When Maudlyne Ihejirika, an award-winning journalist, asked me to meet her at her office recently for our interview, I was surprised. Hadn’t she retired from the Chicago Sun-Times? What was she doing at a high-rise office in downtown Chicago? Ihejirika was in the lobby, waiting for me so she could escort me to the third…
Business journalism, if done well, is community journalism. The beats converge in stories about burgeoning small businesses, from a new grocery store that serves an underserved Hispanic community, to the giddy launch of a trading-card store. Business journalism seeks to answer the “why” behind the persistence of sexual harassment at restaurants. And it explores quirky…
Photojournalist Tiffany Blanchette was standing with a family after their house had burned down just east of Kankakee, Il when the family’s lost cat appeared. Blanchette captured the touching scene with her camera. For Blanchette, 33, this was a particularly rewarding moment in her early career as a photojournalist. Another such moment was when a…
The city of Chicago will direct half of its advertising dollars to smaller local news outlets in the new year through a measure long sought by independent media outlets. Chicago spent $3.5 million on media ads from 2015 to 2020, with just over $660,000 going toward placement in community outlets. This fall, Chicago Mayor Lori…
Heidi Randhava, a reporter and advertising manager for the Evanston Roundtable, a hyper-local digital media publication in the lakefront city of Evanston north of Chicago, calls herself a “cheerleader” for local news. “Even if you tune into CNN, or listen to local officials, being a consumer of local news is the best way in which…