The first assignment that David Bowes got when he joined the St. Louis Post-Dispatch 61 years ago was to cover a coroner’s inquest for Maye Trainor, the city’s premier madam and hostess to Babe Ruth when Ruth’s New York Yankees were in town. In the years that followed he interviewed Dr. William Masters, the sex
When the Covid-19 pandemic first hit, weekly and smaller newspapers scrambled to provide coverage of the huge global story affecting their readerships even though they had much smaller staff and fewer resources than the city’s larger media outlets. But for publications like the South Side Weekly, Wednesday Journal and Loop North News in and around
Growing up in rural Iowa, Becky Vonnahme didn’t have access to many local news sources. Now, as part-time executive director of the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation, Vonnahme has discovered why. Small publications, like small businesses, have a hard time getting funded. After all, ad sales alone just don’t support local journalism anymore. The foundation works
A new local journalism task force is gearing up to examine the growing news desert in Illinois under a new mandate that goes into effect the first of the year, but the majority of the people who will do that work have yet to be appointed. The task force, established by law and signed by
Late last month, my son and I were photographed outside of Columbia College Chicago for a story about my employer’s new policy limiting children on campus. The Chicago Tribune photographer captured him in a wrap on my back, his blue Vans untied and a floral mask covering his face. It was my baby’s first newspaper
