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…
Art Cullen was on a traditional career path, moving progressively to bigger and better paying newspapers and positions before he ended up winning a Pulitzer Prize in 2017. He certainly never imagined along the way that he would ultimately be scraping for dimes to support local journalism as he does as editor of a small…