Bill Parker is a really smart editor here at the Chicago News Cooperative. Like some of us, Bill joined the CNC after taking a buy-out from the Chicago Tribune a couple of years ago. We all hated watching the bloodletting at the Tribune, a company where we had worked for decades. The sad tale included one nice chapter, though. On the departing journalist’s last day, friends would take him or her to a restaurant in Greektown for some lunch, laughs and latholemono. After a while, some of us began feeling like we were on the Athens city council. Too many veteran journalists were taking the paper s generous offer to call it quits.
So Bill and a few others set aside the ouzo and headed over here to 70 East Lake Street to start the CNC. I think I ve seen Bill wear a tie once. He hates them. He can disappear from a room so quickly that the question Where s Parker? is our parlor game. He s a big jazz fan, likes to play golf, has an easy laugh, a direct manner, loves great headlines and even greater (read: big) photos. At the CNC, he s a deputy editor who keeps track of the stories we re doing, reads everything and always improves the copy that flows across his desk. He s also one of the most thoughtful editors I ve ever encountered, and that s why I listened when he walked in my office and said somebody should do a story on why small businessmen in Chicago face tough times getting loans and creating jobs.
Everybody at the CNC is a reporter, regardless of titles, and I decided to dust off my credentials and head down to Ground Zero of the recession in Chicago, the South Side. If you think things are bad in your neighborhood, try West Englewood, Auburn Gresham or South Shore. Unemployment rates now hover around 20 to 30 percent and plunging property values have wiped out a generation of African American wealth once embedded in the value of homes. Brian Berg of Shore Bank took me on a tour of neighborhoods where the lumber of choice was the plywood slapped on windows and doors of abandoned homes that were more common than fire hydrants.
If you want a challenge, try being a banker serving low-income neighborhoods in this downturn. ShoreBank labors doggedly under the glare of federal and state bank regulators. I had lunch with the more than a dozen local builders and real estate developers; most said they couldn t get credit at any price and that business was awful. Standing in front of one of numerous foreclosed homes in West Englewood, a local worker told me: This is the worst I ve ever seen. ShoreBank also lined me up with Barbara Wright, a tall soft-spoken woman who owns a small, struggling uniform business at 1805 W. 95th. When I walked in the door with a photographer, she said, Wait a minute; I ve got to put on my face. When she returned, she looked even better than when we arrived and started talking. Thanks to Barbara, I got an idea of why all of the federal programs, budget deficits and government efforts to improve the economy haven t yet hit the right note. You can read my report in the Chicago pages of the Sunday New York Times.
Speaking of Greektown, the CNC’s Dan Mihalopoulos knows the area well. He and his wonderful wife, Connie, had their rehearsal dinner there just before they got married. Dan is one of those Greek American kids who can trace his roots to the area around Halsted and Van Buren Streets. So he decided to return to do one of our special features — Street Corners.
Every once in a while, the CNC sends a reporter out to find out what is going on around a street corner somewhere in the metropolitan area. The intersection doesn t have to be special or have any particular angle, or it could be a special spot. We don’t care. We just want to go there and talk to people, ask them what s happening, what they talk about with their families over dinner. The idea is to get voices from some ordinary people in the paper, give them a chance to sound off and to tell readers about an area of the city they might want to visit. We ve discovered some really interesting stories by talking to people in the neighborhoods, and all of our reporters love doing Street Corners. So if you know of a corner we should visit, drop us a line at newstips@chicagonewscoop.org and maybe Dan or some other CNC reporter will drop by.
CNC columnist James Warren has some good advice for Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn: Don t let Mike Madigan and fellow Democrats stick you with some stooge as a running mate to replace a candidate that managed to make pawnbrokers look bad. Alright. Alright. We ll quit picking on pawnbrokers. But Warren s not about to quit picking Illinois politics as a subject for his witty columns.
By the way, did you see that New York Times columnist Gail Collins crowned Illinois as the state with the most awful political culture? Readers from other states howled in disapproval, challenging her decision: What about Texas, California, Rhode Island — Hawaii! Rookies one and all for a state with a string of ex governors in or facing jail.
CNC Sports columnist Dan McGrath managed to find one of the few jobs more difficult that digging out of the snow. He s writing about a young man from a dirt poor neighborhood in Chicago who is trying to help Northwestern University s basketball team go to the NCAA tournament for the first time in 71 years, a futility record that rivals the Chicago Cubs. After two of the team’s stalwarts were knocked out for the season with foot and knee injuries, Jeremy Nash became the team’s undisputed leader and will try to pull the Wildcats into the tournament in a do or die game Sunday.
The Chicago News Cooperative produces two pages of local Chicago news for the New York Times every Friday and Sunday. If you think we should do a story about a subject that merits attention and some sound journalism, shoot us the idea at newstips@chicagonewscoop.org. We report, we don’t just repeat.