I wrote the following for my Substack column, and thought I’d share it with the Reader audience.
They say all politics is local, and I believe all media stories are local, too. They start that way, and then trickle up, like the water poisoning in Flint, Michigan, or the police murder of George Floyd.
When I was ten years old, I started a family newsletter. Its name changed a lot, from T.N.T. (Top News Today), to W.H.E.N. (What’s Happening; Enter News). The early ones were all hand written and mostly focused on the family’s animals. Its circulation eventually soared to 150 people—family, neighbors, friends. I also took on geo-politics, gentrification (living in the heart of it at Fremont and Willow in the early 1970s), entertainment, sports, school grades, family health challenges, and violent attacks.
Talk about local news. My focus has been local ever since.
Working at a gay paper most of my career was like working at a small-town paper in a big city. The good, the bad, the deadly. It was a good training ground for when I moved up to the Chicago Reader in late 2018. At this larger platform, I also wanted to try out something I had thought about for years—building an alliance of local media, to help strengthen ourselves peer-to-peer, and use our clout to expand the resources available in this ecosystem.
The Chicago Independent Media Alliance (CIMA) was born in the summer of 2019, perfectly timed to assist media when COVID-19 hit. We launched an emergency fundraiser last May that raised $160,000 for 43 of our members. This year, 43 of our 68 CIMA members are once again working together to lift all boats. See this link to show your support, one at a time, or all at once. Donations to individual papers are being matched by local foundations. Full details, and a list of media outlets, is available here.
Our members range from long-time legacy newspapers founded in the 1800s, to newer podcasts. They serve a very diverse set of audiences and cover a wide range of news, features, and entertainment. They are an important part of our city, and without their voices, so many stories would not be told. And they certainly would not be told through authentic community voices. I hope you can spare some change to show your support.
Local media is my life’s work. Please join me in showing appreciation for my peers, who create such a vibrant fourth estate in this city. The campaign runs through June 11. We’re at about $30,000 now. Every dollar counts.
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