Media Archives

This week, former Chicago Sun-Times TV columnist Robert Feder (@robertfeder) managed to stick his foot in his mouth while sticking his tongue in his cheek. The usually scrappy Feder slapped down ChicagoNow's new WGN-AM Radio weekly show from the pulpit of his own new blog at the web-centric Vocalo Radio. Boy, could I say something about that. But fellow blogger Alexander Russo, the nationally prominent scribe of the popular District 299 Chicago Public Schools watchdog blog, got there first.

Yesterday, I asked why the Chicago Community Trust's recently announced "Community News Matters" grant awards seem to ignore the future sustainability of online local news. It turns out there may be a reason for that. In August, a key Trust staffer claimed in signed comments here on Chicagosphere that the foundation never considered the grant monies to be more than bridge funding--and that it had no idea who would receive that funding. So why did the foundation's own request for proposals (RFP) announce the future sustainability of Chicago's local news sector as a main goal of the grant program? And why are most of the winning grant recipients organizations and bloggers to whom the Trust reached out prior to releasing its RFP in the first place?

[UPDATE: This post has a follow-up, Vivian Vahlberg Vs. The Usual Suspects: Why the "Community News Matters" Grantee List Is No Surprise.]

Today, the Chicago Community Trust announced the recipients of its Community News Matters grant awards, aimed at spurring innovation in Chicago's online local news sector. The recipients list reads like a who's who of the Chicago community news scene. But it takes a lot of reading between the lines to find any evidence of long-term sustainability for the winning projects.

Today, I walked out of Community Media Workshop's Communicamp open conference. It wasn't for lack of wanting to stay in my seat and spend the day with the cognescenti of the Windy City's media and blogging worlds. But how do you remain at an event where the rules of the road seem almost aimed at making someone with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder--like me--feel as out of place as possible? Here's why open conference don't work for ADHDers...and how to change that.

When the Chicago blogosphere's star local news site, Chitown Daily News, suddenly folded in early September due to dwindling finances, editor Geoff Dougherty promised to return "within eight weeks" with a new, more sustainable local news site. True to his word, this week in Crain's Chicago Business, Dougherty announced the upcoming debut of Chicago Current...a monthly print publication with a companion website. Huh?

Last week, local dining-industry PR shop Restaurant Intelligence Agency wrote a blog post telling clients to concentrate on exclusive media pitches or risk being blackballed by angry reporters. As long as three years ago, however, media watchers began warning that exclusives can actually do more harm than good in a highly interactive, Web 2.0 media world. Who's right?

Every day on the Internet, the Southwest Observer faces off against Chicago's machine mentality. Can an independent community journalism website aimed at some of the most parochial neighborhoods in the Windy City find success? Editor Mike Fielding is on a mission to find the answer.

In Chicago, the idea of journalists blogging for free is a controversial one at best. Some journalists scoff at the suggestion that they give their words away for free. However, Sun-Times columnist Laura Washington does just that--and in the process shows why blogging is key to the future of journalism. Enter: The Washington Report.

Last November, the Federal Trade Commission caused a group heart attack among bloggers and online advertisers when the agency announced its intention to regulate online endorsements. As the new rules debut this month, however, the only bloggers with cause to fear are the ones who consider their viewers purely as a means to a financial end, rather than as a community of real people worthy of respect.

It's amazing how unused to receiving criticism reporters can be. Since writing about the future of journalism in Chicago this week here on Chicagosphere (and my Chicago Carless and Huffington Post Chicago bylines), I've been inundated with comments from reporters telling me that I don't have the right to share my opinion or voice dissent when it comes to reporters...because I'm not a journalist myself. (For example, see Kane County journalist Dan Campana's comments here.) In today's video post I ask my audience, do you think you should believe everything you read just because a reporter writes it?

(UPDATE 9/23/09: This story continues on my personal blog, Chicago Carless, in today's post: "The Day Michael Miner Killed Commentary".)

The Chicago Sun-Times deserves to die. Here's why.

[UPDATED: 3:44PM] As initially reported on Gapers Block, the Windy City's leading independent local news website, Chitown Daily News, has laid off its reporting staff and is shutting down, to re-tool as a for-profit venture. The surprise news comes in the wake of the C-BOM bloggers meetup called last month to discuss ways to make financial ends meet on the local blogosphere.

Whether you're an Oprah Winfrey fan or not, if you're traveling through downtown Chicago and the Near North Side over Labor Day weekend and the first workday to follow, chances are you'll be significantly impacted by Winfrey's two-and-a-half-day closure of North Michigan Avenue--Chicago's most important transit bus corridor--to tape the season premiere of her talk show. If you're a CTA rider--and heaven knows you should be this weekend--here's what you should know about the detours.

Yesterday afternoon, Alderman Helen Shiller posted a lengthy response on the 46th Ward website regarding the widely viewed August 13th Uptown riot video and the firestorm of controversy surrounding it. Given the gravity of the situation for Uptown residents, it's a response worthy of a line-by-line analysis by a communications strategist. Being one, myself (how useful is that?), that's exactly what I've done. Read on to learn why I think Shiller's response doesn't fit the crime.

As widely reported this week, Chicago-based hyperlocal newsfeed aggregator EveryBlock.com was bought out by MSNBC for an undisclosed sum likely in the millions. At a time when Windy City foundations are posturing to be the nonprofit saviors of online local news, the surprise sale may point to a different future for popular sites. Is there money to be made in the online local news sphere after all?

Each week on his Beyond the Pedway video blog, freelence web developer Tim Jahn interviews the leaders of creative Chicago companies to learn what makes them tick--and why they call the Windy City home.

On July 6th, I reported on potential violence along the lakefront during Chicago's Independence Eve fireworks. The next day, in consultation with my Chicago Now editor, I filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests on several city agencies. Now thirty days later, here's what I've heard back.

(Photo credit: Jeff Reimer | Mode of Expression.)

There are bad branding strategies. There are Macy's-mothballs-Marshall-Field awful branding strategies. And then there's Willis Group's hubris- and hare-brained idea to rename the Sears Tower. What do you get when you glue a new name on an old icon whose existing monicker has worldwide recognition? Judging by local blog discussion, a good laugh--and lots of people who say they just won't bother to say the word W*****.

Chicago's nationally noted grassroots media training shop, Community Media Workshop, has posted online expanded coverage of last month's annual Making Media Connections conference. Regular readers will recall MMC as the venue for the release of The New News, a report that named the top community-centric blogs and niche media sites in Chicago.

As reported yesterday with far too much column space on Crain's Small Business Blog, the paper formerly known as The Printed Blog has ceased publication after a short, six-month lifespan. If you're scratching your head right now wondering what paper I'm talking about, that's entirely my point.

I seldom take seriously local bloggers intent on taking over the online world. That is, with one exception: Steve Rhodes, Publisher and Editor of The Beachwood Reporter.

Heading one of Chicago's top, homegrown news and content networks, every day Rhodes goes up against the best and brightest of the Windy City blogosphere (including Chitown Daily News, Chicagoist, Gapers Block, Huffington Post Chicago, and the folks right here at ChicagoNow) to tell the story of this town from a deliberately critical perspective. It's a curious kilter with major merit for those who believe the real commodity has never been the dryly objective news, but the subjective newspaper that has always surrounded it in opinionated juiciness.

[Ed. note--6/18/09: This post will be occasionally updated to link back to additional perspectives from the coference.]

On Saturday, the Windy City's media community convened for the second time in less than a week to discuss its collective chance for survival, this time at the Chicago Media Future Conference. Whether the effort achieved its aim has been the subject of much blogosphere debate since the last attendee staggered away from the post-conference happy hour at Wabash Tap.

Organized by Mike Fourcher, founder of Purely Political Consulting, Barbara Iverson, Columbia College journalism professor and publisher of ChicagoTalks.org, and Scott Smith, Senior Editor at Playboy.com, in the immediate wake of Community Media Workshop's Making Media Connections 2009, Saturday's conference stood the chance of launching a substantive debate about future sustainability for the increasingly web-centric local- and niche-news community. Whether that actually came to pass is unclear.