A new bilingual newspaper launched this month that focuses on the Back of the Yards neighborhood.
It is published by the nonprofit Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council (BYNC) and the articles are written by a team of 10 high school and middle school students.
"We want to bring the community together with this paper," Adriana Cardona, the editor of the newspaper, told me. "You hear about all the shootings and violence. But we want to inform the people about all the great initiatives out there."
They are publishing twice a month and 12,000 copies each edition.
Articles in the first 32-page edition published Feb. 17 focused on the
need for a new high school, a dance club and a gardening program. It's
not hard hitting investigative journalism but nice to see the students
cover issues important to their community.
In a front page editorial they wrote:
Because there was no place for community members to share information and stories, focus on the things that unite us, or discuss the issues that are shaping our community, the BYNC designed this paper to fill that gap.
Today more than half of the residents in Back of the Yards are Latino. The neighborhood is perhaps best known for being the location of Upton Sinclair's famous book The Jungle.
The BYNC was formed in 1939 by Joseph Meegan and Saul Alinsky, the well-known community organizer and writer.
It's encouraging to see a community group come together and help fill the void in coverage of the Latino community.
The next edition will be published March 3.
