It’s been a while since I posted anything in this platform - but given how much digital ink I spent on my journalism career, it didn’t feel right not to mark it here.

Back in mid-April 2022, I was hired as a part-time reporter at Growing Community media, which I freelanced for in my Chicago Journal days back in 2012 and then after the whole ( Read more... )

Over the past few months, Chicago has been dealing with waves of migrants from Central and South American countries, many of them bused in by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. The African-American backlash to the  proposal to set up shelters in majority-Black Woodlawn and, more recently, majority-Black South Shore has been covered extensively on the news, ( Read more... )

I ended up doing this article because, back in November, a week before Thanksgiving, I was taking the bus past the intersection of Chicago and Laramie avenues and noticed a large, bright mural on the building at the northeast corner intersection that definitely wasn’t there back in June. I noticed the name of the artist - the iconic Chicago ( Read more... )

I've learned to dread calls from my editor at Austin Weekly News. Used to be that he'd only call me to either do some fact-checking (which means that chances are pretty good that I messed something up) or to berate me from the way I wrote something, which often involved cursing me out. These days, he does occasionally call for other reasons, but ( Read more... )

On December 15, five medical professionals became the first five Chicagoans to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

The vaccines were administered in Loretto Hospital, which is located in the majority-black part of the Austin community area and primarily serves black and Hispanic West Siders. With COVID-19 hitting those communities especially hard, and ( Read more... )

On March 15, Gov. JB Pritzker issued an executive order closing restaurants' and bars' dining rooms. By that point, government meetings and events were already getting cancelled left and right. When I talked to my mom on the phone, I said that i was worried about my assignments ( Read more... )

One of the newspapers that work for less frequently is the monthly Gazette Chicago. It primarily covers Near West Side and Near West Side community areas, with some coverage of neighborhoods further south. It was originally known as Near West Gazette, then Near South Gazette, then as simply Gazette and, around two years ago, it became Gazette ( Read more... )

I don't know what it says about me, but winning one of the Illinois Press Associations awards isn't as exciting as it used to be. Not unless I win first place. So when this year's results were announced and I found out that I got a second-place award for news reporting (in the mid-size weekly community newspaper category), I didn't even mention it ( Read more... )

Back on October 4, I spent several hours working hard to write an article about a rally that took place that took place an hour earlier. The piece that ultimately wound up printed in October 10 issue of Austin Weekly News was a small sliver of it. In fairness, the reactions to the guilty verdict in the trial of officer Jason Van Dyke wound up ( Read more... )

So, back in July 27, I picked up that week's issue of News-Star community newspaper at the Devon Market grocery store, where I do most of my shopping. I was reading the issue on the bus ride back when I came across a letter to the editor written in response to the front page article in the previous week's issue. The article talked about how the ( Read more... )