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... )

As a journalist, I get my article ideas from all kinds of places - press releases, newsletters, Facebook event listings, tweets, meeting agendas, even old-fashioned tips. But, every once in a while, I find out about something newsworthy simply because I happened to be at the right place and the right time.

( It carries rewards - but it is also a risk )

A few weeks ago, a journalist I know told me something that disappointed me.

Since she told this to me in implicit confidence, I'm going to avoid a lot of details, so bear with me.

( Here is the long and short of it )

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... )

Growing up in the waning days of the Soviet Union and the dawn of the new, chaotic Russian Federation, one saying that I heard bandied about a lot was “кто не работает  тот не ест” - roughly “one who doesn’t work is the one who doesn’t eat.” And last week, it dawned on me just how close to literal that is when you’re a freelancer.
( It is interesting how a cold can put things in perspective )

Back on the last Thursday of September, my editor at the Austin Weekly News asked me if I could cover a meeting in Oak Park. As I think I mentioned before, he does the double-duty as one of the reporters for Wednesday Journal Inc's flagship newspaper, the Wednesday Journal, which covers Oak Park and the nearby River Forest. It was one of those ( Read more... )

Back in August, I got a message from Tom Robb, a reporter for Niles Journal, one of Niles Bugle's competitors. We knew each other since my Pioneer Press days. A lot of reporting of community meeting involves sitting around, waiting for something to happen, and its easy to bond over journalism-related stuff. Tom knew that i didn't have a car, and ( Read more... )

In this post, we return to what has become a recurring topic on this LJ - the silly, often contradictory standards that get applied to women's bodies.


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