Davis: Hawks top a week of coverage we'd call joyous
It's hard for even the most grizzled, dispassionate gatherer of news not to get swept up in the euphoria of covering the hoopla over the Blackhawks this past week. I'm no different, and I'll admit to being giddily swept up in the excitement of helping oversee three reporters assigned to provide up-to-the-second coverage after the free tickets to the Soldier Field rally became available online at noon Wednesday.
The story, which we updated online throughout the day, started off as expected: tickets were snatched up in 15 minutes; people were grousing about getting shut out at the Ticketmaster box office, and all sorts of people were trying to make a killing off the situation. Not long after the tickets were gone, Craigslist and eBay were crammed with people offering to part with them. (The range, at one point, was from 99 cents to $1,500.) A check on Friday indicated some of the eBay sellers got a few hundred bucks for tickets.
Another development came Friday when we learned federal customs officials seized $181,215 worth of counterfeit NHL merchandise during the Stanley Cup Final and the Hawks victory celebration. The haul included fake jerseys, hats, T-shirts, jackets and such.
Those opportunists provided the few small blips on the radar of an otherwise joyous week of coverage. Yes, everyone has to work a bit harder (see our fast-turnaround 12-page Blackhawks commemorative section inside today's newspaper), but I'd suggest there are few around here who don't view it as a labor of love.
Academic success:
Speaking of joy, today's Page 1 centerpiece story certainly offers some. The news about lower-income, minority students and their education is usually that of struggle, lower achievement. (In fact, a four-part series on that topic starts in Monday's paper.) But Madhu Krishnamurthy's story today on Hispanic students and advanced placement testing highlights a rousing success. Largely thanks to diligence by our local school systems, the number of Hispanic students taking advanced placement exams has quadrupled in the past decade. Taking AP tests, educators say, is key in college preparation, admission and success. AP proficiency also has the very practical result of saving money when students qualify to skip some required college courses.
'Good people with a sickness':
"Joy" is not a word that comes to mind as we've chronicled the heroin epidemic in the suburbs in our "Through their eyes" series. But the word would be a fair choice to describe the success stories that sometimes come by way of drug court, an alternative sentencing program launched by and still flourishing in Kane County. Staff writer Jessica Cilella last week told the story of Joanna Fecteau of St. Charles, who at age 19 thought she'd never escape the grip of heroin, and the tough-love approach of Randy Reusch, the program's probation supervisor, who helped Fecteau graduate from the intensive program. Reusch's motto is simple: Keep every participant alive, sober and crime-free. But his philosophy shows his humanity: "I have never met anybody in this program that deserved to die. They were all good people with a sickness."
jdavis@dailyherald.com