Editorial: The Daily Herald's role in the community

The journalists here at the Daily Herald are not in the business to win awards. It's nice to be sure, but it's certainly not the main motivator.

But one award we are very proud to have won — eight times in the past 12 years — is the Inland Press Association's Community Leadership Award. As Editor John Lampinen said at the time it was given in October, “We're gratified by this recognition of our staff's continuing dedication to public service.”

Public service is the reason many go into journalism. In many ways, we can help strengthen the communities we serve through our work.

That certainly was true for our series “Generations at Risk: Our Promise to our Kids,” a data driven series that highlighted the struggles low-income students have in school and the successful ways some schools are dealing with it.

When granting the Community Leadership Award, Inland judges said it best: “The lessons learned can be prescriptive for many other cities as America continue to search for ways to end the cycle of failure in many urban schools. A big part of leadership is going beyond identifying problems.

The Herald offered solutions and applauded schools that are doing the right thing.”

Today and throughout this week we are looking back on 2015 and those stories that we believe made a difference in our readers lives. We take this role seriously and treasure the opportunity we have to directly reach our neighbors.

Whether we are telling the story of the ongoing saga at College of DuPage or digging for explanations in the suicide of Fox Lake Lt. Charles Joseph Gliniewicz, we know that we must handle each story with care.

The same is especially true in our ongoing series of stories detailing how the suburbs are dealing with mental health issues.

And there are times when we must tell our readers what they're doing wrong — like the spot check we did of drivers at 10 intersections one morning throughout the area that showed 1,000 people illegally using their cellphones during a one-hour period.

Newspapers sometimes are accused of focusing on the negative and not spending time pointing out the positive stories. Here at the Daily Herald, though, we know those stories are just as important and sometimes more important to tell. For example, every day this month we've granted $100 to worthy readers who submitted a good idea for how to use the money to do a good deed for someone else.

It was a simple concept started by Lake Zurich philanthropist Carolyn Gable and one we're proud to be sponsoring for a second year.

As 2015 comes to a close, we want to thank our subscribers for putting their trust in us and we look forward to another year of working to keep that trust.