Inauguration story will have local flavor, too

This one is special.

Whatever your politics, you cannot deny the electricity in the atmosphere surrounding the impending inauguration of Barack Obama. You may revel in it. You may resent it. But you see it everywhere.

If I had any doubt, it was erased this week when I saw Barack Obama ski caps for sale at my local gas station. Barack Obama ski caps? T-shirts maybe. And posters are everywhere. But ski caps? Are there people so enamored of a politician that they'll eschew celebrating their favorite sports team or entertainment personality to praise him on something as functional and unpretentious as winter headwear purchased at the local gas station?

An FBI spokeswoman told our state government editor John Patterson, who will be covering the inauguration from Washington next week, that the agency is preparing for 10,000 busloads of spectators to arrive for Tuesday's ceremony. At just 50 people per busload, that's 500,000 people arriving by bus alone, most of them in all likelihood without tickets or any hope of getting anywhere near the actual proceedings. That doesn't even begin to count the numbers arriving by trains and boats and planes.

Much of the excitement surely stems from a desire to be part of history, to participate in the inauguration of America's first black president. Much of it stems from the charisma of Obama himself and the sense of hope he has inspired in his supporters. But whatever its origins, it is there, and it demands special coverage, even by presidential inauguration standards. Adding to the aura for media in Chicago is the fact that Obama is one of our own. Adding to the challenge for the Daily Herald specifically is the fact that we are a suburban newspaper - our aim is not just to chronicle history in the making on a national or international scale, but to show how it resonates in and affects the suburbs of Chicago.

To that end, we've prepared a substantial body of locally produced and locally focused reporting on the Obama inauguration, beginning Sunday and running through Tuesday's inauguration. We'll have a special section in Tuesday's edition and a special wraparound front section Wednesday. Our Web site, dailyherald.com, will have additional pictures, documents and videos.

Of course, we will present all the pageantry and analysis of the inauguration and Obama presidency from the national perspective. But in addition, a vast amount of our coverage will concentrate on how it all touches the Chicago suburbs and Illinois, and the main characters of our reporting are people of all walks of life from the vast and diverse region in which the Daily Herald circulates.

John Patterson, as I've said, will be traveling to Washington to soak up the atmosphere and report back on it, but his focus will not be the grand speeches and panoramic spectacle of the event. It will be something you won't get anywhere else - the intimate details of how people from your towns, your churches, your neighborhoods, your busloads, are experiencing and celebrating this historic event.

You'll see a lot of coverage in the coming week of Obama's inauguration. Clearly, from your wall decorations to your headwear, you're interested in this event and this presidency in a way you haven't followed many presidencies in the past.

So, we'll be covering it in a way that's a little different - not only in terms of how many stories we carry and how we present them but also in terms of what those stories are about. Yes, they'll be about the inauguration. But beyond that, you'll find they're also about you.

• Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is an assistant managing editor at the Daily Herald.