The meat of newspaper week is in what happens every day
Last Sunday, we published a special section insert in the Daily Herald commemorating the start of National Newspaper Week. We called it “Critical Crossroads,” and included a host of reports and essays describing everything from routine features of the paper like letters to the editor, prep sports coverage and photography to our editors’ news discussions and the paper’s employee ownership structure.
It is a fitting and fairly comprehensive look at what we do and why we do it. And yet, as this week has progressed, I have been impressed by how difficult it is — impossible, really — to summarize what a newspaper actually does and why it is important. Those, really, are descriptions that are manifested daily only in the actual work our journalists do.
Consider how they have demonstrated this value in the past week.
The story of the week, of course, has been the assignment of, first, federal immigration authorities and, now, National Guard troops from other states to conduct operations in the Chicago region. All of our reporters touch on this story in some fashion, but our senior projects and transportation writer Marni Pyke has been leading the coverage, combining her own reporting on suburb-specific developments and state-government actions with details from our wire services. Other reporters have also been called to duty on specific aspects of the story that could only be reported through a local lens — notably Barbara Vitello, who described a Saturday protest in West Chicago, and Mick Zawislak, who attended a Monday press conference with local elected leaders in Waukegan.
Their work — like the work of all reporters and photographers, whatever story they are covering — has been given context and presence through the efforts of a team of copy editors and page designers — notably Brian Shamie, Bob Beamesderfer, Melynda Findlay Shamie, Allen Cone and others. Their efforts extend from the lighthearted appeal of Saturday’s story on a Bozo the Clown enthusiast to Wednesday’s somber Page 1 reflection on the two-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 terrorism in Israel and its aftermath in Gaza.
As important and attention-getting as the big news stories of the day are, it is especially pertinent to consider local news items that may seem secondary to the global events of the day but that actually do as much or more to affect the quality of life in our communities. Consider just a few of these from the past week:
• Katlyn Smith described a boutique workout business seeking changes that will have an impact on downtown Naperville;
• Zawislak told of a reservoir completed in Vernon Hills to help assure water availability in an emergency;
• Russell Lissau, who provided an important update Sunday on campaign financing in the Republican race for governor, also reported later on the city of Des Plaines’ purchase of a restaurant site central to its downtown development plans;
• Christopher Placek, who last week described the $15 million-a-year impact Arlington Heights expects from a possible Bears stadium, also kept Rolling Meadows readers up to date this week on developments along Kirchoff Road; and
• Eric Peterson offered a Business centerpiece updating efforts to spur development in Schaumburg.
All these among many other seemingly “routine” but critically important stories we provide every day.
Meanwhile, who can ignore the excitement of a Cubs run in the early rounds of the MLB playoffs? Our Mike McGraw certainly didn’t, providing incisive previews of coming games and analysis of the victories and losses that lent a particular authority to the presentation by Sports Editor Orrin Scharz and others on his team.
Nor can we forget numerous human interest features like Vitello’s revealing Page 1 feature on pet shelters straining to deal with the numbers of pets being returned by owners dealing with difficult economic conditions or Rick West’s uplifting report on the gift of a home and “a new life” to a U.S. Army veteran who was seriously injured in the Iraq War. And you can add to this regular staples like comics, local sports news, health news, business news, neighborhood news, entertainment news and, yes, weather.
In print and online, there is, indeed, an abundance of material in the daily newspaper worthy of a weeklong reflection. But the truly important and impressive work of our journalists is demonstrated in what they do on any given day.
• Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is managing editor for opinion at the Daily Herald. Follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jim.slusher1 and on X at @JimSlusher. His book “To Nudge The World: Conversations, community and the role of the local newspaper” is available at eckhartzpress.com.