Feder: Chicago media rose to meet the challenges of 2020

On a sunny Sunday afternoon in late February hundreds of print, broadcast and digital journalists sat shoulder to shoulder in a downtown hotel ballroom where they pondered the future of their profession.

For more than three hours participants in the Chicago Journalism Town Hall argued passionately about how local news should be funded and how newsrooms should reflect the diversity of the communities they serve if they are to remain viable.

By mid-March hypothetical questions of survival suddenly became frighteningly real, thanks to the specter of a coronavirus pandemic.

For the remainder of 2020, COVID-19 would challenge the media as never before. Along with the misery and suffering brought on by the worst public health crisis in a century, journalists found themselves covering economic upheaval triggered by a prolonged lockdown, social unrest tied to a national reckoning on race and an incendiary presidential election like no other.

Chicago media professionals showed amazing ingenuity and dedication as they reinvented their business on the fly.

As bricks-and-mortar newsrooms turned into ghost towns, journalists found creative ways to do their jobs from remote locations. Living rooms, dens, kitchens and bedrooms became makeshift studios for broadcasters. Lola, the beagle in the background of Cheryl Scott's nightly weather forecasts on ABC 7, gained a social media following of her own.

Get the full report, and more Chicago media news, at robertfeder.com.