By Michael Miner
The Community News Project originated a year ago as a set of self-evident truths perceived by Thom Clark, president of the Community Media Workshop (and cowriter of the Reader’s Snap Judgments). First of all, Clark told me, “it was my presumption that party conventions are an anachronism. The primary system has taken the place of that decision-making party, and yet news outlets still assign people to cover it.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The tape will be the easy part. But once reporters have trotted out the familiar old images of slashing billy clubs, chanting demonstrators, and teetering paddy wagons, they’ll run head-on into their own ignorance trying to illuminate today’s Chicago. Here’s where Clark sees his opportunity.
The Community News Project and the quasi-official Chicago ’96 convention office see eye to eye on the press corps that will wash ashore this summer. “They’ll have covered the Olympics, and the Republicans in San Diego two weeks before,” said Julie Thompson, communications director of Chicago ’96. “So people will be stretched very thin. They’ll be tired, overbudget. They’re going to have skeleton crews.”
Attached to the letter was a list of 21 briefing papers the news project has begun turning out. To judge from the two already completed–on education and the Illinois economy–these are highly cursory overviews. But they’re larded with names and phone numbers of local authorities ready to say more to any reporter who asks. “And they’re sitting in computers in such a way,” said Clark, “that we can update them to deal with trends, source lists, or as campaign themes develop.”
What about Kotlowitz’s There Are No Children Here? I asked.
The Sun-Times sold $125 tickets for a benefit performance of Steppenwolf’s The Libertine last week largely on the promise that guests could hobnob with John Malkovich at a reception after the show. They couldn’t. The rest of the cast stayed around, but Malkovich showed up just long enough to find his mother; then the two of them went out to dinner together.
