The Sun-Times News Group announced that the News-Star, along with Skyline and The Booster (of Rogers Park) would cease publication as of January 30, 2008. Many readers of this blog also read the weekly News-Star, which covers news and events in the Uptown and Ravenswood neighborhood. The News-Star often covered Uptown news that the mainstream media failed to cover. Reporter Lorraine Swanson was a common sight at many community meetings and asked tough questions to elected officials.Read more about the end of the publication here, courtesy of Crain's Chicago Business.
Update: According to this article, The Skyline, Booster, and News-Star have been purchased by "Wednesday Journal." Apparently the three papers will be merged with two editions of the "Chicago Journal."
Oh, man! Bummer! The only paper in town that covered our area with anything other than the tired old "St. Helen versus the NIMBY Yuppies" angle.
ReplyDeleteLorraine Swanson was amazing in her coverage of what was really going on here.
< selfish > Sure am glad I sent in a check to renew my subscription last week. < /selfish >
Not sure if I'm missing something, but there is no mention of the papers being permanently shut down; it seems they were sold to a local publisher in Oak Park, and it's unclear if they will be not heard from again.
ReplyDeleteNews Star isn't worth it's weight in doo-doo without a knowledgeable reporter covering the lakefront area.
ReplyDeleteHow do you suppose a operation based from Oak Park will cover say - Rogers Park, West Ridge, Edgewater or Uptown?
Unless they keep a reporter of Lorraine's caliber, it won't be worth reading.
I'd say us bloggers hit the jack-pot now. More people will turn to us for the neighborhood coverage.
According to the Tribune, the newspapers will "cease publication."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-ap-il-sun-times-skyline,1,1460589.story
Craig & Ravenswood Dweller, you're a little behind the times.
ReplyDeleteThe News-Star was under Lerner Publications, which was based in Lincolnwood.
Later it was sold to Pionner Press, based in Oak Park. They do local publications for suburbs all over the Chicagoland Area. I remember reading the Hoffman Estates Review growing up.
The offices weren't local, but they had dedicated staff that were (i.e. The Lerner-owned News Star had an editor who lived in ROgers Park, not too far from Loyola Beach, i believe. Also Marcella Tardy was from here as well).
They also have several other papers for the Northwest Neighborhoods. i wonder if they chose the News-Star because they thought the blogs had that news area covered?
Anyway...
It's very sad that the North east side of Chicago will be losing a vital news source. There's still Inside Publications, but i think the News Star was better.
Wednesday Publications are going to take over those newspapers that the Sun-Times are giving up. So these publications aren't going to die. Well only you guys know if that'll work or not.
ReplyDeleteI think the Wednesday Journal people will do a good job with it, judging from their Chicago Journal papers. Glad to see this morning that this deal was in the works, rather than simply the death of these papers.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's not like we'd have no local news coverage at all without them, but these papers fill in some important coverage the dailies don't have room for.
Wednesday Journal purchases 3 city weeklies from Sun-Times
ReplyDeleteThis stinks but thank God we have uptown update!
ReplyDeleteThe Wednesday Journal does a good job covering local happenings in Oak Park, so I expect that they will do a good job with the News Star.
ReplyDelete