CHICAGO CARLESS

(Photo: A city salutes its–and America’s–own. Credit: kirbyfest.)

As thrilled as the world was to learn that America elected its first black President on Tuesday night, the reaction to the news by revelers at Grant Park was transcendent. Here’s what you didn’t see on the news: a quarter of a million people spontaneously counting down in unison while awaiting the West Coast polls to close.

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(Photo: Chicagoland’s best media guide, once again with words from Yours Truly!)

The following entry is cross-posted on my Huffington Post Chicago byline.

The media world as we know it has imploded in the past year, nowhere with a louder thud than right here in Chicago. Multiple bloodlettings at local print and broadcast outlets, not the least of which at the Chicago Tribune, have left the industry begging for mercy.

It’s into this maelstrom that Community Media Workshop, Chicago’s grassroots media-relations training shop (one of the few in the nation), this month releases the 18th edition of its annual media guide, Getting On the Air, Online & into Print.

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(Photo: Different bridge, same exodus: my experience on 9/11. Credit: Joseph Rodruguez.)

An annotated version of the following entry is cross-posted on my Huffinton Post Chicago byline.

Today, with the world again awash in retrospect, I usually prefer to be blogging about about courtesy, or kittens, or one of any number of safer, happier, topics. Seven years on and I had originally thought not to mark the occasion again. At some point, we just have to emotionally let go inside, or we destroy ourselves. In the end, while I feel no need to make a pilgrimage to a dusty construction site in Lower Manhattan, I still feel a need for words. I wrote these particular words in 2006, to mark my experience of the fifth anniversary of 9/11. Here’s my story from that day…

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(Photo: You never know where life will take you. Credit: Devyn Caldwell.)

The new Huffington Post Chicago page debuts today. And guess which Windy City carless blogger has got a byline there?

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(Photo: Why, there was a time, my son, when people read these things called newspapers… Credit: Cushman Collection.)

Last week’s newest bloodletting at Sam Zell’s Chicago Tribune saw bone start to be jettisoned along with flesh. On top of hundreds of job losses since the beginning of the year, early-buyout exits by managing news editor Hanke Gratteau and public editor Timothy McNulty-along with two dozen other core newsroom staff-from one of the most important news outfits in the nation is shocking.

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