They are sometimes looked down on as the stepchildren of Chicago journalism: weeklies (or irregularlies) with inexperienced reporters, biased editors, buffoonish editorial policies, exaggerated circulation claims, and ink that clings more to the fingers than the paper. At their worst, community newspapers prove all these claims.
A check of three random Municipal Reference Library aldermanic files backs up that claim. The most recent file on Bernard Hansen shows two stories each from the Tribune and Sun-Times, one from the Evergreen Gazette–and eleven from the Booster papers. Jesus Garcia’s file contains one story from the Tribune, two from the Sun-Times, three from the All Chicago City News, and four from the local Lawndale News. William Beavers received only one Trib mention, but two from the Defender, one from the Southtown Economist, and nine from the Daily Calumet.
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“You don’t live in a town of three million,” says writer and activist Lew Kreinberg. “You live in a neighborhood. People need to find out what happens within the smaller areas. The Municipal Reference Library and its neighborhood newspaper collection have nurtured me and the work I’ve done for the past 25 years. Besides, the dailies tend to slant their stories to a downtown, prodevelopment point of view. You need the community papers to provide a balance by describing how projects have impacted on particular neighborhoods.”
“And even when the city has money, they don’t spend it on us. Martin Oberman headed a City Council committee on local documents when the committees expanded a few years ago. He said ‘I’ve got $50,000 in this committee’s budget, and I’m not going to use it.’ I suggested we use that money to film all local documents. But he’d made his stand about returning the committee’s money, and there was no way he could back down from that stand.”
