At yesterday's Chicago Journalism Town Hall, I suggested that it'd be possible to replace the local-news functions of the Chicago Tribune or the Chicago Sun-Times with an online news operation costing $2 million a year.

A big part of that, I said, would be reporters making $35,000 a year and covering key local beats like City Hall and the County Board.

This idea was met with guffaws. Imagine... Reporters making $35,000 a year.

The group then moved on to consider ways to ensure that talented reporters in Chicago make $100,000 a year or so. 

But the federal Department of Labor...more

Nonprofit news has become a hot topic over the past few days. Some people are calling on Warren Buffet to drop a cool billion dollars or so to endow newspapers.

Others say going nonprofit is a cop-out.

Fueling these discussions are a couple of myths about the nonprofit world. Since we've operated in it for three years now, let me dispel them:

* Nonprofit is the easy way out. Ahem. Perhaps you noticed that NPR and Chicago Public Radio just laid off staff. Perhaps you, at some point in your career, have written an article or 12 about...more

CTA honcho Ron Huberman doesn't have much education experience, but was named today to head the Chicago Public Schools.

Perhaps it's because he came at the right price?

It's been a long week here in Illinois (half as warm and twice as corrupt as Florida!) waiting for our governor to resign.

He's got an approval rating well below freezing and no good reason to stay in office.

He can't use the resignation as leverage with the feds, because he's not going to be reelected, and it's tough to govern from jail. Offering to quit a job you can't keep anyway is no negotiating tactic.

And it's not like he can actually get anything done. Productive meetings, at least in Illinois, are prefaced by the idea...more

Journalists are, for the most part, watchers rather than doers.

We like to sit on the sideline, take notes and mutter snarky comments to each other. When the doing is done, we weigh in with artfully constructed prose that explains what happened and who stepped in it.

That's a fine approach for most news stories. But when the story is the systematic disembowelment of the industry we all know and love, cynical detachment and dispassionate observation won't cut it. 

It's time for rank-and-file journalists to demand, or seize, a seat at the table and begin forcefully guiding the industry toward...more