You Are Invited to Sing Happy Birthday to Chicago With Us!

Greetings, readers, friends and fans of the McKinley Park News!

You’ve possibly noticed a gap in our local news articles this past week. The reason has been a good one: We’ve been busy as beavers leading production for Chicago’s Birthday Party, where we sing Happy Birthday to Chicago (in four languages!) at the geographic center of Chicago on our great city’s 187th birthday.

Join us and a cavalcade of community supporters, neighbors, special guests (including Captain Chicago!) and local organizations at 6 p.m. on Monday, March 4, at 37th and Honore for a community event to celebrate our fantastic city, represent our wonderful McKinley Park neighborhood and meet your fellow neighbors.

I am so proud of the group that’s come together to support this event. Come out and join us: It’s going to be a lot of fun!

Local News Hijacking

More causes of our news publishing delay are some crazy things going down at the Chicago Independent Media Alliance (CIMA) and Press Forward Chicago.

You may remember my plaudits and hope from past Letters to the Editor about our home-grown CIMA group that was bringing together Chicago publishers in a first-of-its-kind alliance. I and others also wrote about how Chicago should get a “general fund” to support local journalism, and how it seemed like this was going to happen through Press Forward Chicago.

Unfortunately, it looks like both of these efforts have been hijacked by advocacy interests incompatible with hard news providers like the McKinley Park News, as well as carpetbaggers who have nothing to do with news, publishing, or supporting our industry at all.

Shattering CIMA

CIMA’s been torn apart by Public Narrative, a single member of the group that now states it has “acquired” CIMA and is asserting its total control over the organization and all its assets, with no opportunity for any other member organization to participate, have a word in the group’s governance, or even submit feedback on the group’s direction.

CIMA had gone dark for nine months, and we members were not told what was going on. But behind the scenes, Public Narrative and the Reader Institute for Community Journalism were secretly working the whole while on transferring our alliance — and all the work (and intellectual property and rights of publicity) that every member put into it — entirely to Public Narrative.

Broken Expectations

We members heard nothing from anyone until last Thursday, when Public Narrative hosted a Zoom call that would have been the first time in nearly a year that we CIMA members could have spoken to each other again. I and others were so looking forward to saying Hi after so long!

I anticipated discussing group direction and how we could move toward becoming our own independent organization. “Independent” is in the group’s name, after all. But Public Narrative muted us. They also refused to commit to an all-members meeting.

We Gotta Go

When I and others started to question this direction and state our concern (as well as I could type on a phone at the time), Public Narrative’s Jhmira Alexander made their position clear: If we didn’t like Public Narrative’s ownership and control over CIMA, we could leave.

Well, OK then. I think it’s obvious that CIMA needs to leave Public Narrative.

Meet on March 19

Toward this, I and other members have convened a meeting — open to everyone actively and principally engaged in local media and news publishing — at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 19, 2024, at the Sky Ride Tap, 105 W. Van Buren St., Chicago. (21+, full bar, cash only.)

It was easy to set this up because I and a couple other local news publishers who are CIMA members had already started organizing on our own: Given the long blackout, we thought CIMA was abandoned. (A web portal is coming soon.)

Mostly we just wanted to get together again, talk shop and have some fun with actual working members of our industry: something only CIMA had supported to date, but an event it now seemed like Public Narrative would work hard to deny.

Failing Journalism 101

One of the most disturbing aspects of this debacle is the complete abandonment of journalistic principles and supposed collaboration through this whole process: a racket of betrayal of our craft and industry by those who prop themselves up as experts and saviors, but instead just exploit local news while not practicing it themselves.

According to its mission statement, Public Narrative is a non-profit advocacy marketing organization that enacts the narrative it wishes the public to perceive by manipulating the practices of newsrooms.

McKinley Park Progressive News

Or that’s how it reads to me. Certainly there’s a lot of flowery language masking the social and political advocacy foundational to Public Narrative’s mission, although anyone who reads it will understand it advocates for causes seen by many as partisan, and have their opinion of news content colored as a result.

I do not have the luxury of publishing the McKinley Park Progressive News. It’s hard enough to create a sustainable local news product, much less one that would subdivide our market by endangering reader trust that our news is not motivated by informing readers, but marketing specific agendas.

Editorial Virtue Signaling

Instead, the McKinley Park News focuses on hard news and information that appeals to and is useful to our entire community, and we stick opinion and user (and commercial/sponsor) content where it belongs: in specifically identified areas and roles.

I don’t think Public Narrative would ever support a local news outlet that didn’t align with its stated social and political agendas, or a newsroom that wouldn’t agree to be a customer of its advocacy marketing programs, or a news publication that would not adopt whatever Public Narrative might mandate as its currently fashionable editorial virtue signaling (e.g. using “Latiné” instead of “Latino”).

Velvet Coffins In Ivory Towers

Or at least that’s how it’s going to look to everyone, principally for you news readers and your critically important trust. “News” is worthless if you can’t trust it, a foundational principle of journalism.

However, none at the forefront of the local journalism community — especially all of the “leaders” who have fled our industry for velvet coffins in ivory towers and the non-profit industrial complex — are speaking up about this ethically barren behavior, or many other recent examples of “local news” being exploited by those who do not practice it.

Follow the Money

Why would those who portray themselves as journalism leaders behave this way and completely ignore core questions of ethics and trust? Real working journalists know one of the first things to consider when it looks like shenanigans are afoot: Follow the money.

Tons of funding is now flowing into efforts to “save local news,” but most of the benefit seems like it’s being siphoned off into supporting institutions and programs — and bloated staffs who have elevated themselves into these positions — rather than actually helping local news, whether through direct fiduciary support or initiatives that are actually beneficial to and informed by we local news publishers.

Consider Press Forward Chicago, a local subset of the national half-billion-dollar Press Forward initiative. Press Forward Chicago was an exciting program sold to all local news publishers as a “general fund for Chicago journalism.”

News Businesses Locked Out

However, as Press Forward Chicago announced the other week, its $10 million to fund local news will only be available to non-profit organizations: Any commercial news publisher like the McKinley Park News must track down, without support, a non-profit “fiduciary sponsor” and agree to an unspecified contract, seemingly with management fees siphoning away funds at every step of the process. Public Narrative is one such suggested fiduciary sponsor.

Another big, unexplained problem seems to be outlined in the program’s Frequently Asked Questions: Grant administrator Chicago Community Trust says it limits beneficiaries to “charitable” projects only, such as those that do not yet have their 501(c)(3) status.

Homogeneous Leadership

My questions about whether local news businesses will get any help have gone unanswered. It looks like the McKinley Park News and all other local news businesses are getting locked out of Press Forward Chicago.

As with Public Narrative, Press Forward Chicago and its coming money spigot is laden with conflicts of interest, beyond just Press Forward Chicago leadership having seemingly little direct local news experience and being so homogeneous their leadership web page looks like a corporate board photo from the early 1980s, except for switching the gender of the old people surrounding the single black guy.

Non-Profit News

The non-profit news outlets that are presumably Press Forward Chicago's beneficiaries are public charities that must receive the majority of their funding from “public support,” which means they often adopt specific agendas beyond just reporting news in order to attract public donations and agenda-driven grant awards.

Chicago’s non-profit news outlets are great for local publishing and produce fantastic and impactful content. However, there are a lot of news needs that non-profit local news doesn’t fill, such as the workaday community info that’s very important locally, but that may not serve an advocacy agenda. (Think street closures and neighborhood event calendars.)

Purchasing Silence

I would challenge our non-profit brethren, especially our fellow local news publishers in CIMA, to consider these issues and speak out if you have concerns, even though you may feel compelled to silence so as not to endanger future Chicago journalism funding from those who seem to be cornering the market for it.

You may see how Press Forward Chicago’s sole support for non-profit news stands to shatter the local journalism community in a destructive manner so similar to Public Narrative’s takeover of CIMA. And again, foundational journalism ethics concerns add to an ever-growing list:

• Will Press Forward Chicago and its fiduciary agents like Public Narrative only choose to support local news that aligns with their stated advocacy agendas and the priorities of their non-news practitioner leaders?
   
• Would readers have their trust of a local news outlet colored by big funding from agenda-driven sources that seemingly have priorities that overshadow general support for local news?
   
• Should Press Forward Chicago and its fiduciary agents like Public Narrative be the gatekeepers of local news funding, without engaging any actual local news practitioners to ask what could help us?

No one’s addressing any questions like this, and the chorus of crickets keeps growing to fill the silence of the self-anointed spokespeople who purport to support local journalism.

Decades Down the Drain

I’m not surprised: These folks have been around for a while now. Although the recent “save local news” gold rush and its carpetbaggers are notable, it’s par for the course for those who purport to lead our industry, but actually have been guiding it into ruin for decades.

It’s time we stop listening to the losers with non-news priorities who have fled from and offer no real help for our news industry. That’s why CIMA was so important: an organization by we local publishers, for us, on which we could collectively work to really help our local industry and its interests. Doh!

Blacklist Here We Come

I would not be surprised if this Letter from the Editor blacklists the McKinley Park News and secretively cuts us out from consideration for future local journalism grant funding or support from local journalism's leadership cabal, because we’ve pointed out these issues and shared our opinion that the local Emperors of Journalism aren’t wearing any clothes.

However, dependence on advocacy-tainted third parties and self-interested jackanapes would mean I have failed as a local news publisher, especially independence of our editorial content and anything that threatens the appearance of such.

The Worst Failure

I’d also fail to create a sustainable local news enterprise, including successfully navigating the headwinds of any blacklisting or pressure to convert to a non-profit. Our philosophy is: To save local news, we have to get money back into our local news industry. Begging isn't a business model.

Most important is that I would also fail you, dear reader. Your trust in us has more value than any payoff or benefit loaded with compromises and conflict of interest. What we do has no value without your trust. It seems like many have forgotten that this is what news is.

We Recant Our Support

In the past, we’ve promoted these organizations to you, and encouraged your donations. I’m sorry to say we can no longer do so, however, I hope to be able to offer an alternative sometime soon. I despair that Press Forward Chicago and Public Narrative probably won’t do the right thing.

As for the funders and donors for Press Forward, Public Narrative and far too many other organizations purporting to support local news, but falling short: You really need to look at what your money’s doing when you’re giving to those who state they want to “save local news.”

No One Asks Us

As a local news publisher, I tell you here that what’s going on now does not benefit local news publications like the McKinley Park News. To find out what does, you and others might visit your local news publication and ask us! No one from Press Forward or Public Narrative has so far.

You might find this tough, though, with traditional local news publishers falling left and right, many having received no support or consideration from our supposed saviors of local journalism. One recent example is The Bridgeport News shutting after 80 or 90 years of publishing, with none of local journalism's benighted shedding a tear or even acknowledging the loss.

You Make It Worthwhile

All of these journalism cosplayers and tiers of institutional grift do not stop us, but only slow us down. I appreciate your patience, dear reader, and wanted to share with you all the reasons for this past week’s news gap, as well as let you know how we continue to fight for an independent news outlet for our neighborhood.

Fortunately, the thrill and challenge of publishing local news for you — and helping to lead community events like tomorrow’s Chicago’s Birthday Party — make it all worthwhile.

I thank you as always for your support. Cheers!

— Justin Kerr
Publisher, McKinley Park News