Justin Kerr

I am the publisher of the McKinley Park News and a resident of the McKinley Park neighborhood, where I and my family have lived since 2008. We have really enjoyed getting to know our local community and have found McKinley Park to be a convenient, affordable and safe neighborhood with some great amenities and lots of excellent people.

Like many near-Southwest Side neighborhoods, McKinley Park has suffered from a dearth of information about the day-to-day news and events that make up the fabric of the community. This was my original inspiration for the 2012 startup of the McKinleyPark.org website, a basic neighborhood news and events listing site that eventually became the McKinley Park News. I and my family have also been active in many neighborhood and community groups, and I am one of the founders of the McKinley Park Development Council, serving as a volunteer on its board of directors for four years. In 2024, the McKinley Park Civic Association presented its William H. Toms Community Service Award to me for our community journalism.

My professional background began in journalism and Internet publishing, in which I began dabbling in the early 1990s while a student at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. Newsroom stints as reporter and copy editor led to starting up one of the first online newspapers in the U.S. at The Times newspaper; later work for the Tribune Company focused on nationally distributed online media products and services. Other publishing experience has included serving as executive director of 501(c)(3) online magazine The Site of Big Shoulders, and my technical writing has been featured in the Software Developers Journal, Joomla! Community Magazine and other publications. I've also helped Internet startups, creative agencies and media outlets build, sell and manage their online products and services in both direct consulting and team lead roles. I am proud to be a member of the Chicago Journalists Association (CJA) and the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and its local chapter, the Chicago Headline Club.

Throughout, I've been a resident of the Chicago area, living in South Side neighborhoods the bulk of the time and enjoying the community, variety and neighborliness that this side of town engenders. When I consider McKinley Park's place in this tableau, I see a neighborhood led by a very strong community with great potential for more improvements, responsible development and further bridges between our neighborhood's Hispanic, white and Chinese enclaves.

I look forward to making the McKinley Park News a resource for the neighborhood and conveying our community's stories, which are so often overlooked by Chicago's other media. I also look forward to your enjoyment of and interaction with this website, as well as seeing you and fellow neighbors around the neighborhood.

All the best to you and yours,

— Justin Kerr