Dear readers,
Last week we took a road trip to East Peoria. The Pair-a-Dice Casino and Hotel if you want to program your GPS. It was the annual Illinois Press Association conference and the editorial and advertising awards.
Honestly, winning awards from your peers is gratifying. We don’t do this hard and good work for the plaques. We do it for our readers and these communities. And while I always tell my colleagues that these contests can be a bit fickle, over 45 years now we’ve won a lot of them.
This year Growing Community Media and our four flags earned 35 awards. The Forest Park Review grabbed the handsome Kramer Trophy as the best small weekly paper in Illinois. Both Wednesday Journal and the Review placed for General Excellence. The Journal took first place for best website in its circulation category while the Riverside-Brookfield Landmark took second place.
Across the flags, our reporters, photographers, digital manager and designers and freelancers won for beat reporting, feature writing, obits, spot news photos, overall page design, and for a succession of our special publications such as Eats, West Side Magazine and the community guides.
What did we cover to win awards? Zoning. Taxation. Casket Races. The death of a former park district director. And, of course, Wally’s Waffles. The stuff of local journalism.
Maybe you know, maybe you don’t, but five years ago our four flags became a nonprofit which we named Growing Community Media. That means we now proudly rely on our readers to help fund our scrappy newsroom.
This is a better moment than most to make the ask.
If what you know about these neighborhoods comes significantly from reading the Review, the Journal, the Landmark or the Austin Weekly News online, we need you to become a member of this hometown club. That’s our future. That’s how local news will continue, maybe thrive a little, going forward.
Best case scenario for us is for you to sign on as a monthly donor. Ten dollars a month would be great. Helps us build a strong foundation and make our plans. You’ll hardly miss $10 but your local news will keep on coming.
That’s the ask. Now’s the moment.
With gratitude.
Max Reinsdorf
Interim Executive Director
Dan Haley
Senior Advisor