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Gratefully,

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If you’re not signed up there—and most of you are, because your email address was migrated here that one time Mailchimp failed—we hope you will now.

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Gratefully,

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It’s here. Updating coverage: Hurricane Idalia’s made landfall on Florida’s west coast—the first major hurricane on record to pass through the bay abutting the Big Bend, where the Panhandle curves into Florida’s peninsula …
■ … flooding streets from Tampa to Tallahassee …
■ … and wreaking havoc on flights to and from Chicago.
■ Its superpower derives from what The Associated Press calls “intensely warm water that acts like rocket fuel.”
■ Also: A supermoon.
■ Media writer Tom Jones explains the value of journalists reporting from dangerous spots within the storm.

‘The greatest external threat to human life expectancy on the planet.’ New research out of the University of Chicago concludes pollution’s menace exceeds that of tobacco or alcohol.
■ The Conversation: Emerging research raises concerns about the dangers of cannabis smoke.

Chicago stories.
■ The Sun-Times: “Two Chicago firefighters escape after man locks them in basement with gasoline-covered floor.”
■ Block Club Chicago: “North Side baseball coach displayed gun after his team lost, police and witnesses say.”
■ A Tribune editorial: Mayor Johnson’s response to gunfire at Friday’s White Sox game has been “ridiculous.”

Swim Club beached. The Friday morning social phenomenon that drew thousands to Lake Michigan near Montrose Harbor, raising safety concerns, is off for the rest of the summer.
■ In a funny announcement on Instagram, organizers cited last Friday’s rogue gathering where, “from what we’re told, multiple Park District employees and CPD officers were seeking out people with Swim Club gear, threatening to arrest them.”

‘Heartless people … held a festival on social media.’ The Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg shreds arguments from one of the many who objected to his Monday column asserting that the influx of immigrants to Chicago is a good thing.
■ The city’s opening two more migrant shelters on the North and South Sides.
■ Axios Chicago: Housing and economic strain are driving the overcrowding of Chicago’s public animal shelter, which is putting more creatures to death.

Amazon’s warning. The company’s CEO tells employees who are resisting its return-to-the-office policy, “It’s probably not going to work out for you at Amazon.”
■ At The Nib, Jen Sorensen wonders why so many TV shows focus on bosses and investors and not workers:

‘Bored Journalist Syndrome.’ That’s what columnist Matthew Yglesias blames for the surge of interest in nutjob Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign.
■ Columnist Mark Jacob on Twitter X: Andrea Mitchell’s MSNBC interview with Ramaswamy “shows why she needs to retire and be replaced by someone who won’t get bulldozed by fascist liars.”

‘Nobody beats Father Time.’ Ending what he says is the longest-running tenure of any TV sports anchor at any station in the nation’s top 20 markets, Channel 7’s Jim Rose is calling it quits next month.
■ CNN has a new boss—the former chief of the BBC and The New York Times.

They’re back. Five late-night TV hosts idled by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes—Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Seth Meyers and Jimmys Kimmel and Fallon—are teaming up to launch a new podcast, Strike Force Five, with proceeds to benefit their out-of-work staffs.
■ Hear here, beginning today.

Fewer than 1 in 10 Chicago Public Square readers help keep this service free for all. You can join their ranks—with a one-time tip (awesome!) or an ongoing pledge (awesomer!)—for any amount you choose.

Support Chicago Public Square

It’s here. Updating coverage: Hurricane Idalia’s made landfall on Florida’s west coast—the first major hurricane on record to pass through the bay abutting the Big Bend, where the Panhandle curves into Florida’s peninsula …
■ … flooding streets from Tampa to Tallahassee …
■ … and wreaking havoc on flights to and from Chicago.
■ Its superpower derives from what The Associated Press calls “intensely warm water that acts like rocket fuel.”
■ Also: A supermoon.
■ Media writer Tom Jones explains the value of journalists reporting from dangerous spots within the storm.

‘The greatest external threat to human life expectancy on the planet.’ New research out of the University of Chicago concludes pollution’s menace exceeds that of tobacco or alcohol.
■ The Conversation: Emerging research raises concerns about the dangers of cannabis smoke.

Chicago stories.
■ The Sun-Times: “Two Chicago firefighters escape after man locks them in basement with gasoline-covered floor.”
■ Block Club Chicago: “North Side baseball coach displayed gun after his team lost, police and witnesses say.”
■ A Tribune editorial: Mayor Johnson’s response to gunfire at Friday’s White Sox game has been “ridiculous.”

Swim Club beached. The Friday morning social phenomenon that drew thousands to Lake Michigan near Montrose Harbor, raising safety concerns, is off for the rest of the summer.
■ In a funny announcement on Instagram, organizers cited last Friday’s rogue gathering where, “from what we’re told, multiple Park District employees and CPD officers were seeking out people with Swim Club gear, threatening to arrest them.”

‘Heartless people … held a festival on social media.’ The Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg shreds arguments from one of the many who objected to his Monday column asserting that the influx of immigrants to Chicago is a good thing.
■ The city’s opening two more migrant shelters on the North and South Sides.
■ Axios Chicago: Housing and economic strain are driving the overcrowding of Chicago’s public animal shelter, which is putting more creatures to death.

Amazon’s warning. The company’s CEO tells employees who are resisting its return-to-the-office policy, “It’s probably not going to work out for you at Amazon.”
■ At The Nib, Jen Sorensen wonders why so many TV shows focus on bosses and investors and not workers:

‘Bored Journalist Syndrome.’ That’s what columnist Matthew Yglesias blames for the surge of interest in nutjob Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign.
■ Columnist Mark Jacob on Twitter X: Andrea Mitchell’s MSNBC interview with Ramaswamy “shows why she needs to retire and be replaced by someone who won’t get bulldozed by fascist liars.”

‘Nobody beats Father Time.’ Ending what he says is the longest-running tenure of any TV sports anchor at any station in the nation’s top 20 markets, Channel 7’s Jim Rose is calling it quits next month.
■ CNN has a new boss—the former chief of the BBC and The New York Times.

They’re back. Five late-night TV hosts idled by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes—Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Seth Meyers and Jimmys Kimmel and Fallon—are teaming up to launch a new podcast, Strike Force Five, with proceeds to benefit their out-of-work staffs.
■ Hear here, beginning today.

Fewer than 1 in 10 Chicago Public Square readers help keep this service free for all. You can join their ranks—with a one-time tip (awesome!) or an ongoing pledge (awesomer!)—for any amount you choose.

Support Chicago Public Square.

Time’s up.

Updating coverage: The unsuccessful quest for the Titan—that submersible missing on an expedition to the wreckage of the Titanic—passed the point when breathable air was to run out.
■ CNN columnist Oliver Darcy: “Should a missing tourism vessel for the ultra-wealthy take precedence over other consequential stories happening around the world?”
■ Lauren Martinchek: “Here we are pondering some of the most disturbing deaths imaginable that simply did not need to happen.”
■ Slate’s Shannon Palus: As the rich “try to defy death … the rest of us can only watch.”
■ There’s no shortage of harrowing tales from past travelers with the expedition company …

■  … whose website remained open for business as usual this morning.
■ Neil Steinberg predicts: “Interest in this kind of thing will soar. … People with more money than sense will … become intrigued, ignoring the ‘and then you might die’ part.”

’Killer tornadoes, hurricane-force winds and softball-sized hail.’

A National Weather Service forecaster reflects on the horrible weather that devastated a west Texas town and killed at least four people last night.
■ The Washington Post Tuesday: Five maps link Texas’ terrible weather to climate change.
■ Argonne National Laboratory’s teaming up with community organizations to track climate change’s impact on Chicago.

’The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office does not believe it can meet its burden of proof.’

Twelve years after the killing of an off-duty Chicago police officer, prosecutors have dropped charges …
■  … against two men who’ve already spent a total of 22 years behind bars.
■ The City Council’s approved $8.8 million in settlements of lawsuits claiming Chicago cops did bad things.
■ In a move the head of Chicago’s search for a new police superintendent calls “completely inappropriate,” 19 council members are pushing one candidate.
■ Columnist Matthew Yglesias: “Community meetings aren’t democracy. … Elected officials should … decide what they want to do and make it happen.”

Sox park reliever.

A man who aided people hurt in a hit-and-run Tuesday outside Guaranteed Rate Field credits his decision to take his employer up on an offer of emergency medical training.
■ The suspect in the case was due in court at noon today.
■ One witness says the Sox and the city should shut down 35th Street near the stadium on game days.
■ The chaos caused by a flash mob at a carnival last month has prompted Tinley Park to bring in outside security to back up cops for a festival July 1-4.

’I believe in throw-back.’

Mayor Johnson’s introduced an ordinance aimed at protecting Chicago’s iconic “ghost signs”—flashy neon reminders of businesses long gone.
■ The City Council’s voted to designate The Warehouse—a West Loop club that birthed house music—a Chicago landmark …
■  … just in time for this weekend’s Chicago House Music Festival and Conference.

Metra pass on borrowed time.

A pandemic-era innovation—the $100 unlimited-ride monthly ticket, the agency’s most popular—may be ending …
■  … along with $6 and $10 day passes.
■ It’s soliciting public comment here.

’Censure all of us!’

Democrats defiantly celebrated the Republican-dominated House’s censure of Rep. Adam Schiff, who led the prosecution in Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial.
■ Schiff told Fox he’ll wear the censure “as a badge of honor.”
■ Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, the Daily Beast reports, “The messy feud between two of MAGA world’s biggest stars burst into public view … when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called Rep. Lauren Boebert a ‘little bitch’ to her face.”
■ Boebert wanted to impeach President Biden—a plan House Speaker McCarthy diverted to committee.

’Justices licking sugar off the tummies of their sugar daddies.’

Politico’s Jack Shafer says Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito’s “presponse” to ProPublica’s expose of his questionable ethics was one of the dumbest things Washington’s seen in decades.
■ Charlie Pierce at Esquire: “Supreme Court justices should not live like oil sheikhs, and especially not on somebody else’s dime.”
■ A year after Alito’s historic majority opinion overturning women’s right to abortion, The Associated Press reviews abortion law in every state.

America: Older than ever.

New census data shows that the U.S. population’s median age has leapt eight years since 1980—mainly, in one demographer’s words, because “fewer kids are being born” …
■  … and that the white population of this country would have fallen last year if not for immigration …
■  … which makes all the more timely “The Onion’s Guide To Fertility Treatments.”

’A feast for data-hungry government agencies.’

The Intercept: “The legal research and public records data broker LexisNexis is providing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement with tools to target people who may potentially commit a crime—before any actual crime takes place.”
■ Here’s the unredacted contract overview.

’This tale is far from over.’

Columnist Eric Zorn notes release of an update to former WBEZ reporter Lauren Chooljian’s podcast The 13th Step, where she details the arrest of two men accused of vandalizing her home, her parents’ home and a colleague’s home in apparent retaliation for her reporting.
■ You can hear the whole series here.

’Meyerson tells readers where to go.’

Thanks to Zorn for sharing Chicago Public Square highlights with readers of his Picayune Sentinel newsletter.
■ You should subscribe free here.
■ Elizabeth Austin made this edition better.

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She’s worked for Chicago’s biggest newspapers and he’s worked for Chicago’s most successful radio stations. And now … they do email.

Joining Charlie Meyerson for this edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podcast, Chicago Media Talks: Axios Chicago newsletter authors Justin Kaufmann and Monica Eng.

Listen in your favorite podcast player, via Spotify and Pandora, on Amazon’s Alexa-powered speakers or on Apple Podcasts.

Or if you prefer to read your podcasts, check out the transcript below.

And if you’re a completist, check out the behind-the-scenes raw audio and video from the recording of this podcast via Zoom on YouTube—including deleted segments like Eng and Kaufmann’s answers (at 34:50) to the question, “How did Charlie most annoy you?”

■ Enjoying these podcasts? Help keep them coming by joining The Legion of Chicago Public Squarians.

■ And consider subscribing—free—to the daily Chicago Public Square email newsletter.

_____

Now, here’s a roughly edited transcript of the interview with Eng and Kaufmann. Corrections? Email Squerrors@ChicagoPublicSquare.com.

Charlie Meyerson 0:00

She’s worked for Chicago’s biggest newspapers, and he’s worked for Chicago’s most successful radio stations. And now, they do email.

Monica Eng 0:08

At WBEZ they kept saying, “Would you like to write our newsletter?” And I’m like, “Are you kidding me? I’m a reporter! Stop with the insulting questions.” And now, like, I love it.

Meyerson 0:20

Monica Eng is a longtime Chicago reporter who’s covered food, culture, health and the environment for the Chicago Sun-Times, the Chicago Tribune and, yes, also at a radio station, WBEZ. Justin Kaufmann’s a former talk show host and producer in Chicago at WBEZ and WGN Radio. They’ve teamed up to create the Axios Chicago newsletter, rounding up the day’s biggest Chicago news plus coverage of their passions, including food and sports.

Justin Kaufmann 0:44

Chicago is a different place. It is going to be a different newsletter than Denver. It should be a different newsletter than San Francisco.

Meyerson 0:52

Coming to you despite a cough, congestion and a mild fever that a test assures me do not signify COVID-19, I am a well-medicated Charlie Meyerson with Rivet360 and Chicago Public Square, which, yes, is also an email newsletter. And this is Chicago Media Talks. Justin, what did you want to be when you grew up? And how did that lead you into Chicago radio?

Kaufmann 1:14

You know, it’s funny. My dad always reminds me that I was really into DePaul Blue Demon basketball when I was a kid and I would write up stories like sports stories of the games that they would show on Channel 9 at the time, like when DePaul would pay like Creighton, or Georgetown. And I would write—he showed me when I was older—like, these write-ups. So I think I wanted to be a sports writer in some form. But to be honest, I really wanted to be in radio. I love the idea I had my own— I did the announcements in high school and a lot of things to end up where I ended up to be a talk show host. So I think that that’s what I wanted to be.

Meyerson 1:53

High school announcements: You and I have that in common. Monica, what did you want to be when you grew up? And how has that shaped your career?

Eng 2:01

I had no idea. But by the time I was 15, and my mom was dating Roger Ebert, he said, “Hey, so do one of your kids need a job this summer?” I said, “Well, I’m not going to be doing anything but watching TV. So maybe I’ll go try this thing called being a copy clerk at the Chicago Sun-Times.” And from the first day I started working in the features department at the Chicago Sun-Times in 1985, I fell in love with it, and that’s all I ever wanted to do—be a newspaper woman or a newswoman. I did not envision I would be an emailer, thanks for calling me that.

Meyerson 2:35

It’s an honorable profession. It’s honorable.

Eng 2:37

There was no email at the time, which was why I had a job. You know, putting the mail in the slots at the Chicago Sun-Times.

Meyerson 2:45

How and when did you two first meet?

Kaufmann 2:48

Ooh.

Eng 2:49

Ooh.

Kaufmann 2:49

That’s a good question. Monica was world-renowned, you know, in Chicago media. And I think I booked her a couple times on talk shows on WBEZ. And then, you know, when Monica was looking to make a career change, she came over to WBEZ. So we worked together at WBEZ for a couple of years, working on talk shows and reporting.

Eng 3:12

Yeah, well, yeah, I remember I remember. I used to hear you on the radio. And I was always a huge fan of WBEZ, and then you know, you, you’d say, “Hey, can you come on and talk about your Tribune stories?” And I thought, “Oh, this is fun.” So when you said, “Hey, there might be a spot here,” like, “You know what? I’m gettin’ a little sick of the Tribune, maybe I’ll think about that.” But as you recall, hiring at public radio sometimes takes a little time. So I think we were doing that dance for a couple of years.

Kaufmann 3:39

Yeah, we had a lot of lunches at Fox & Obel, which is that high-end grocery store over on …

Eng 3:44

… between Tribune Tower and WBEZ.

Meyerson 3:47

How did you come to be a team on the Axios Chicago newsletter?

Eng 3:51

Justin had already been working with the Axios daily podcast. So he kind of knew about that world. And we both had worked with Niala Boodhoo at WBEZ. And she was already there. She was quite an evangelist for the place. And I thought, “Whatever, I’ve never really even heard of this thing.” And so when she told us both about it, I think we’re like, “Well, let’s take a look at this.” I don’t think either of us were like super-sure we wanted to do a newsletter because obviously we had different skills. We didn’t like who has newsletter skills? Do people like graduate college knowing how to do this?

Kaufmann 4:25

Yeah, I will say, Charlie, that the one thing that grabbed our attention, I think, was looking at what Axios was doing with newsletters—not just in the local markets, but what they were doing with Mike Allen and others who do the national newsletters—is they really did feel like a written talk show. And if you look at Mike’s Axios AM, that’s what it is. Mike is hosting a talk show—he’s doing articles instead of segments—but it really had this vibe, this energy to it. He’s connecting to his readers. He’s engaging, he’s going back and forth. It reminded me a lot of what I was doing at WGN Radio when I was doing a WBEZ with Reset. So it was an easy opportunity when they said they wanted to do it for Chicago, you know, it was a, it was a no-brainer to say, “OK, well, you know, could you do a talk show in an email format?” And that’s what we’ve been, that’s really our ethos, our mission statement, our philosophy, Monica and I, that this is a talk show in an email format, and it seems to be working.

Eng 5:19

In fact, when we are when we’re over length on these newsletters, Justin’s like, “Oh, we gotta cut it for time.” I’m like, “Justin, we’re not doing radio.”

Kaufmann 5:28

It’s hard to lose the little radio things like “cut for time.” “Listeners,” I always— Our readers are listeners, I always say that.

Meyerson 5:37

It’s easy to get those mixed up. You know, sharing some of that same professional DNA with you guys, I know that one of the hardest things I find in creating an email newsletter is deciding what not to put in. Because, as Monica has said, there’s no time restriction, there’s no length restriction, and deciding what doesn’t go in is harder than deciding what does go in. How do you wrestle with that?

Eng 6:00

Well, we do have a length: Nothing over 950 words. But that does make it harder. I mean, Chicago is full of, you know, a million stories in the naked city. And so how do you choose, you know, four or five a day? It’s a terrible Sophie’s choice to make.

Kaufmann 6:16

That has been an issue where I think a lot of the editors and everyone were like, “You know, you’re gonna have to do this every day, you’re gonna watch out— Finding content will be an issue.” For Monica and I—because we’ve covered the city for years, and you know, this, Charlie; I read your newsletters and same idea—you could do 50 stories, you could do 100 stories. I mean, there’s— time is nothing, so you’re just like, yeah, every night at 10 o’clock, after we put the thing to bed, I’m like, “Darn it, we didn’t talk about this, or we didn’t do this.” And that reminds me of when I worked at ’BEZ and ’GN as well, where you would be down on yourself because you missed the topic that you think Chicago wanted to talk about.

Meyerson 6:52

As we record this August 22, 2022, you’ve been with Axios just a bit more than a year. What’s been a high point of that year or so with Axios?

Kaufmann 7:00

I think, to me, the highlight has been just connecting with Chicago readers. I would have never thought this would be this successful. I mean, at the time we tape this, we’re over 80,000 people who are signed up for it. The open rate is way above the average. And people are engaging and sending us emails on a daily basis on every story we do. It’s way more than I ever had at WGN or WBEZ. I think that that has much to do with the format—I mean, people at their computers are like I can easily respond to this. But that has been the high point to me is watching that sort of evolved engagement from some of the other things that were— I mean, you know, Charlie, talk radio is all about engaged. So by getting people on the phone, like, that’s where it’s supposed— you think that’s ingrained in the secret sauce of an AM talk radio station like WGN, but this supersized it. We’re talking hundreds and hundreds of emails and people who want to engage.

Eng 7:56

They can be overwhelming at times—because, yeah, it’s like, “Oh, I want to respond to all 150 people who wrote to us today sharing you know, where they like to go, you know, for a picnic in Chicago, or, you know, what they remember about Tower Records.” So, yeah, similarly, I think, you know, the engagement. Yeah, of course, I got COVID during our first or before our first retreat, so I couldn’t go, and Justin just loves to rub it in about how fun it was.

Kaufmann 8:25

It was such a fun time without Monica. That really I think that’s the secret sauce is that Monica wasn’t there.

Eng 8:30

Leave that old wet blanket home.

Meyerson 8:32

All right, how about the low point of your first year with Axios? Monica?

Eng 8:36

Oh, jeepers, I wouldn’t say low point. But, I think, you know: Breaking news. During the strike, when omicron was raging and the CPS and CTU were fighting. We were doing really long days. And it was like, “Oh, shoot, something else just happened. Let’s, you know, break the thing open again.” It can kind of it’s actually very exciting to cover breaking news. But it was wearing and I think, you know, and well and then the Highland Park thing, day after day, turns into a manhunt it turns into to these things. And our bosses are actually great. They’re like, “Look, are you guys feeling worn down? What can we do to kind of rejuvenate you.”

Kaufmann 9:20

I think because we are news media creatures at best and at heart, it becomes really difficult to shut it off. And so, if there are breaking news stories on top of breaking news stories, we’re not the type to bury our head in the sand. We’re the type to say it doesn’t matter if it’s 8 o’clock, 10 o’clock at night, 11 o’clock, we get up and we start working again. And that is just part of the pitfalls of the job. I mean that you get burnout. You don’t get a chance to have any sort of renewal moment or time to rest. You just gotta keep going.

Meyerson 9:53

Just six years after its founding Axios is being bought by Cox Enterprises, the cable communications and historically a newspaper company, for a little more than half a billion dollars. What’s that mean for you and Axios Chicago? Are you both millionaires now?

Eng 10:09

Well, I guess quasi-millionaires maybe like, multi. It’s actually, you know, I’ve been and Justin’s been at companies that have been bought before, and it’s usually bad, bad news. It actually appears to be good news, in this case. And, and our bosses made sure that they got a really good deal for employees as well. As far as we can tell, they’re not going to touch the journalism, they just actually want more local journalism. Cox seems to really love the local end of it. And so I think it means we get more love and, and, and our bosses are talking about this as a multi-generational thing. They want Axios to be around generations after they’re gone. And I think, as far as I can tell, that’s, that’s really gonna help with this.

Kaufmann 10:59

Yeah, they’re saying all the right things.

Meyerson 11:00

When you say “good deal for employees,” what does that really mean?

Eng 11:03

We get to sell a third of our stock. So everyone is vested, even people who have been there a short time, and you can sell a third of your stock to Cox and then later, we can sell it for actually an even better deal—you know, depending on the valuation of the company at the time.

Kaufmann 11:17

You know, Axios is a young company. And it is interesting to see the difference in philosophy and styles when a young company is bought, as opposed to an older company. And I’ve been on both sides of the spectrum. I was there when WGN Radio was sold to Nexstar, before that tried to be sold to Sinclair. That is a different feeling. That’s a feeling of dread. And, you know, they’re coming in to change formats or cut or like even work in the newspapers. That’s not what this is, this is a win for Axios, they got a media company to buy the product for a pretty sizable amount of money. And they look at it as this is an indicator and also, I would think, an encouraging sign that people are interested in the future of local news.

Meyerson 12:03

Between the two of you, you have by my count, more than half a century of experience in newspapers and radio. What’s your take on this, this email news business? Is it a fad? Is it here for the long run? Is it the successor in any way to traditional radio and television? Or is it something that you expect is going to fade away as something else comes along?

Kaufmann 12:23

Well, I will say this: I think that obviously you’ve been a pioneer and doing email, and you’ve you found your voice, and that’s really what it’s about. It’s not that everybody can go to email and, and be like, “All right, I’m just going to transfer my product to this new format and it’s gonna work.” I mean, it’s the same tenets. You have to be engaging, you have to have personality, it’s about the tone. Everything is the same. It’s just you’re using words, and I think it’s very akin to maybe what we saw in the early 2000s, with the blog movement. I think that that was something that at first people were like, “What, you’re gonna put your—this is in the newspaper? It’s digital? What are we doing?” And you saw some that became very successful and very profitable, and some that were middle of the road and some that died off. And I think that newsletters, especially independent newsletters, are in the same ballpark. I think it’s the same game. It’s just evolved. And I think that advertisers are more interested in putting their money into email newsletters because it’s been tried and true by now.

Eng 13:26

Yeah, if you’d asked me a year ago, I would have said, “What the heck email newsletters?” I mean, actually, I’ll be honest: At WBEZ they kept saying, “Would you like to write our newsletter?” And I’m like, “Are you kidding me? I’m a reporter! Stop with the insulting questions.” And now, like, I love it. And it really is meeting people where they are. People our age still open email. My daughter, she’s like, “Can’t you just text it to me, mom?” So maybe these will be texted in the future. But it’s respecting their time. It’s curating for them. And it’s yeah, it’s going into the box that they open every morning.

Kaufmann 14:05

I think it’s all about advertising. And I think that the audience has been there. Charlie, you—we did it together at ’BEZ.

Meyerson 14:13

Let’s be transparent. You hired me to do WBEZ’s—

Kaufmann 14:17

Yeah!

Meyerson 14:17

Well, it wasn’t even— WBEZ in 2013 was not set up to send email to readers. So I did what should have been email but was just a blog at the time.

Kaufmann 14:27

Yeah, but it was a news blog. It was similar. It’s similar in the way to what you do right now with Square. I mean, it was a very similar idea. But that is where this— I mean, you could see the evolution from those kinds of posts that were important—that people would go to the URL to check it out every morning to see what Charlie had to say about Chicago news. Now, they’ve just like podcasts, they figured out a way to take these blog posts and give them right to you in an email format. And that is that I mean, if you really think about podcasts, that’s where the world changed when you were doing radio and it was appointment and I had to go to a dial. I had to actually punch the numbers in. Now they found technology that just puts it on my phone when I wake up. And that’s a big difference. That’s why you have … so much audience there because they’re not having to do anything. It’s almost like the media industry is finally figuring out, you have to go where the audience is at as opposed to trying to get them to come to you.

Meyerson 15:20

A colleague in the broadcast business once talked about his organization’s ability to train listeners to do certain things at certain times. That seems to be a notion that I think is going away. I don’t even know when my favorite TV shows are on, they just show up on my TV when I want to watch—

Kaufmann 15:34

When you’re ready to watch them! Exactly! Right? I mean, I watched two or three TV shows over the weekend that were season finales from two weeks ago. And I didn’t have any problem with it. I knew how to avoid the spoilers. We’re not living in this collective zeitgeist anymore, where everybody’s watching one episode of Lost. There’s a lot going on. And I feel like that is the same with we talked about podcasts, you talking about newsletters, talking about news. And I think that what I find interesting is just the idea that Monica and I are, we get this all the time from listeners—or readers. Sorry, there you go—that say, “I get all my stuff from you.” You know that—

Eng 16:11

Which is scary. Come on, guys, you shouldn’t be—

Kaufmann 16:13

Yeah, it is scary. You should read other stuff for sure. I mean, but I think it’d be the same with your readers, Charlie. I mean, they’re coming to you, they can go get the stories from different places. But they’re coming to you for that five, three to five minutes in the morning. For them to say, this is what I this is what’s going on. And this is what I need to know what’s going on.

Meyerson 16:28

You know, “We read the news so you don’t have to” is one approach to email newsletters, I think. How has the pandemic played out for you, as you create the Axios Chicago newsletter? Monica?

Eng 16:40

Well, we started it like 1/3 or halfway into the pandemic. And so, I’m thrilled to be at an organization that says “We will be remote all the time.” If you’re in New York, and you want to go to the New York office, or in Virginia and want to go there, that’s great. But they say “Home is where your office is,” and we get a nice fat stipend every month to make our home a nicer place. And you can spend it on flowers or a dog or whatever —

Meyerson 17:12

A dog? I’m impressed.

Eng 17:14

I mean, anything that will make your home a nicer place to do your job. But for younger people for whom work is like the place where you’re gonna meet your mate, and you can learn from older journalists, I could see how it’s a problem. The world, you know, we know it all.

Meyerson 17:29

You’re both youngsters compared to me! Justin, how did the pandemic play out for you?

Kaufmann 17:33

Well, I mean, I left—I got, you know, tossed outta WGN Radio right when the pandemic started.

Meyerson 17:39

Yeah, I was on your last show. It was an honor.

Kaufmann 17:40

Yeah, that was right. I mean, that was right when the lockdown was happening, which is the timing is crazy. But the so I was one of the people who lost their job right when the pandemic started. And I have yet to— Any project that I picked up freelance, I mean, I went on to host Reset, and I went into the Navy Pier studio to do that. But since then, I’ve done a number of projects—the Madigan podcast, and the Axios newsletter, and working for Axios Today, which is the national podcast—from this desk. And that has changed the world, the technology for us to be able to do this, the technology for us to be able to connect through Slack and other platforms that give us an immediate connection is great. Now, I will say that What I miss is the creativity through collaboration, which was brought up in D.C. I mean, when we went to the Axios retreat—they had an all-staff retreat in DC—that was a big thing that the CEOs and the founders talked about, is they said, we have to do more of these. Because you do find yourself coming out of those, talking to the crew from Dallas or the crew from Tampa or the crew from Salt Lake City, or Seattle, and becoming friends and saying, “We should do something, Detroit.” All that kind of like conversation is amazing. It really gets your creative juices flowing. And so that we miss for sure. And even Monica and I, who have a great shorthand, we don’t see each other in person enough. Now luckily, we’re on the same softball team and that softball team is winning. It’s a winning team. So it’s …

Eng 19:08

If it were losing, you know, it’d be a sort of an angry confrontation.

Meyerson 19:11

All right, well, that brings me to my next question, coincidentally, which is that your passions shine through in almost every issue—Monica, food, and Justin, sports. Justin, we’re in the thick of the season for your passion—and passion’s putting it mildly because I’ve played against you—Chicago’s Kup Media Softball League, named for Sun-Times columnist Irv Kupcinet. How’s it going? Justin?

Kaufmann 19:34

It is good. You know, there’s some really good teams this year in that league and the league is great, because—come on. It’s a passion of mine because I love the sport. And I really start to learn the nuances and the history of 16-inch softball. The 16-Inch Softball Hall of Fame in Forest Park is a tremendous place to learn more about our forefathers, and how they played softball and how softball is Chicago’s sport. So it is really great to be out here and like a night like tonight we’re gonna play tonight as we’re taping this, we’re gonna play on a beautiful night at 75 degrees in a Chicago park on the West Side. It doesn’t get more Chicago than that. So like the connection to the city. And I think I think it’s a very inclusive sport. I think that you see really strong African American leagues on the South Side, you see really strong Latino leagues, you see suburban, a lot of car dealerships. You can’t have a Chicago softball league, leagues without car dealerships, but I mean, everybody knows the game. Everybody’s played it. Everybody’s got a crooked finger. So I feel like it’s the ultimate connector. That’s why I love the sport.

Meyerson 20:42

Yeah, the fingers. I can identify with the fingers. That’s why I’m not doing softball anymore. Monica, you’re just back from your visit to the Illinois State Fair. How was it?

Eng 20:49

It’s pretty disgusting. The highlight was the walking a horseshoe which is, as you know, is Texas toasts covered in ground beef or other meat and then fries and then a beer cheese sauce. This one those are you throw all that in a tortilla, roll it up, deep fry it and then put more cheese sauce on it. I feel like it’s gonna be a few years before I recover. But I have to say I loved those tiny little fried doughnuts, those like tiny cinnamon doughnuts that are warm. You pop them in your mouth, and those are no good for you. But, no, it was fun. But I think state fair food is really an exercise and excess and, and fun for the time you go out there. But I’m paying my penance. I just went to Wrigley Field over the weekend to try their plant-based meats. So I got a really healthful giant helmet of nachos, covered in cheese and sour cream, but then some plant-based chicken on top and a kind of shriveled-up hot dog that you will …

Kaufmann 21:53

No, that that definitely, definitely evens it out.

Eng 21:55

No, no, like virtuous. It’s like a kale salad. So yeah, but it’s fun. And I know that readers can vicariously enjoy these strange treats through me. So I’m happy to do it.

Kaufmann 22:07

I will say this, Charlie, like, I just think that even beyond food and sports, we both share a lot of passions, but we also have individual uniques. I mean, I’m big—you know this—I’m big into politics. Monica is big into public policy and health and environment. You mentioned sports as a passion. But I also feel like sports is a huge part of the stew that is Chicago news. And a lot of places I’ve worked—’BEZ is a great example of it—they ignore it. Or they think that that’s not important. And I think that that’s wrong. And most of the readers that that will write in are going to be sports fans in some form.

Eng 22:48

Every time I think, “Oh, God, Justin’s writing the sports story again,” we get tons of response. And so I’m so glad we balanced each other out on that because he knows the world. And I just trust him from now on.

Kaufmann 22:58

Yeah, and that was it. But that’s the news. I mean, if you grew up in Chicago, and you know Chicago, you know how important a Monday recap of the Bears game is.

Eng 23:07

I did grow up in Chicago, but I’m just like, I’m not interested. But you know that people will be.

Kaufmann 23:11

They will be. But I think the combination of Monica’s interests and mine together make something that is very specific and unique to Chicago, that brings people around and wants to engage because it’s everything from arts, music, to— and it’s different than a lot of the markets, Charlie. Like if you go to some of the other Axios locals, they’re just straight-up reporters.

Eng 23:35

Some of them are former real estate reporters. So they love doing real estate stories. One of them is like a beer fanatic, and he does tons of beer stories. And Axios says, “Let your freak flag fly, man. You’re into it, our readers will, like, understand your passion and get into it, too.”

Kaufmann 23:50

Yeah, but you also know that like Chicago is a different place. I mean, we can compare ourselves to New York or L.A. or compare ourselves to Wisconsin and Indiana. I mean, there’s, there’s something about Chicago, it’s cliche to say it’s, you know, big city, small town kind of thing. But it is going to be a different newsletter than Denver, it should be a different newsletter than San Francisco. And that’s what’s great about it is ours is very unique, very different than the others in the market. And, and theirs are great. I mean, I read them all. I love them. I love the local stuff.

Eng 24:22

Well, at some point we’re not gonna be able to it’s going to be 35 by the end of the year, and then maybe 100 by 2025.

Meyerson 24:28

We have a question from one of our viewers on YouTube, Mike Dessimoz: “From communications and other interactions you have with your readers, what seem to you to be their most serious areas of concern?”

Kaufmann 24:41

I think it’s violence. I think whenever we get into political stuff like Monica wrote a great piece about Bailey calling Chicago a hellhole again, and really the follow when she asked at the fair, “Hey, what do you say to Chicagoans who live in that hellhole?” he’s like, “I hear from them all the time.”

Eng 25:00

He says he believes most of us think we’re living in a hellhole.

Kaufmann 25:03

And so that’s the story. And so today, it’s been really thoughtful. A lot of people are mad at Darren Bailey, but then others who say, “I don’t agree with the word, and he’s not right. But there are some serious concerns in Chicago right now, when it comes to violence, and crime, things like that, that need to be taken, taken care of.” So he’s not wrong in saying that things are happening in Chicago, that shouldn’t be, but the way that he’s using—the words that he’s choosing are too political, divisive, or just straight-up wrong. So I think that that’s what we get, mostly when we do police stories, or we do violent stories, anything like that, you’ll get responses that are much more divisive than you would think. We’re not an echo chamber. But I think what you notice the most is people get upset about the mayor, and where we are when it comes to crime.

Meyerson 25:56

Monica?

Eng 25:57

Yes, well, the same. They say oh, to talk more about crime, and I say, “We cover crime, but I don’t think Chicago is defined by crime.” We want to also remember why we love this city. And that’s also what this newsletter is about. So we try to be balanced. One person said, “You guys are a sort of glass half-full?” I don’t know. But I know that I would want to open up something that is “glass half-full,” and not just be bludgeoned by how horrible this place is every morning. I’m not sure I wouldn’t open up that email every morning.

Kaufmann 26:27

Well, you know, Charlie, you do your newsletter. Every morning, you could spend the first 15 links on crime stories. The 10 o’clock news loves it. Oh, my God, from 10 to 10:15. is every carjacking that happened in the city. They love it, they put reporters on it—

Eng 26:40

—which is why our parents are all like, “This city. How do you live in it?” Like, “Stop watching the news, Mom.”

Kaufmann 26:46

There has to be a study at some point—I’m sure we used to have think tanks that would do this, and maybe they still do—about the role the 10 o’clock news has played in how people see their city. Because it used to be, what, 10 to 10:04—I’m an idiot savant when it comes to this stuff, because I watch it and I mark where the stories are at—but it used to be maybe you get the first two stories that were violence. I’m seeing now like almost through the first commercial break. And you can I feel like you could cherry pick a lot of that stuff, because it’ll be carjacking here, somebody got mugged over here, you know, things like that. And that is a big story in Chicago. But it’s not the only story. And when you’re talking about millions of people, I mean, what, 2.7 million in Chicago, and then you go outside of that to people like 9 million in the whole like area, of course, there’s going to be crime. So and I’m not saying that Chicago doesn’t have a crime problem; we talk about it all the time. But I think that it’s a strange world we live in where the people who are charged with documenting what’s happening in our city are spending a third of their time talking about crime.

Meyerson 27:51

Closing thoughts. Justin.

Kaufmann 27:55

You can’t have a conversation about the future of this kind of work without pointing out what you’ve done for Chicago. And obviously, Chicago Public Square has been there and done a lot so far and, and continues to lead. You know, there wouldn’t be an Axios newsletter, or a Politico newsletter or any of the newsletters that came in if there weren’t independents that tried and showed that it was successful before.

Meyerson 28:18

Closing thoughts. Monica?

Eng 28:20

Well, I’m just glad that you saw fit to have us on. We type all day and we don’t get to use our talking muscles that much. Thank you so much for doing it. And thanks for amplifying our stories sometimes. That really helps. And I think it shows that a lot of people say “Oh, Axios is trying to kill local journalism, it’s going into these markets,” and a certain leader of a certain large news organization in Chicago said, “You’ll never be us.” And it’s like, “Dude,” or maybe it was a woman, “Yeah, we’re not trying to be. We’re trying to be additive to the local news environment. I think we can all support each other. Because more information for Chicago is only good for Chicago.”

Meyerson 29:04

Yeah. I don’t know if you get anyone asking you about other email newsletters as if they’re competition—sounds like you do—but every once in a while, someone will ask me and I want to say publicly: The more email newsletters for and about Chicago, the better. Especially if—as Axios Chicago does—it comes out before mine, so that I can link to your work.

Eng 29:22

There you go.

Meyerson 29:23

Makes my newsletter all the better.

Kaufmann 29:24

Yeah. And we’re the same. I mean, we when we talk to any— I mean the people writing Chicago newsletters are great. I think Shia [Kapos] is awesome working at Politico, Hunter [Clauss] at WBEZ, the folks at the Sun-Times and the Tribune do great work. So, you know, I don’t know if they just because we’re—it’s so funny, because, for years, we’ve all worked at different media outlets and then we’ve changed …

Eng 29:47

And we’re all friends …

Kaufmann 29:49

… we’re all friends and personal, yeah.

Eng 29:51

When I was at the State Fair covering Pritzker, some of us couldn’t get close to him. And so Amanda Vinicky was taking my phone and making it closer and then I took the NPR person’s mic and moved it closer. We’re all just helping each other and I think that that’s the spirit we should see it in.

Meyerson 30:08

Amen.

Kaufmann 30:09

Except on the softball diamond.

Meyerson 30:11

Our guests on this edition of Chicago Media Talks—recorded August 22, 2022—have been Monica Eng and Justin Kaufmann, co-authors of the essential (and free!) Axios Chicago email newsletter. You can reach them at monica.eng@axios.com and justin.kaufmann@axios.com. And join me for a roundup of the news weekday mornings at ChicagoPublicSquare.com. I’m Charlie Meyerson. For producers Jesse Betend and Cindy Paulauskas and everyone at Rivet360, thanks for listening to Chicago Media Talks.

[Transcribed by Otter—and then edited. A lot. Thanks for the inspiration, Eric Zorn.]

The most enduring memory of a restaurant reviewer through the pandemic: “Crying so much … over so many meals with gratitude and relief.”

Joining this edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podcast, Chicago Media Talks: Chef, journalist, adventurer and Chicago Tribune critic Louisa Chu—who takes us from her time as a 4-year-old worker at her family’s Chicago restaurant through her stint as a judge on Food Network’s Iron Chef America to what she’s working on next.

Listen in your favorite podcast player, via Spotify and Pandora, on Amazon’s Alexa-powered speakers or on Apple Podcasts.

■ Enjoying these podcasts? Help keep them coming by joining The Legion of Chicago Public Squarians.

■ And consider subscribing—free—to the daily Chicago Public Square email newsletter.

Joining this edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podcast, Chicago Media Talks: A couple of media figures whose work is increasingly shaping Chicago’s news and political landscape.

Meet A.D. Quig, a rising Chicago Tribune reporter who sees local government facing “a time of big change”; and Girl, I Guess Progressive Voter Guide author Stephanie Skora—someone unafraid to call a candidate, in her words, “a slimy fuckface—because there’s no reason not to.”

Listen in your favorite podcast player, via Spotify and Pandora, on Amazon’s Alexa-powered speakers or on Apple Podcasts.

■ Enjoying these podcasts? Help keep them coming by joining The Legion of Chicago Public Squarians.

■ And consider subscribing—free—to the daily Chicago Public Square email newsletter.

(Photos, counter-clockwise from right: Quig, Skora, hosts Charlie Meyerson and Sheila Solomon.)

Their groundbreaking alliance netted them and their news organizations a 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. But that doesn’t mean they always worked together seamlessly.

In this edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podcast, Chicago Media Talks, meet Madison Hopkins and Cecilia Reyes, praised by Pulitzer judges for “a piercing examination of the city’s long history of failed building- and fire-safety code enforcement, which let scofflaw landlords commit serious violations that resulted in dozens of unnecessary deaths.” (Recorded June 13, 2022.)

Listen in your favorite podcast player, via Spotify and Pandora, on Amazon’s Alexa-powered speakers or on Apple Podcasts.

■ Enjoying these podcasts? Keep them coming by joining The Legion of Chicago Public Squarians.

■ And consider subscribing—free—to the daily Chicago Public Square email newsletter.

(Photos, counter-clockwise from right: Reyes, Hopkins, hosts Charlie Meyerson and Sheila Solomon.)

She’s the first woman—and the first woman of color—ever to serve as Chicago Sun-Times executive editor. She’s facing challenges like none before her, as the paper comes under the control of an organization primarily in the radio business.

In another edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podcast, Chicago Media Talks, meet Jennifer Kho, who joins the Sun-Times at a critical point in the evolution of the news business. (Recorded July 11, 2022.)

Listen in your favorite podcast player, via Spotify and Pandora, on Amazon’s Alexa-powered speakers or on Apple Podcasts.

■ Enjoying these podcasts? Keep them coming by joining The Legion of Chicago Public Squarians.

■ And consider subscribing—free—to the daily Chicago Public Square email newsletter.

(Photos, counterclockwise from right: Kho, with hosts Sheila Solomon and Charlie Meyerson.)

Odds are good you didn’t know their names a decade ago, when one of them was just breaking into Chicago radio news and another was barely removed from an internship at Chicago’s public TV station. And now they’re two of the city’s most influential journalists.

In another edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podcast, Chicago Media Talks, WTTW News’ multiple award-winning reporters and Chicago Tonight co-anchors, Brandis Friedman and Paris Schutz, talk about their careers, the challenges facing local news and recent turbulent times at Channel 11.

Listen in your favorite podcast player, via Spotify and Pandora, on Amazon’s Alexa-powered speakers or on Apple Podcasts (say “Hey, Siri! Play Chicago Public Square Podcasts”).

■ Enjoying these podcasts? Keep them coming by joining The Legion of Chicago Public Squarians.

■ And consider subscribing—free—to the daily Chicago Public Square email newsletter.

And now, courtesy of Eric Zorn and Otter.ai, here’s an extremely rough transcript of the show:

Charlie Meyerson 00:00

Odds are good you didn’t know their names a decade ago when one of them was just breaking into Chicago radio news and another was barely removed from an internship at Chicago’s public TV station. And now they’re two of the city’s most influential journalists.

Brandis Friedman 00:14

The truth is I never would have chosen Chicago for myself until I did.

Paris Schutz 00:18

I thought, “At some point, my internship is going to end, and they’re going to hire me and pay me.”

Charlie Meyerson 00:23

Brandis Friedman and Paris Shutz are multiple award-winning reporters and co-anchors for WTTW television’s signature broadcast Chicago Tonight. I’m Charlie Meyerson with Rivet 360 and ChicagoPublicSquare.com. And this is Chicago Media Talks, a show in which people in Chicago media talk about Chicago media. Here’s my co-host, my friend and my Rivet 360 colleague, journalism strategist Sheila Solomon.

Sheila Solomon 00:51

How is Chicago Tonight different from other local news shows in Chicago?

Brandis Friedman 00:57

We e get this question a lot, and Paris can address this as well, I think we try to spend more time on our subject matter. And, no disrespect to our colleagues at the commercial TV stations, you know, there’s a place for each of us in this market. But what’s different is, we spend more time on our subjects. So a report or package, maybe 3, 4, 5 minutes versus the minute, minute-and-a-half that you’d probably get at other stations. So that we can let it breathe, and provide a bit more context, sometimes analysis. You’ll notice that we do a lot of talk segments, so that we can balance out a segment or just explore whatever the topic might be from different viewpoints. And allow folks to really share more of whatever it is we might be talking about that night. And, in addition to the politics, and the education and the business, and all that stuff that we cover, we also give a good bit of time to the arts. We have an arts producer here as well as an arts reporter. And so we get to showcase not just the big arts organizations in town that we all know about, like Joffrey or Lyric or Chicago Symphony, but these two producers are really good at finding the arts stories that you have not heard about and bringing those to our audiences as well.

Paris Schutz 02:09

Our goal is to have our audience understand what’s happening in Chicago and Illinois and the world at large. And following the mission of WTTW, to leave you enriched, to leave you feeling like you’re more connected to your community. So we’re not out there to chase ambulances or cover every single crime or police chase that happens. But if we do cover crime, we want to talk about it in a way that will help people understand this as an issue, help people maybe empathize with what’s happening. And then talk about what stakeholders are talking about as solutions.

Charlie Meyerson 02:53

WTTW has gone through some big changes in the months leading up to your ascendance as co-anchors of Chicago Tonight. You lost a news director—forced out after just about a year on the job— and Phil Ponce and Carol Marin stepped down from their roles as two of the key faces of the station’s news coverage. How’s that affected the show? And WTTW News overall?

Paris Schutz 03:11

Well, we’re just the last ones standing, Charlie. No, I mean, it’s certainly affected, I would say workplace morale a little bit. But at the end of the day, we do the same show that we always have. And we have the same goals that we always have. And we’re out there distracted by the reporting, and by the journalism, and by all the news that we have to report on and put into context. So the mission never changed through all of that. And you mentioned Phil and Carol being gone. They’re part of the DNA of Chicago Tonight, just like John Callaway, who started the show. So they’re very influential on what we do now. And I always just try to think about what Phil would do in a certain situation, or what Carol would do, or even what John Callaway would do. So, it’s kind of like a family, you know, all these things are sort of passed down through the generations and the show really hasn’t changed much. I mean, it might look a little different, that tone might be a little different. But those North stars are still exactly the same as what John Callaway wanted, and what Phil did, and what Carol did, and even to an extent, Bob Sirrott. And some of the other folks that have been associated with the show, are Eddie Arruzza, Elizabeth Brackett. And, as Brandis said, the quality in-depth journalism, the context that we’re providing, and the goal to really inform the community and make them feel connected to the city.

Brandis Friedman 04:40

There have been some changes. But to the credit of our colleagues, everyone has really kept their heads down and focused on the work. And I don’t think any of us allowed ourselves to really be distracted by any of that other stuff that was going on. Obviously, everybody noticed it. We all recognize it, but that wasn’t really the focus. We kept our focus on the work. And with regard to Phil and Carol moving on to their next chapters, everything that Paris said is true. But Phil slowly started to step back little by little a couple of years ago, and Paris and I were given the opportunity to start stepping in and filling in at that point, I think probably with the intention that at some point if Phil was ready to move on from hosting every night with regularity that Paris and I would be prepared to try and fill his shoes. I don’t think that we can necessarily it takes two of us to do it. But I think we’ve been given ample time to prepare for this moment,

Paris Schutz 05:37

It feels like we’ve been in these roles for a long time. And it doesn’t, it doesn’t feel like it happened overnight or anything. It feels like we’ve been doing this for a while and getting our sea legs under us to take the baton, if you will.

Sheila Solomon 05:53

So how do you see Chicago Tonight changing on your watch?

Brandis Friedman 05:56

I feel like the show is not necessarily mine to change. Only that, you know, we are very collaborative here. I think all of us take a lot of ownership on this show. And so at the moment, I don’t predict any major changes. Obviously, I think all of us think there are ways we can work to be better or different or to improve or provide our audiences with something more, something different. Over the last year. It is obvious with the expansion to the other shows, “Chicago Tonight Latino Voices” on Saturday and “Chicago Tonight Black Voices” on Sundays, it is clear that we have included and diversified our coverage a little bit more— right? — covering those communities that as evidenced by what we saw last summer did not feel they had been covered and heard enough. And so I think we’ll definitely keep that going. Obviously.

Paris Schutz 06:45

I agree with Brandis there. And I’ll just add that, as a staff, I think we’ve started to talk a little bit about the big picture, long term. How can we meet our mission best in this day and age as things change as platforms change? I think it’s really good to every now and then to inventory here at Chicago Tonight and ask what is it we’re doing well, what it is we can improve on? Do we need to change some things? So I can tell you that we are having some of those discussions. There might be things that we want to change, we just don’t know what those are yet. The North stars don’t change, we want to remain balanced. We want to remain a place where everybody can trust the information. And in this day and age trust is so important when you have such a bifurcated media, landscape and social media where everybody’s just kind of turning to, whatever satisfies their preconceived bias. I’ll say personally, I feel an added responsibility that we need to be the vanguard of that traditional sense of y journalism and trustworthy journalism and balanced journalism that everybody no matter what your opinions are, or what your ideologies are can trust to get reliable information.

Charlie Meyerson 08:12

Paris, you started at WTTW as an intern in 2005. Back then, what was your dream job?

Paris Schutz 08:50

Well, I at some point, my internship is going to end and they’re going to hire me and pay me. No, I’m kidding, Charlie. At that point, I did not know what my dream job was. I actually intended to do documentaries, be a filmmaker. I’m also a musician and thought maybe I’d do that as a career. I really was kind of all over the place. But the internship with Chicago Tonight—and by the way, I applied to intern with Chicago Stories, which was a documentary unit that we had at the time. But they didn’t need an intern, so they sent me to Chicago Tonight which did need an intern, I was like, “OK, I guess I’ll do that.” And that’s where I caught the bug of local news on live television. And just as an intern being part of these stories that I remember as a kid that shaped the city of Chicago and the region and meeting some of these players, the political players, and the local newsmakers that again that I had read about and watched it that was pretty exciting. And, again, I did sign on as a production assistant. I still didn’t know what my long-term goal was. I started to inch my way on the air only because I’d had a forming background, you know, as a kid and as a teenager, you know, naively thinking I could do it. And I was terrible for a long time. And the more I did it, the more I realized this was exactly what I wanted to be doing the kind of journalism that we were doing, it’s pretty much the only kind of journalism I feel like I can do. Reporting was a thrill chasing down the story. And the performance aspect of it is really exciting, it’s performing nonfiction, basically. So when I was an actor and a performer as a kid, something wasn’t quite right. And that was that it was that, I didn’t want to be doing fiction. I wanted to be doing nonfiction. Because I just felt more connected to that. So this has been a dream job. But when I started off, I had no idea. I was just trying to figure out a way to get paid.

Sheila Solomon 10:50

Brandis, unlike Paris, you didn’t grow up in the Chicago area. So what brought you here about a decade ago? And what was your career goal at that time?

Brandis Friedman 11:01

It’s funny, you should mention that. But just because, you know, in college, I came to visit Chicago once and I don’t know why I hadn’t come before college, you know, I’ve got family here. I just hadn’t done it. So on a visit, it did not have a very good trip. I just didn’t I didn’t see the parts of Chicago that I know I love today. I got sick on that trip. It got 70-something degrees in July, and I’m from Mississippi, and I thought that was ridiculous and abnormal. And so the truth is, I never would have chosen Chicago for myself until I did. My husband is from the area. He grew up in Morton Grove. He’s a former TV news reporter. And both of us had done the market hop. I started in Wichita Falls, Texas, and then in Little Rock. And then I got out of the business briefly when I was in Kansas City and worked on Capitol Hill a little bit in Washington, DC. And then that’s where I got back into TV, after being out for about a year-and-a-half and started producing at the ABC affiliate there, because it was where I wanted to be— being out of it was not right for me. And so I came to Chicago because we knew we wanted to be closer to family and his family was here and I wasn’t moving back to Mississippi. That’s when I got hired at WBBM News Radio as a freelance reporter and anchor because I thought it was a really great opportunity to get into the market and learn my way around. And then I got lucky when the correspondent position opened at Chicago Tonight and just kind of applied. I was like, who knows, we’ll see what happens. The executive producer at the time, Mary Field, called for an interview while I was walking my dog. And that very day, I was very disappointed because I learned I hadn’t gotten some other job that I thought I wanted, and looking back would have been all wrong for. So it worked out the way it was supposed to. I feel like I’m lucky to have this job because I really love and respect and appreciate the kinds of news that we tell and the way we tell those stories. And no disrespect to our colleagues at commercial stations. It’s just that some of that is not for me. I’ve done it before and I don’t want to do that now. I wouldn’t be where I am. So I recognize my job is a bit of a unicorn. But I’m thankful to have it.

Charlie Meyerson 13:04

Brandis broke journalism’s fourth wall this month, interviewing someone with whom she and Sheila—as I’ve just learned—have a personal connection: A friend whose son was shot and killed last month, the day before his 19th birthday. So Brandis, how did the decision come down for you to conduct that interview instead of you know, as might be the case in many a more traditional newsroom, assigning it to someone else?

Brandis Friedman 13:31

Right. It’s funny, you should mention that. Sheila does know the same friend. I remember, I saw Sheila at the funeral. And I wasn’t able to make it over to say hi to you in time, because it was very it was a full room. So when this happened, part of me looked at it as a journalist, right. And I saw, there are going to be other stations that are going to cover this, and newspapers. And we all know this has been picked up by most of the outlets here in town. And actually, my husband put the bug in my ear. He’s like, What if you were to interview her? And I’m like, I don’t know. At the time. It was too early. I didn’t mention it to Sonia, I didn’t mention it to anyone at work. But then I did. And Sonia, I think as a professional and as a grieving mother and an angry citizen, was kind of looking for a way to express all of her thoughts and feelings because of all those hats that she wears. And I was advising her as a friend. And then I thought, the one station I didn’t mention is my own. And what do you think? And then I talked to my boss to see what he thought. And I wanted to be sure that if was going to do it that I’ve got a trusted producer looking over my shoulder to make sure that I was still practicing the journalism that I’m supposed to be practicing. In this instance, we decided to have me do it instead of someone else just because, sadly, we don’t interview a lot of grieving mothers at Chicago Tonight. As Paris said, we cover the issue of violence but not each and every instance of violence, which happens far more than it should. And if I were to interview this particular grieving mother— it was her stepson, Miles Thompson, who was killed — we’d have a different conversation because she and I know each other, we have a lot in common. We’re both former Mississippians, Ivy League grads now living in Chicago, we both have sons. And so that conversation is much more intimate than one that I would have gotten had I interviewed a grieving mother with whom I’m not friends, or had we allowed someone else in the station to do it. And I think that was our intention, our intent was to make it different, to make it a little bit more intimate than it might have been otherwise.

Charlie Meyerson 15:37

That segment was produced for WTTW’s relatively new show Chicago Tonight Black Voices. What is different, if anything about your approach to that work in that show, compared to your role at Chicago Tonight?

Brandis Friedman 15:49

The standards are the same. We still want to make sure that we’re providing viewers with news that has impact. And of course, we have to be fair and balanced and accurate. And all of that is the same. But we get to experiment with that show just a little bit more. It’s a younger show, it hasn’t been on the air a year just yet. And so we play around a little bit more with like this kind of segment or that kind of segment. There are days we’ll run a segment on black voices that can re-air on Chicago Tonight the following week for a slightly different audience. And vice versa. But not every segment that runs on Chicago Tonight Black Voices would also run on Chicago Tonight. And so I guess it’s kind of hard to describe what the differences are, I can’t quite put my finger on it. But we certainly examine what it is like to be a Black Chicago when on that particular show, the issues that affect black Chicagoans. But that does not mean that all the guests are only Black people, right? Because we also want anyone who is watching the show, not just a Black audience, but anyone who’s watching the show, comes away with an idea of what it is like to live a Black Chicagoan experience.

Sheila Solomon 17:02

Chicago Tonight Latino Voices is another relatively new show on WTTW. And it’s focusing on a different ethnic group. So what are the pros and cons of having new shows devoted to specific demographics? I

Paris Schutz 17:20

The pros are obviously, as Brandis said, giving, these communities a chance to share their stories and to elevate their stories and their experience to a broader audience, which by the way, these shows are meant for everybody. It’s, not it’s not simply Latino Voices for Latino audiences or Black Voices for a Black audience. From my own experience last year reporting in the pandemic, going from neighborhood to neighborhood, —we were in a different neighborhood each night for about five months— but a lot of those were the Black and Hispanic neighborhoods of Chicago. And one of the things that was evidently clear in doing that was, I didn’t understand my own city as well as I should have. And I think most Chicagoans don’t. And there were just a lot of things I learned about neighborhoods on the South Side or the West Side that you would never hear in local news coverage. Because a newsworthy event in a lot of those communities tends to be a negative event— a crime, or a shooting. And w that skews the audience’s perception of what really characterizes life in those neighborhoods. So obviously, this weekend, you had the tragic shooting and killing of police officer Ella French in Englewood. And it is tragic. And it’s a huge newsworthy event. But what happens is, when we only cover the negative stuff viewers can think that that’s the only thing that defines life in Englewood — crime and murder, or in Austin, or in Pilsen, or in Belmont Cragin. And doing the kind of reporting that’s done on Black Voices and Latino Voices, or that we did last year with his neighborhood stuff is you get a different picture. Like it’s complicated, there are really bad things. The crime is really a part of daily life here. But there are also really amazing things. There’s so many people that work in organizations that try to help people, whether it be mental health, or whether it be crime prevention, There are people, you know, Black and Latino, middle-class Chicagoans that live in these neighborhoods that that swear by them, that won’t leave even though the problems are bad. So the true story is a much more mixed picture. There are some wonderful parts of Englewood, there’s some wonderful parts of Auburn Gresham. And maybe this is a way to help change this skewed perception in the audience, that that the only thing that characterizes life in parts of Chicago is crime. It’s not true. It’s a big part of life. But there are also other really wonderful things that characterize life in these neighborhoods. And I’ll just say, cons, because you asked: We’ve gotten some letters saying, well, it’s you know, it’s too narrowly focused. And, what about other groups? You know, what about Asian Americans? What about LGBTQ? I mean, I think all those things are fair. But Chicago Tonight tries to incorporate, all these points of view and all these communities. So that we all understand each other better. I have gotten some tweets—not a lot, I haven’t gotten a lot of emails necessarily— but some folks who have something to say about it being you know, Black Voices. I’ve got a tweet that says “racist propaganda hour.” The show’s a half-hour; it means that person doesn’t even watch. And I really ignore those tweets The only value to those tweets is a reminder that there are folks out there who think that way. And I’m not signing up to change their minds. If they do, great, but I’m signing up to do the job that I’m doing. And I don’t really pay a whole lot of attention to those tweets, unless someone has something that they actually want to discuss. But that’s not what’s happening in those tweets.

Sheila Solomon 21:13

Paris, how is WTTW expanding its team of reporters and producers and videographers?

Paris Schutz 21:19

I think most of the expansion lies on the online side of things. We’ve really beefed up that operation in recent years to where we have dedicated beat reporters that are exclusively online. We look at people like Heather Cherone, who covers City Hall, and she’s pumping out three stories a day. She’s going toe to toe with some of the newspaper reporters there. And we’ll have her on the Chicago Tonight program every now and then debriefing her reports, and we have folks like Patty Wetli, who does the environmental beat; we have Matt Masterson, who’s doing criminal courts and education.

Brandis Friedman 21:59

Kristin Tomasz

Paris Schutz 22:01

Yeah, so we’ve really tried to make this a 24/7 news operation, especially online, where we have people covering beats, and it’s not just at seven o’clock at night, which is when Chicago Tonight comes on where you’re gonna get Chicago Tonight journalism, you can get it 24/7 when you refresh, the website, and it’s designed for you to check it at all hours of the day. So that we have our reporters keeping up to speed on what’s happening in the city. We recognize that at some point — we’ve been talking about this for years — the singularity is going to happen, where the platform really doesn’t matter, whether it’s TV or streaming or online or social media, it’s just the content that matters. And we will have to master all of those platforms.

Brandis Friedman 22:50

I would add to that, you know, we’ve recently added an on-air reporter in Joanna Hernandez, who is coming home to Chicago. She’s been in New York for about five years. And now she’s here. And we’re hiring a “Chicago Tonight Black Voices” producer, one who is dedicated to black voices.

Sheila Solomon 23:07

Closing thoughts, Charlie?

Charlie Meyerson 23:10

As you know, I spend a good chunk of my day cruising Chicago’s many, many news websites. We’re lucky to have so many in this town. And I haven’t been shy about saying that most of the city’s commercial TV and radio websites suck. Can I say that on this podcast? I think so. They’re ugly. They’re riddled with typos, editing failures, factual errors. Channel 11’s.Is a cut above. And I wish other broadcasters would take note. Your closing thoughts Sheila?

Sheila Solomon 23:42

The other day, a friend texted that I should look for her in an interview on Sunday’s Black Voices and Monday’s Chicago Tonight. And her text reminded me how important it is to have a broadcast outlet that centers its storytelling on the diverse voices that make up Chicago. Closing thoughts Paris?

Paris Schutz 24:05

We’re in a moment with news media where there’s a significant reduction in traditional news; you see what’s happened with the Chicago Tribune. And the whole industry is trying to figure out what the winning model is going to be. And like I said earlier, the fact that so many people get their news and information from social media, I think is troubling. Because as we know, they’re not reliable. And those algorithms just prioritize stuff that’s going to, send people down a rabbit hole and confirm their biases. And so Chicago Tonight, we’re gonna stick to the script that we’ve been doing for 30 years, in that we’re going to offer you in-depth, thoughtful coverage. It’s going to be hard-hitting some of it will be softer or feature-oriented. But it’s our best effort to get at the objective truth. Knowing that we can never 100% get there but we’re gonna do our best. And, again, it’s a place that everybody — no matter what their background — can trust. That’s what we hope. We hope that they continue to trust us because we really need good traditional journalism and news sources. And we really need people to turn to those kinds of traditional media to get their information. You see what’s happening with vaccine misinformation. Misinformation and disinformation are just way too, prevalent and way too dangerous. And so we’re going to continue to try and fight the good fight in terms of being that traditional objective source for everybody. We’ll do our best, and we hope that more people understand the value of that.

Charlie Meyerson 25:47

Brandis your closing thoughts?

Brandis Friedman 25:50

As journalists we are lucky to be in the position that we’re in, What’s important to me is to be able to uplift the voices that you get to hear on Black Voices and the folks that we hear from, and I see that as an opportunity not just to provide for the viewers who are watching, but also for the people who are on the show,.We’re hoping to provide them an opportunity to share their perspective and their point of view with other people. So I’m thankful to be in this position where I can make those connections happen.

Sheila Solomon 26:26

Paris, you’re also an accomplished musician. Where can people see you perform these days?

Paris Schutz 26:32

I don’t know about “accomplished.” I don’t perform out much these days, I hope to change that. I’ve played at some piano bars in the past. I’ll play with some bands every now and then just for fun. I certainly have a lot of empathy for the working musicians who do rely on this for a living and hopefully, they get out and get all the gigs that they can. And when I am out there, I will be sure to try and let everybody know, through the proper channels.

Charlie Meyerson 27:03

I’m pretty sure a lot of viewers of Channel 11 don’t realize that Paris co-composed the Chicago Tonight theme music. How did that happen?

Paris Schutz 27:14

Well, our former executive producer Mary Field said we need a new theme song, but we don’t have any money to pay for it. So we’re going to just use some stock songs in the music library. You know all these TV stations and production companies pay for these stock music libraries where people create these stock melodies. I said, “Oh my God, we can’t do that we need to have something original that says ‘Chicago Tonight.’” So I went down to the piano that we used to have in our old studio and just started looking around at the set and try to have something sink into my brain through osmosis. And I came up with just a really simple little melody, that you could basically sing “Chicago Tonight, Chicago Tonight, Chicago Tonight,” just that easy, and fleshed it out a bit. Sought the services of the brilliant trumpet player at the CSO, John Hagstrom, and he really helped flesh it out. He plays all the brass instruments you hear on that theme. Took us to a recording studio and we put it down on tape and it’s been going, I don’t know, it’s gonna be going on 10 years now that that’s been the theme song. And none of us have seen a penny in royalties from it but that doesn’t matter because we did it out of love. But maybe for the next one. Oh, I won’t give away my services for free.

Charlie Meyerson 28:42

And as Paris Schutz’s Chicago Tonight theme music escorts us out of this edition of Chicago Media Talks, recorded Aug. 9, 2021. We remind you our guests have been Paris Schutz and Brandis Friedman. You can reach Brandis at bfriedman@wttw.com, and Paris at pschutz@wttw.com. You can find Sheila Solomon at Sheila@Rivet360.com. I’m Charlie Meyerson. Join me for a roundup of the news at 10 weekday mornings at ChicagoPublicSquare.com. For Sheila Solomon, producer Jesse Betend and everyone at Rivet 360, thanks for listening.

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Listen here, or in your favorite podcast player, via Spotify and Pandora, on Amazon’s Alexa-powered speakers or on iTunes (say “Hey, Siri! Play Chicago Public Square Podcasts”).

■ Enjoying these podcasts? Keep them coming by joining The Legion of Chicago Public Squarians.

■ And consider subscribing—free—to the daily Chicago Public Square email newsletter.

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Listen here, or in your favorite podcast player, via Spotify and Pandora, on Amazon’s Alexa-powered speakers or on iTunes (say “Hey, Siri! Play Chicago Public Square Podcasts”).

■ Enjoying these podcasts? Keep them coming by joining The Legion of Chicago Public Squarians.

■ And consider subscribing—free—to the daily Chicago Public Square email newsletter.

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Listen here, or in your favorite podcast player, via Spotify and Pandora, on Amazon’s Alexa-powered speakers or on iTunes (say “Hey, Siri! Play Chicago Public Square Podcasts”).

■ Enjoying these podcasts? Keep them coming by joining The Legion of Chicago Public Squarians.

■ And consider subscribing—free—to the daily Chicago Public Square email newsletter.

Listen here, on your favorite podcast player, via Spotify and Pandora, on Amazon’s Alexa-powered speakers or on iTunes (say “Hey, Siri! Play Chicago Public Square Podcasts”).

■ Enjoying these podcasts? Keep them coming by joining The Legion of Chicago Public Squarians.

■ And consider subscribing—free—to the daily Chicago Public Square email newsletter.