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Nicole's dream
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By Stephen Franklin
Jan 14, 2010
A veteran police officer, Jacques Conway, now retired, ambles across the stage to
accept an award for his service to his community. A roar of cheers fills the room.
People are standing beside their tables and applauding. A number of his church
members are on hand.
Up come the couple, Lois and Ernie Bauman, who have put their faith in their
community years ago when white flight set in. Rather than flee, they stayed and built a
fine arts academy for black youths from the West Side and nearby suburbs. Again,
people stand and cheer.
And there is the locale state senator, Kimberly Lightford, whose list of deeds draws
another long, rousing applause.
These were some of the folks recently honored at the first annual fundraiser for the
West Suburban Journal, a weekly paper that didn’t exist six years ago. But here it is,
holding its first gala fundraiser and the money will go for its intern and scholarship
program.
I am taken back and it is not just from the vibes in the dining room. So, here is a
paper growing in a time when others are disappearing. A paper serving a large sprawl
of black communities on Chicago’s West Side that gets into the act, talking about what’
s happening and gets attention for doing it.
As the night goes on, the story is told slowly how L. Nicole Trottie, the publisher and
everything else for the paper, began with an idea and found support and advice and
built up an organization around volunteers and interns and slowly one employee after
another, and, according to the Illinois Press Association, became the first black
female publisher of a weekly newspaper in Illinois.
Nicole’s dream, as someone said, has surely come true.
Stephen Franklin, longtime journalism, teacher and author, now is ethnic news project
director at the Community Media Workshop. He gained a 20-year career in daily
newspapers when he joined the staff of the Chicago Tribune in 1986.
Jan 14, 2010
A veteran police officer, Jacques Conway, now retired, ambles across the stage to
accept an award for his service to his community. A roar of cheers fills the room.
People are standing beside their tables and applauding. A number of his church
members are on hand.
Up come the couple, Lois and Ernie Bauman, who have put their faith in their
community years ago when white flight set in. Rather than flee, they stayed and built a
fine arts academy for black youths from the West Side and nearby suburbs. Again,
people stand and cheer.
And there is the locale state senator, Kimberly Lightford, whose list of deeds draws
another long, rousing applause.
These were some of the folks recently honored at the first annual fundraiser for the
West Suburban Journal, a weekly paper that didn’t exist six years ago. But here it is,
holding its first gala fundraiser and the money will go for its intern and scholarship
program.
I am taken back and it is not just from the vibes in the dining room. So, here is a
paper growing in a time when others are disappearing. A paper serving a large sprawl
of black communities on Chicago’s West Side that gets into the act, talking about what’
s happening and gets attention for doing it.
As the night goes on, the story is told slowly how L. Nicole Trottie, the publisher and
everything else for the paper, began with an idea and found support and advice and
built up an organization around volunteers and interns and slowly one employee after
another, and, according to the Illinois Press Association, became the first black
female publisher of a weekly newspaper in Illinois.
Nicole’s dream, as someone said, has surely come true.
Stephen Franklin, longtime journalism, teacher and author, now is ethnic news project
director at the Community Media Workshop. He gained a 20-year career in daily
newspapers when he joined the staff of the Chicago Tribune in 1986.