Southtown Star

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The SouthtownStar (previously known as The Daily Southtown) is a newspaper of the Chicago, Illinois metropolitan area that covers the south suburbs of Chicago and the South Side neighborhoods of the city - a wide region known as the Chicago Southland. Its popular slogan is "People Up North Just Don't Get It" (a pun). While the Southtown is not as large or as well-known as Chicago's metro dailies, the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, it does have a reputation for aggressive investigative reporting and colorful, vivid writing.

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[edit] History

Founded on September 11, 1906, the Southtown celebrated its 100th year as a paper in 2006. Originally called the Englewood Economist, it was retitled the Southtown Economist in 1924 and began publishing twice weekly. The newspaper relocated from Chicago's Englewood community to the west end of the city in Garfield Ridge in 1968, and again relocated to suburban Tinley Park in 1997. It's been a daily since 1978. On November 18, 2007, the twice-weekly neighborhood newspaper, The Star (Tinley Park) was merged into the Daily Southtown to create the SouthtownStar, which is circulated daily with a special Neighborhood Star pull-out section on Thursdays and Sundays. [1]

The paper maintains bureaus in Chicago city hall and the city's federal courts building. It is owned by the Sun-Times Media Group.

[edit] Awards

In 2006, the Southtown was named Newspaper of the Year among the nation's large circulation suburban dailies by Suburban Newspapers of America and the American Press Institute. The judges said: "This is a terrific newspaper -- its spot-news coverage is both broad and deep, and its feature stories are as good as those of the country's best newspapers. The newspaper puts a lot of effort into providing value to readers -- and it shows."

The paper also won the Illinois Associated Press Award for General Excellence in 2006, the national Fred M. Hechinger Prize for Education Reporting, and the Chicago Headline Club's Watchdog Award for Reporting in the Public Interest.

[edit] Notable Staff

Among its resident writers is Phil Kadner, now the Chicago area's premier news columnist. He's been writing a daily column for two decades. In 2002, he won the Studs Terkel Award for journalistic excellence for writing from a grassroots perspective, and he's been the recipient of several prestigious Peter Lisagor Awards for commentary.

Of his most recent Lisagor win in 2006, the judges wrote: "His writing is absolutely clean. ... No personal vanity, and eyes open to the world and the ordinary people who are so extraordinary in it."

Many noteworthy reporters have passed through the Southtown. Former education reporter Linda Lutton helped bring down a corrupt school superintendent, getting him sent to prison. In 2004 Lutton won the Studs Terkel award, too, for her writings on housing, education, crime and public safety, culture and politics.

The late Kevin Carmody, environment reporter, won a 1999 George Polk Award -- one of the nation's most prestigious prizes in journalism -- for his stories on the official cover-up of the illness and death of employees exposed to toxic metals decades ago in A-bomb factories. His series "Deadly Silence" revealed how hundreds of scientists, tradesmen and secretaries at a Manhattan Project lab at the University of Chicago were carelessly exposed to the toxic metal beryllium, then for 45 years intentionally kept in the dark about the potentially deadly health consequences.

Cornelia Grumman, a 1993 Pulitzer Prize winning editorial writer at the Chicago Tribune for her death penalty editorials, was a reporter at the Southtown. Cathleen Falsani, author of The God Factor and now the religion reporter for the Sun-Times, got her start in newspapers as the religion beat writer for the Southtown. Other writers who cut their teeth on the news business at the Southtown include the Sun-Times' Mark Konkol, author-blogger-columnist Allison Hantschel and the Tribune's David Heinzmann.

The Southtown today may be one of the best-written non-metro dailies in the country, with the likes of Kadner, politics columnist Kristen McQueary, pop culture columnist George Haas, features columnist Donna Vickroy and sports columnist Phil Arvia. South Siders seem to have a deep affection for these writers and the paper itself.


[edit] External links