Pete Nickeas

I don’t know where to start … this is like three blog posts condensed into one.

It’s hard to empathize with people, people don’t care about poor people, and media coverage lacks when it comes to poor people.

(EDIT: I’m going to do more posts on the various topics.)

First … I confess, I have a hard time empathizing with people. Or feeling bad for people when bad shit happens.

I’ll cry like a baby when some bad shit happens to innocent people. This is probably one of the most profane videos I’ve ever seen. And I had a disgusting feeling in my gut watching a kid in his final moments. How could you not feel bad about that?

The two or three dozen people involved in that kids death will get theirs one day, and I can’t feel bad for them. They’ll go to prison and get spit out, or avoid jail time and go to a group home, or never get caught. They’ll get theirs, at some point in life, and I can’t feel bad about it.

Feeling bad for kids and other innocent people, though, is about the extent of my feelings for “man kind” in general.

When you do bad shit to people, bad things happen to you. That’s life.

How many people died of gun violence in Chicago last year? More than 500. To say it was a long hot summer would be an understatement.

There’s another video floating around of a guy who stuck a gun in someone’s face, then got the shit beat out of him by someone who fought back. It was gruesome. The guy who had the gun was on his back, on the ground, with a guy over him throwing punches quicker than most. Left, right, left, right. Just laying into him with a disregard for his well being.

But when you stick a gun in someone’s face, that’s what happens. Someone’s gonna fight back.

What’s bothers me, I think as much as the problem itself, is the media coverage. The Chicago Tribune’s editorial board isn’t in the streets pounding its chests about the lack of parenting, policing, whatever it is … that’s leading to 500 violent deaths in the city. You don’t see any special projects, either.

(Disclaimer: of all the papers in the country, I have more admiration for the Trib than any other paper. Their political coverage is what, in my humble opinion, what political coverage should be.)

Under its “Watchdog” tab, you don’t see “violence in the city.” Or anything similar. It’s not to detract from their state coverage (out front on almost every story involving Blago and observing the Trib’s bureau in Springfield was a learning experience in itself) or their city hall coverage (I still point to the “Neighborhoods for Sale” series as an example of what I one day hope to do) but they aren’t dedicating resources to this like they are other things.

The closest thing I’ve seen to a comprehensive look at what it’s like to be in the hood in Chicago is Alex Kotlotwitz’s “There Are No Children Here.” And that story details life two decades ago.

Maybe I’m wrong, and the Trib has three people in Englewood right now working on a project. But I doubt it. I just don’t see it, and it’s something we should be seeing.

I’ve been at work for about an hour and I’ve got way too much going on right now.

- I was walking down 5th street this morning towards home (and also yesterday at one point) and there’s the nasty formaldehyde smell (or other embalming chemical) coming from the Ellinger-Kunz & Park Funeral Home & Cremation Service building. It’s very distinct, extremely disgusting smell.

- It’s going to rain all day. I didn’t move yesterday because of threatening rain and I didn’t want to risk getting all of my stuff wet. It’s going to be in storage for awhile and I don’t feel the need to pre-soak my furniture on the ride over. So now we’re gonna try and get all of it out in increments this week I guess, whenever time permits.

- I feel like I should be more psyched up for this week but I’m not. I’m actually kinda bummed right now and I don’t feel well. I’m more interested in following the capital plan money than the prospect of an income tax hike or any other budget scenario.

- I talked to a guy about a job a couple weeks ago, and he seemed pretty cool. And I talked to another guy about a job last week (same company) and he also sounded like a good guy. So here’s to hope.

- I’m moving out of the first apartment I had with Erin. We moved in on our one-year anniversary last year. It’s sad. I’m going to miss Springfield. Learned a lot here. Last night I was walking a friend’s dog (the two of them tripped out to California for a couple days) and I was thinking, no way I pictured myself being cool enough with anyone I meet in Springfield to house-sit for them for three days. I mean, it didn’t even enter my mind that I’d meet people here that I’d be cool with. Just kinda figured I’d come, work for a year, and jet. Which is what’s happening anyway. But I’ve met some really, really cool people here too.

The sincerest of apologies are in order for the dust that’s begun to settle on this blog.

But let me tell you, it’s been one hell of a week.

It started Sunday night, staking out the leaders and seeing a capital plan being fleshed out.

The state Senate passed a construction plan Wednesday and the House passed it Thursday. The boss has been sick, though, so we’ve been on our own basically. We turned out eight stories between the two of us yesterday, half of them legislative and the other half about projects in our coverage areas.

In between that, I’ve been looking at donations, road projects, reform legislation, train maps, and other fun infrastructure things.

Needless to say, I’ve been feeling torn about how I feel about this whole thing all week. The hours suck but I love the job. Days like yesterday - when we were turning stories important to our coverage areas for numerous reasons - are perfect.

Other days, not so much.

Either way … it’s the end of the week, lawmakers canceled all of their planned weekend sessions, so that means nobody’s here til Tuesday. WE may be here this weekend but I dunno. See what the boss says I suppose.

And on that note … it’s 86 and sunny.

PEACE!

The Lakers didn’t beat the Supersonics, but all in all, today was a good day.

Two stories at work, which is good. We don’t typically cover day-to-day stories of statewide importance unless there’s a local angle … so we left a lot of the Roland Burris coverage to the AP. Stuff like that, we tend to defer to the wire services.

And its even more rare that I turn two stories in a day because the boss expects us to focus on one story and make it good - call a dozen people about an issue and see what they say … and this is especially true for stories about proposed laws. There’s not a lot of spot news that we cover.

But today! Today, there was. My main story today - which we’ve planned on covering all week - changed from “Teacher union spends a ton of money on an ad campaign” to “Governor compromises on major budget proposal”. The shift from event coverage to a major news peg was actually really fun. Good times, Joe!

There was that, and there was, well, shoot. I went to grab the story from our website but it’s behind a paywall now (a totally different topic) so I can’t link to any Kankakee-specific stories anymore.

It was a story about how a couple parks in Kankakee County were given grant money to develop their open-space. A simple, eight or nine inch story with quotes from a mayor and a park district commissioner, the basics. A quick little story that will get tucked away somewhere on page three that’s extremely relevant to our community but not A1 material.

So, that’s what I did today. It’s one of those days where things were just working - the governor was answering questions if you stopped him between events, spokespersons were returning calls, and local sources were eager to talk.

Today was good. Just one of those days.

Things are slow in Springfield while lawmakers are on vacation. There even seems to be considerably less traffic on 2nd Street each night after work.

Anyway, after a couple weeks essentially removed from the daily rotation, it will be nice to feel the pressure of a deadline again.

This week it looks like I’ll be bouncing back and forth between a story about the state’s expansion of a juvenile-offender program and a few other random follow ups on stories from earlier in the session.

When lawmakers come back next week, the main items on the agenda will be reform measures, a full-blown capital plan, and revenue measures. The revenue measures are likely to be the most contentious issue, since nobody wants to raise taxes but everybody wants a capital plan.

It will be fun. And I mean that with total sincerity.

Wrapped up a story last night I’ve spent the better part of two weeks on. Out of the daily rotation except for a quick story about state Sen. Dan Rutherford, D-Pontiac, seeking the treasurer’s post. Also, a couple other random pressers and feeding stuff to the other two reporters in here for their stories occasionally.

I will have a link in the coming days as the newsrooms start to post it online.

Anyway, the work involved taking tuition and fee data from the state board of higher education, which keeps track of all that, putting it into a database, and using it to get other information … like average tuition for a 10 year span, tuition bumps, fee bumps, etc.

The story looked specifically at the state’s “truth-in-tuition” law and how universities are stuck with less state money and their hands are tied because they can’t raise tuition rates on a student once he/she enrolls. So tuition increases for next year’s class are larger, and, they’re turning to fees to help cover things the state used to pay for, like building maintenance.

Working on a follow up or two now.

Song of the day:

State Sen. Dan Rutherford, R-Pontiac, is only in the exploratory committee stage, so he’s not technically “running for treasurer” yet.

That’s not the interesting part. Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney hosted a fundraiser for Rutherford not too long ago and there have been whispers about his candidacy for weeks.

But instead of holding a press conference or shooting out a press release, Rutherford posted a video on YouTube for the initial announcement and followed up on Facebook and Twitter.

Later in the evening he sent out a standard press release. He said only one reporter contacted him prior to the release being sent out - it was because she saw the update on Facebook.

Though I haven’t been around here long, I do believe it’s the first time someone considering statewide office has made the announcement like this.

Rutherford is the first candidate to announce for Treasurer in the 2010 election. Since he has a Senate seat til 2012, if he loses he’ll still have a job.