The Midwesterner: Blogging the Global Midwest

Sunset on a New Day for News

Back in late 2009, shortly after this blog was born, I posted an article called "A News Day Dawns," about a journalistic experiment in Chicago that held the potential for a brighter future for all journalism in the Midwest.

This post is an obituary. That experiment just died, and anyone who cares about the role of journalism in our democracy has to be among the mourners.

The experiment was called the Chicago News Cooperative. It was founded by a group of former editors and star reporters from the Chicago Tribune, who had been fired or forced out or who quit in disgust after that paper, once the mightiest in the Midwest, was taken over by Chicago real estate magnate Sam Zell and plunged into bankruptcy (where it remains).

Scaling the Chicago Summits

With Chicago and the Midwest gearing up to host the Group of 8 and NATO summits on May 19-21, it might be useful now to look at just what these organizations are, and what will go on in their twin meetings. In both cases, perception and reality are two different things.

I have some experience on this. As a reporter, I covered the first G8 summit (it was only the G6 then) in 1975, and later summits as the organization grew in numbers and complexity. Over the years, I also spent time in NATO's rather ramshackle headquarters in Brussels, covering meetings of presidents, foreign ministers, defense ministers and lesser poohbahs.

Chicago and the Summits

Talk to most Chicagoans now about the twin summit meetings of the Group of 8 and NATO, scheduled for mid-May, and they'll probably tell you that it's a "real roll of the dice." Which is just about right.

Supporters of the summits, including the people in charge of organizing the city's hosting of them, will say that big splashy meetings like this are part of being a global city, will show off Chicago's beauty, turn the world's spotlight on the city and will, in short, put it on the map. Opponents of the summits say that having them in the middle of a city like Chicago is simply a recipe for disaster, an historic traffic jam at best, protester-driven riots at worst, and a budget-buster in any case.

Either side may be proved right. But right now, nobody knows -- how many people and protesters will come, how the police will handle the protests, whether the endless motorcade will turn the city into gridlock, how much of the costs will come out of local taxpayers' pockets and, especially, whether Chicago will end up with glittering global publicity or a great big civic black eye.

Daffodils in Winter

If dawn follows the darkness, the Midwest may be recovering from its long night of economic decline.

So say a rash of news stories reporting on a sudden burst of economic activity and job growth in some of the most hard-hit regions of the Midwest. These stories chronicle a rebirth in jobs across the Midwest, a return of jobs from China and other outsourcing destinations, and a particular upsurge in manufacturing. Another report sees new venture capital going into Midwestern health care companies.

Some of this stems from the natural gas boom in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and may mark the beginning of a long-term upturn. Other good news come from Auto Alley, where the auto business, newly bailed out by the government, is showing signs of life.

But for the most part, it's too early to proclaim the Midwest's long winter to be over. Take these stories for what they are -- items of good news in a bleak landscape, as welcome as a balmy day in February. The natural gas boom may be real, but we've all been stung by quick blips in auto production in the past, and are all too aware of that industry's ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The return of outsourced jobs is happening in some places, but it's still too sporadic, and the evidence too anecdotal, to proclaim a turnaround.