The general media, according to Laura Washington, usually shies away from reporting on race if there's no aspect of conflict there.
"Henry Louis Gates gets in trouble with the cops, so we cover the story, and have a 'national conversation on race.' Then we move along to other things," said Washington, who is interim publisher of The Chicago Reporter. "The media sort of misses the boat, even when race-based stories are all around us."
But for four decades, that's given The Chicago Reporter a comparative advantage over its competition. "There's no other investigative publication that I'm aware of that covers race and poverty," according to Washington. "When the Reporter started back in 1972, there was nothing of its kind and that remains the same."
She returned to The Chicago Reporter, where she'd previously spent 17 years, last November, when its previous publisher, Kimbriell Kelly, stepped down. Washington has worn many hats in Chicago media over the years; besides her work for The Chicago Reporter, Washington is a columnist for Chicago Sun-Times and a political analyst for ABC-7 Chicago. In 1985, she was named deputy press secretary to Mayor Harold Washington. On the basis of both her reporting on LGBT issues and work in the mayor's office, she was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame as a Friend of the Community in 2012.
These days a large part of Washington's time is devoted to leading the search for the Reporter's next publisher—she said a decision is likely coming by this month's end—and wrapping up the magazine's 40th anniversary celebration, which culminates with a gala event June 13 at 7 p.m. at Chase Auditorium, 10 S. Dearborn St. The evening also includes a taping of the NPR radio program "Wait, Wait … Don't Tell Me!"
"It was important for us to talk about our anniversary, especially in the context of how Chicago has changed in those 40 years," said Washington. "The city has become much more diverse. When we started, the city was pretty much black and white, and blacks were in the minority. Nowadays, it's black, white, Latino and Asian, and minorities make up the majority of the population."
Poverty, meanwhile, still threatens vast numbers of residents on the South and West sides of the city. "In many ways, that poverty has deepened because of the demographic changes we've seen in the last 10 years," Washington said. "Many African-Americans, especially upper- and middle-income African-Americans, have moved to the south suburbs and the western suburbs, and what remains behind are the poorest of the poor."
In the first issue of the Reporter, its founding publisher, civil-rights activist John A. McDermott, promised that the magazine would "try to be dispassionate, accurate and constructive in its approach." That means approaching a story so as to best sort out its facts and documenting community problems with a minimum of hyperbole.
"We have passion for the issue," said Washington. "But in terms of the reporting, race is an extremely emotional and controversial issue. … So what we want to do is approach the topic with no agenda. We just want to find out what the facts are. We want to examine the problem without a lot of emotion, without a lot of screaming and yelling, and just present that problem."
Nevertheless, much of the public, including many news organizations, tends to mischaracterize The Chicago Reporter as an advocacy organization. According to Washington, "There is this inclination to think that, if you care about racial inequities and economic inequities, it makes you some kind of an advocate or cheerleader, as opposed to a news organization that wants to make things better."
"We're not there to tell you how to fix the problem," she added. "We're there to identify it and leave it to the policymakers to find the solution."
That's what happened, for example, when The Chicago Reporter investigated the mortgage giant Countrywide Financial. A 2007 survey of regional mortgage data—one of many the magazine published—documented widespread discriminatory practices by the lender; African-American and Latino borrowers were being steered to high-cost loans more frequently than white borrowers, even ones with bad credit scores, were.
"African-American homeowners whose incomes were $90,000 a year were less likely to get mortgages then whites who had incomes of $30,000," Washington said. "That's an incredible disparity—an obvious racial disparity—that you could only point out by doing heavy duty number crunching."
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan subsequently launched an investigation into Countrywide's practices and sued them, along with Wells Fargo and Company, in 2010, alleging numerous violations of the state's Fairness in Lending Act and its Human Rights Act. Countrywide, now part of Bank of America, agreed to a $335 million national settlement the following year, while Wells Fargo settled for $175 million.
"Like a lot of good reporting, a lot of what we do doesn't necessarily move the needle or provoke change—that's the way journalism works," Washington added. "But a lot of what we do has an impact."
The Chicago Reporter covered LGBT issues long before most mainstream news outlets in the city did. "As early as the late 1970's, we had out journalists on our staff," according to Washington. "They cared about those issues and influenced the decision-making of our editors. When I was a young reporter they had a huge influence on me and helped me understand why those issues were so important."
She added that LGBT coverage easily fits into the scope of the Reporter's mission. "For a long time those issues were in the shadows—from my own perspective, LGBT issues are justice issues and equity issues. We look at people of color, and many of them are LGBT's suffering inequities because of their racial status and their LGBT status. So they suffer a sort of double whammy, which is even better a reason to acknowledge and shed light on those issues."
The Reporter remains committed to investigative journalism even as other outlets have drastically cut it back—investigations expend a great deal of time and money, and run the risk of angering various interests in the community. To keep its investigations going, fundraising is a significant part of Washington's job. Community Renewal Society, which publishes the Reporter, is a major supporter, but the magazine also has to rely on foundational and corporate grants, as well as individual donors.
"Our stories are very time-consuming," Washington said. "A typical cover story for us takes two or three months to produce when one person's working on it. That means we're still spending money on salaries when you can't turn out a product that quickly. … You're also often dealing with reluctant people and institutions. So you've got to do FOIA's and you've got to call 80 times. You've got to spend more time talking to a lot of people—that's time-consuming and takes more bodies."
Given all the years she has worked at the Reporter, Washington still has a hard time referring to it as a "news organization" and not a "news magazine." She's nevertheless grateful that the digital age affords more opportunities to build an audience beyond the magazine's longtime readers.
"It's no longer a stand-alone, traditional vehicle," Washington said. "It's not just a paper or a magazine. We have a blog, a website and a bi-monthly magazine. We're starting to do a lot more reporting via Twitter and Facebook. We're a digital institution."
Call 312-427-4830. For publication details, see www.chicagoreporter.com .
