Old and new media are included in the roster of the 2010 winners of the Studs Terkel Community Media Awards, announced today by the nonprofit Community Media Workshop at Columbia College. Honorees include Kate Grossman, Deputy Editorial Page Editor, Chicago Sun-Times; Natalie Moore, Public Affairs Reporter, Chicago Public Radio; and Progress Illinois, a news blog produced by Josh Kalven, Adam Doster, and Angela Caputo.
They join the roster of over four-dozen journalists recognized by the Workshop and the late Studs Terkel as representing some of Chicago's finest media professionals. They will receive their awards at the Workshop's annual benefit — co-chaired by Tracy Baim of the Windy City Media Group and Dan Haley & Andy Johnston of Wednesday Journal — March 10, 2010 at the Chicago Cultural Center. More information at www.communitymediaworkshop.org
Grossman decided to study policy and spend a year teaching at a Chicago public school before turning to journalism. Her grasp of how government worksor could work betterhas produced reporting and more recently commentary that shaped debates and framed decisions on Chicago's public housing and schools.
Moore calls herself a groupie who got hired for a dream job: from a new bureau office at 69th and Halsted, she's covering the South Side full timenot just when something bad happens. Community development, youth violence, digging in on local high schools: not off the beaten path, but real issues to the people in these communities.
Progress Illinois' team of Kalven, Doster, and Caputo — sponsored by Service Employees International Union — are mapping a new kind of news with their progressive political coverage of government from the local to the national levels, while filling in some gaps in coverage of community, advocacy and nonprofit groups.
Terkel was patron saint of the Workshop's Studs Terkel Community Media Awards before passing away in October, 2008, according to co-founder and president Thom Clark. "Studs was one of the world's most effective communicators, multi-talented as a writer, an actor, a journalist, an orator. His was a unique voice, both a rascal and a statesman; he brought dignity and hope to the hopeless and powerless and had a raw, respectful and honest insight about those who succeeded in life. Winner or loser, celebrity or nobody, saint or sinnerStuds reached out to us all. He was an organizer, a community organizer if you will. He talked to and, more importantly, listened to all of us," Clark said.
Since 1989, Community Media Workshop has coached thousands of nonprofit communicators to tell stories in ways that advance their missions or grow their organizations. Based at Columbia College Chicago, it works in Chicago and across the Midwest.