Newspapering, and self-promotion

As I may have mentioned on this blog before, I've been working with some friends to get a small newspaper off the ground here in Rogers Park, the Chicago community where I live. We're still growing and improving after 7 months of learning on the job.

In the current issue, which hits local newsstands tomorrow but is on the Web now, I contributed an essay of sorts that I find quite amusing (yes, shameless self-promotion to follow). It deals with the joys of jury duty and draws from my literary past. It's called One Day, One Trial, One Bounced Check. Here's a small taste, but please do read the whole thing if you find the tease worthy:

On a crisp early morning last April, I made the trek down to the Daley Center to perform a civic duty that fills most Chicagoans with more dread than pride. I had been summoned by the Court to sit through a process of jury selection that seems patterned after the most angst-inspiring metaphors of our best existential writers.

Our County of Cook has christened its system “One Day, One Trial” based on the fact that you need to endure either a single day of rejection or the more dire sentence of empaneling on a single trial’s jury. The solitariness of the moniker is fitting, as the whole experience engenders feelings of isolation and anxiety.

The neighborhood newspaper biz

This post is a bit out of character, as I don't like to delve too deeply into my non-creative activities on this site, but I also don't want to sit idly by and allow someone to mischaracterize what I do either.

For those who don't know, my friends and I started a new community-based newspaper. It's meant to open up the channels of communication in a diverse neighborhood where information doesn't always flow freely. It's a publication with a distinctly progressive voice, which will become apparent when you see this week's lead story on Naomi Klein's discussion of the financial bailout.

The paper is called The Urban Coaster, and it's beginning to get some attention. CommonDreams.Org just featured the Klein story on its national site and brought us a huge influx of new readers. Unfortunately, with the good always comes some bad. There are those in the community who don't want to see a publication succeed that gives voice to alternative views.

Ours is a strange little neighborhood, where a group of very vocal folks try to shout down anyone who disagrees with their self-aggrandizing agenda. They do this to compensate for the fact that their opinions only resonate with a small minority. Some have blogs that they use to bully others into silence, and they often do so in the most reprehensible ways. Actually, I guess that really isn't much different than the tactics of certain Fox News "personalities."

I don't want to dwell on their negativity too much, and I think the vast majority of people in the community will respond to our positive message much more than their vituperative posts. It's just a shame that some feel the need to resort to the most petty of personal attacks in order to promote their views. I'm not going to stoop to their level.