Just for fun, I decided to log into my Peoria Chronicle blog again after being away for many years. I updated the theme and started reading the first few months I was blogging in 2005. That was quite the trip down memory lane. My son was born in 2005; now he’s 17 and a senior in high school. My youngest daughter who was two in 2005 is now a sophomore at the University of Iowa. And my oldest daughter who was five in 2005 (the one I blogged about getting her first bicycle) is a Bradley University graduate and is in Switzerland for the fall.
I read about all the places that closed in 2005: Hunt’s, Vonachen’s (the first time, when they became Bud’s Aged Steaks, which didn’t last long), Ben Franklin in Peoria Heights, Famous Barr (which became Macy’s, which then left the mall completely).
When I first started blogging, I wrote a lot more about my personal life. As time went on, it got more newsy and less personal. In fact, I got some personal threats when writing on certain subjects which made me decide to guard my privacy more and more as time progressed. Eventually, I was too busy to blog anymore.
I’m still too busy, actually. So I’m not going to be blogging very much. But I might throw up a post or two now and again, for old time’s sake. The things that got me started blogging way back in 2005 are still the things that make we wish I could take it up again now: When I read or hear news in Peoria, I’m left with more questions than answers. I just saw a report on WMBD-TV the other night about the Illinois Report Card. The reporter quoted the state superintendent of education as saying, “The report shows we are absolutely on the right track.” Yet the Wall Street Journal just published a shocking article on Illinois schools that reported, among other horrific stats, that “in 2019 7% of black third-graders in Rockford were reading at grade level, 11% of Hispanic third-graders in Elgin and 8% of black third-graders in Peoria.” But our local news channel is content to post a link to the report card and a quote from a bureaucrat that is clearly trying his hardest to get some lipstick on a pig. The reporter evidently didn’t actually read the report card or have enough curiosity to ask any follow-up questions. Everything is hunky-dory here.
Why can’t we have a more robust press? Why can’t we have investigations into why the schools here are letting down our children so miserably, just to name but one topic that warrants further scrutiny? Are people really that apathetic? Or are they just ignorant? I’d like to think it’s the latter, and that if they were more informed, they’d pick up their pitchforks and demand better. But I fear that it’s the former, and that no amount of information will inspire anyone to do more than shrug their shoulders and lament that “you can’t fight City Hall.”
One thing is for sure: A robust press can’t rely on free citizen journalism. It needs people who can work full-time on rooting out corruption and forcing a light on things that our bureaucrats would rather we not see. Is there anyone out there still interested in paying for this kind of service? If the Journal Star suddenly rose from the ashes like a Phoenix and started actually caring about real journalism again, would people pay for it? Or would they keep turning to Google News and other aggregation services to get their news for free?
Maybe someday after I win the lottery, I’ll have the time and resources to do more. But for now, I still have kids to put through college and food to put on the table–something that keeps getting more expensive these days. If you have any ideas on how we can (in practical ways) be the change we want to see, I’d love to hear your comments.