Category Archives: The Peoria Chronicle

City Council, City of Peoria, Heart of Peoria Plan, HOPC, The Peoria Chronicle

Community announcements and Chronicle hiatus

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It’s just about December, and that means that work duties will be dominating my time. You may remember from last year that each December the church where I work (Grace Presbyterian) puts on a big Christmas concert called “Grace Family Christmas,” and I spend the time between the actual concerts (Nov. 30-Dec. 3) and Christmas Eve editing the concert footage to show on WEEK, channel 25, at 10:30 p.m. Christmas Eve and 12:00 p.m. (noon) Christmas Day. That takes up so much of my time that any free time I have outside of that I spend with my family, and that leaves no time for blogging.

Some things that are upcoming that I want to remind everyone about:

  • Tuesday night (11/28) at the council meeting, the Heart of Peoria Commission will be presenting their position paper on the Glen Oak School siting issue.
  • The next two Wednesday nights (11/29 and 12/6) are the last two public hearings scheduled for 2006 on the Land Development Code for the Heart of Peoria area.
  • Dec. 13 is the Park Board meeting where they will be discussing whether or not to enter into an intergovernmental agreement with the school district to allow them to share Glen Oak Park land for a new school building.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I’d just like to say once again how much I appreciate you, the readers of this blog. And a special thanks to those of you who take the time to comment — whether it’s to encourage me, disagree with me, or offer constructive criticism, or whatever. The best part of the blog, for me, is the feedback I get and the discussions we have.

I hope you all have a very merry Christmas and I’ll see if I can’t squeeze in some time to post a couple times this month. You know how it goes… If there’s some big local news story (say, if the STB hands down a decision on the Kellar Branch between now and Christmas), I won’t be able to contain myself and I’ll have to put something on the blog about it. But other than that, it will be pretty quiet around the Chronicle until after Christmas. While I’m out, please check out the other fine blogs that I have listed on the sidebar.

Happy holidays, everyone!
C. J. Summers

Television, The Peoria Chronicle

Well, that was . . . terrifying

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Whew. I appreciated the opportunity to be interviewed on TV, but boy am I glad that’s over! I was so nervous. I feel so much more comfortable writing, where I can meticulously craft exactly what I want to say and how I want to say it — rewriting several times in the process.

I was impressed by how nice everyone was to me. I was impressed because, if I were they, I would have been totally annoyed with someone like me hanging around. They took the time to answer my questions and let me stick around and watch them produce the 10:00 news. I was interested in that because, of course, I do a little bit of TV production in my job at Grace Presbyterian. Their production is much faster-paced than ours, which is to be expected since they don’t spend a lot of on-air time praying, and we don’t spend any on-air time giving the weather or lottery numbers.

Surprises:

  • Mac and Mike wear real suits; Lee Hall just wears the jacket, tie, and shorts.
  • All the news personalities edit their own news clips.
  • Gary Sandberg is a fan of mine!
  • Jenny Li really is even cuter in person than she is on TV.
  • Neither Mac nor Mike get to decide which stories run or in what order (I always thought the anchor got that privilege). The producer makes those decisions.

I asked Mike if they were going to interview any anonymous bloggers, and he mentioned that one may be “coming out” on the air in the future. That made me raise an eyebrow….

Thanks to everyone who watched tonight. And now, back to our regularly-scheduled program.

The Peoria Chronicle

Gone fishing

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Well, I mean that metaphorically, actually.  I’ve only fished once in my life, and didn’t catch anything.

I need to unplug for a little while.  I’ve been getting a bit too obsessed with the blog lately, and, frankly, I’m unhappy with how my posts have been getting more and more negative.  So, it’s time to get away from it for a few days, clear my head a little, and contemplate the future of the Chronicle.

In the meantime, please enjoy the other fine writers on my blogroll, and have a great weekend!

The Peoria Chronicle

Add the Chronicle to your newsreader!

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I was reading PeoriaIllinoisan’s post, “An Open Letter to Bloggers,” and got lambasted by this line:

Your blog doesn’t have an Atom/RSS/XML syndication feed. It was smashing stuff, truly, but I keep forgetting to check it for new posts and articles. If you had a syndication feed — it’s a built-in option with most blogging software — I could bookmark your blog in Bloglines.com or any desktop newsreader, and be alerted to every update.

Well, I’ve never used syndication feeds, so I never really thought about it before. It turns out that these feeds were built-in to the snazzy WordPress software, but I didn’t have any links to make it easy for people to subscribe.

So now, taking a cue from the Blogfather, I’ve signed up with FeedBurner to make it easy and convenient for you to add my little blog to your newsreader. I’ve added a “Subscribe” link in the menu bar at the top of the page, as well as on the side bar under the “Meta” menu. I hope you all find this to be a useful addition to the site.

If you have any other suggestions to make the site more user-friendly or interesting, leave me a comment or shoot me an e-mail. As always, thanks for reading!