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Now Lorraine Swanson, the last editor of the News-Star, is launching lakeeffectnews.com to cover all the above territory plus Albany Park, which the News-Star covered before WSI took it over from Pioneer Press in 2008. “I was always kind of frustrated by the weekly format, and I’m looking forward to putting out a daily project,” Swanson tells me. “We live in an instant age and everybody wants to find things instantaneously. They’ll be able to find it now. People are hungry for news and hungry for coverage of their neighborhoods. I think the old Lerner flag was always kind of a watchdog for the neighborhoods. I want to continue that tradition. In a perfect world I’d supplement this with a print product but I don’t have the money for that.”
To give her a hand, Swanson has rounded up some pals who, like her, were laid off by Wednesday Journal, plus Jack Bess, a celebrated writer and editor from the Pioneer Press era, plus three interns. “As our ad revenue gets up,” she says, “I do want to pay the professionals. I don’t think professionals should work for free.” One of her pros, Ben Myers, edited the WJI’s Skyline until he lost his job in the March downsizing. She’s paying Myers for his stories “out of my own pocket for now.”
