On Nov. 4, 1842, Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd were married in the home of her older sister and brother-in-law, Elizabeth and Ninian Edwards. That old Edwards home is long gone – demolished in 1918 to make room for a state government building (now the Howlett Building). OK, history lesson over. Now, 183 years later, […]
Uncategorized
Posted inUncategorized
Growing central Illinois one skill at a time
Central Illinois employers are facing a critical shortage of skilled workers. The relentless pace of technological change worsens this problem. Hiring alone won’t solve this crisis. To keep pace with evolving demands, employers must make targeted investments in professional development, building the skills their teams need to adapt and thrive. As new technologies transform every […]
Posted inCommunity & Lifestyle
The voice within
Hello, my name is Dr. Roxanne Casey. As a child reared in the inner city of Chicago, I overheard women often talking about the constant inequalities due to society limiting them to domestic roles, submissive wives and mothers. I lacked understanding as a child regarding their conversation, but I recalled their conversation when I was […]
Posted inUncategorized
Echoes of yesteryear
The annual Sangamon County Historical Society’s cemetery walk, Echoes of Yesteryear, will make for a great Sunday outing on Oct. 5. It takes place from noon to 3:30 p.m. at Oak Ridge Cemetery, 1441 Monument Ave. The last tour begins at 3 p.m. Susan Helm, co-chair of the cemetery committee, said, “This year’s Cemetery Walk […]
Posted inFilm
Battle messy and ambitious, Dead of Winter tells wrong story
Anderson orchestrates ambitious Battle Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another comes fully freighted with great expectations. Proclaimed by critics as the front runner for the Oscar for Best Picture, it seems preordained to deliver the director recognition from the Academy that’s long overdue. Yet, much like Martin Socrsese’s The Departed, this is far from […]
Posted inUncategorized
Planting a new paper for Springfield
I grew up in a Springfield dominated by the Journal and Register (later the Journal-Register). Not only in newspaper terms but sociopolitically as well. The paper was owned and directed from San Diego by Jim Copley and his Copley Press, a very conservative operation. It was a classic case of absentee ownership. The J-R had […]
Posted inUncategorized
Fuddy-duddies
It was no internet in terms of its impact on communications but in the 1960s and ’70s cheap web offset printing allowed anyone who had a gripe, a dream or even just an itch they needed to scratch to “put out a paper.” All you needed was some rubber cement and a typewriter and an […]
Posted inUncategorized
PAGE ONE
In the following pages we display one cover a year for each year we’ve been publishing. That’s 51 covers. Since we didn’t get started until late in 1975, we’ve used the first nine months of 2025 to complete 50 years. Does that make sense? The covers we picked, one per year, weren’t picked at random, […]
Posted inIT Picks
Popular car show returns to capital city
This weekend, all roads lead once again to Springfield for this major car show. Hundreds of street machines, muscle cars and hot rods will rumble into the capital city. They will be followed by thousands of spectators for this weekend of family fun, live music and entertainment. The festival begins with the Route 66 City […]
Posted inUncategorized
50th Anniversary special
Beginning on page 13 is our anniversary section, with articles by three who were in the “room where IT happened” 50 years ago: Bill Friedman, founding publisher; Alan Anderson, founding editor; and Jim Krohe, contributing editor. These are followed by our “Gallery of Covers,” seven pages of Illinois Times covers, one for each of the […]
Posted inUncategorized
Maybe freedom of the press isn’t guaranteed after all
As a young newspaper reporter in April 1972 I traveled with friends to the A.J. Liebling Counter-Convention in New York City. Counter-Convention meant this gathering was operating as a counter to the meeting of the American Newspaper Publishers Association, taking place New York at the same time. A.J. Liebling was a press critic and New […]
Posted inUncategorized
How we started IT
In 1968 I returned from three years in the Amazon and embarked on a path toward a career in science journalism. I joined Time magazine as a science reporter, when I met Bill Friedman. After several years in New York, Bill and I began to feel restless and wondered what was happening in the rest […]
