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 of the country. He began talking to me about a return to his native Springfield, where he fantasized that we might be able to build a new model of journalism with more independence, breadth and roots in the local community.
Bill found a weekly paper called Maine Times, which he thought might be a model worth studying. This turned out to be true, and when he asked me to join him, I felt his excitement and quickly said yes.
Understandably, the Springfield Copley daily had little interest in helping us, and we hesitated to challenge an outfit with such deep pockets and contracts with the advertisers we would need to survive. I shared his anxiety but agreed with Bill that we could offer a diverse mix of topics that would be more flexible, diverse and absorbing than we saw in “the competition.”
The issues we saw as crucial in the mid-70s included energy, agriculture, politics and education. We also saw a whole raft of local issues that brought to life a picture of downstate Illinois that had been ignored for many years. By downstate we meant anything that wasn’t Chicago; where Athens is pronounced AY-thens, Berlin is pronounced BER-lin, and White Sox is pronounced Cubbies.
Alan Anderson, editor, in 1977
Building a staff
In many ways luck and people were on our side. Bill’s father, Lester, opened many doors and cheered us on. Advertisers sensed our enthusiasm and bought space. We managed to rent a spacious house just down the street from the Lincoln home.
The space fit our needs perfectly, if tightly. The front room held writers and editors, while everyone else squeezed into the back, including Jessie Ewing’s photo lab in the bathroom. New technology allowed us to use inexpensive phototypesetting equipment, and keyboard wizard Christine Skoczynski was able to typeset the entire paper each week. In his reliable Camaro, Bill drove the scissored proofs to Peoria for printing.
Inventing community journalism
On the editorial side, we were unhappy with the approach taken by the existing daily, which we found narrow and dry. We wanted to portray our part of the country as vibrant, diverse and optimistic. Our task was to seek out and describe these qualities for our readers.
First, we dug into dominant topics of the day: energy, agriculture, politics, education, health care, social issues, business.
Second, we focused on local aspects of these broad topics and how they affected our readers. For example, riffing through several of our early editions I saw articles on Springfield’s first teachers’ strike, Bloomington-Normal’s experiment with metro-management, the reactions of Black families to busing, economic challenges posed by the first mega-mall in downstate, challenges of prison reform, early days of organic farming, traditions of Illinois patronage.
A third focus included more offbeat, heartwarming and sometimes heartbreaking views of downstate: the Athens State Championship Chilli cook-off, new ways to fight alcoholism, an 8-foot 11-inch-tall man called the Alton giant who literally didn’t fit in; how to make burgoo (don’t ask), 50 years of selling worms and leeches, how to make moonshine in Ashland, why two brothers in Beardstown spent their lives trying to invent an airplane that flies vertically.
Our small editorial engine
Claudia Dowling led the way in our very third issue with a sensitive and humorous profile of Dick Durbin, now U.S. senator, as he literally took his first steps in a distinguished political career that endures to this day. It was no surprise to watch Claudia move on to a distinguished career with Life and People magazines.
I also found one of Victoria Pope’s typically sensitive renderings that described the challenges faced by the last Black resident of Petersburg; Victoria went on to a leadership career at National Geographic.
Someone whose footprints are found throughout the work of the IT is historian and columnist Jim Krohe, a native of Springfield who has viewed his home region with affection and honesty for a long and successful career. His steady hand on the tiller has continued to keep us informed and honest.
Some of my warmest memories are the occasional calls from Bill’s father, Lester, a quiet, amused fan of IT goings-on. From time to time, I would hear the familiar resonant voice calling to inform me that it was time for a “board meeting.” Of course there was no board, but we would meet for a sandwich and iced tea at Norb Andy’s tavern to chat about great journalistic things to come.
I’d like to close by thanking Bud Farrar for all he has done not only to keep IT alive in a time of journalistic peril but, more broadly, to play an important role in defining and practicing community journalism.
After Illinois Times, Alan Anderson moved to North Carolina and became editor of a different kind of weekly, the Madison County News-Record. After leaving that paper, he spent most of a year hiking about half the Appalachian Trail. He gave in to a long-time urge to drive a commercial truck, taking a challenging all-country job with J. B. Hunt. He retired from “JB” and returned to freelance writing for several years, then struck up a rewarding relationship with the director of the Institute for Advanced Study, working for him on a variety of writing projects for several decades. This work led to related assignments for the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. Currently he is retired and living in Asheville, North Carolina.
This article appears in 50th Anniversary special section.
