Medill has created the Medill Illinois News Bureau, which will provide local news outlets with coverage of the state legislature and government agencies.
Working in partnership with Capitol News Illinois (CNI), Medill graduate and undergraduate journalism students will develop expertise in covering state government, producing stories and multimedia content that will be distributed to news organizations statewide and in bordering states. CNI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization based in Springfield that is operated by the Illinois Press Foundation. Its vast distribution network includes about 700 newspapers, digital-only news sites and broadcast outlets throughout Illinois and in border state cities such as St. Louis.
“This new Medill Illinois News Bureau is intended to help strengthen coverage of state government at a time when the Statehouse press corps has been depleted and after most newspapers have closed their Springfield bureaus,” said Medill Dean Charles Whitaker. “Medill is stepping up to help fill some of that void, and to provide students with invaluable, real-world experience and classroom expertise covering one of the largest and most complex state governments in the nation.”
A team of Medill students will be based in Springfield during the legislative session and will work out of CNI’s newsroom. When the legislature is not in session, these students will develop enterprise pieces and cover breaking state government news from Chicago.
“Our Capitol News Illinois team is very excited about this partnership with Medill,” said Jeff Rogers, the founding editor of CNI and executive director of the Illinois Press Foundation. “Through its Local News Initiative, Medill and Northwestern University are making a significant push to revitalize community journalism and address the growing number of news deserts in Illinois. Because Capitol News Illinois addresses a news desert at the Illinois Capitol, this is a perfect partnership that will further connect communities statewide to their state government. This is a win for everyone, including the fantastic student journalists at Medill, who will get their work published by newspapers and broadcast outlets throughout the state.”
The program is funded with a grant from the Robert R. McCormick Foundation. The McCormick Foundation is a major supporter of the Medill Local News Initiative, a multi-pronged project aimed at bolstering local news locally and nationally. The initiative includes the Medill State of Local News Project, which tracks the number of news outlets nationally and news desert communities, and programs such as the Medill Local News Accelerator, the Midwest Solutions Journalism Hub and Teach for Chicago Journalism. Program participants also will conduct local news audience research.
“We are glad to have Medill and Capitol News Illinois as partners in keeping our citizens informed about the actions of their government and keeping the State of Illinois accountable to its residents,” said Tim Knight, the president and chief executive officer of the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
Medill Senior Lecturer Bob Rowley will serve as director of the Medill Illinois News Bureau. Rowley is a former national and foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, where served as national editor for seven years. Rowley covered state government and local politics early in his reporting career.
Eig is the author of six books, four of them New York Times best sellers. His most recent book, published in 2023, “King: A Life” won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and has been longlisted for the National Book Award and named one of the best books of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post and Time Magazine. “King: A Life” also recently garnered the New-York Historical Society’s annual Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize in American History, endowing Eig with the title of American Historian Laureate.
Adm. Lisa Franchetti assumed the duties as Chief of Naval Operations Nov. 2, 2023. She is the first woman to serve as Chief Naval Officer and the first woman to serve as one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She was the second woman promoted to four-star admiral in the U.S. Navy.
Goode serves as the chief communications and social impact officer of BMO where she leads communications, media relations, government affairs and community engagement.
Lazerow is an entrepreneur who co-founded Buddy Media, a software company that was acquired by Salesforce.com for $745 million, where he served as chief strategy officer. He has invested in more than 100 early-stage companies, including Facebook, Scopely and Liquid Death.
Tarde is the chairman and editor-in-chief of Golf Digest and global head of golf strategy and content for Warner Bros. Discovery. Tarde became an intern at Golf Digest in 1977 and was named editor in 1984 and is now the longest serving chief editor in media.
Zepeda is senior vice president, Consumer Connections, Insights and Strategy for Moet Hennessy USA. He joined Moet Hennessy as vice president for Belvedere Vodka in 2014, and subsequently held some strategy and transformation roles both in marketing and enterprise-wide focused embedding the 2030 Strategy for the US market.
Jim Berry is an evening news anchor for CBS News Miami. His broadcasting career began at WBTV in Charlotte, North Carolina, as a reporter. He became an anchor/reporter before moving to WJLA-TV in Washington, D.C. There, he anchored and reported news, and hosted a public affairs show before turning his attention to sports. He joined WSVN-TV in Miami as sports director and main sports anchor before being hired by CBS at WBBM-TV in Chicago as a sportscaster. Berry then moved to CBS-owned WFOR-TV in Miami as its main sports anchor and host of Miami Dolphin pregame and postgame shows. Berry is a three-time best of Miami winner with five Emmy Awards. He is a member of the Silver Circle of Excellence in the Suncoast Chapter of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences. Over the years, he has been a frequent motivational speaker and supporter of numerous charities that mentor young people.
Casey Bukro pioneered environmental reporting, becoming the nation’s first environment writer for a major newspaper when the Chicago Tribune named him to that post in 1970. Now retired, Bukro will publish a book this year on nuclear energy based on his coverage as a reporter. Bukro also writes an ethics blog about journalism that won the Society of Professional Journalists’ 2015 Sigma Delta Chi award. In 1967, Bukro and fellow Medill alumnus William Jones won the Tribune’s prestigious Edward Scott Beck Award for the groundbreaking “Save Our Lake” series on Great Lakes pollution. Bukro served as the Society of Professional Journalists’ Midwest regional director from 1974 to 1981. He wrote the society’s first code of ethics and served as its national ethics chair. Bukro is a member of the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame.
Sarah L. Kaufman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and journalist who reported on the arts, pop culture, society, science and sports for the Washington Post for more than two decades. She is the author of the award-winning nonfiction book The Art of Grace and a contributing author of Balanchine: Celebrating a Life in Dance. She has taught writing and journalism courses at Harvard Extension School, Princeton, American University and other institutions, and is a longtime faculty member of the National Critics Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. Kaufman joined the Washington Post in 1994 after working at the Buffalo News and the Arlington Heights Daily Herald. Her work has earned her many awards, including the Criticism and Culture of Ballet Lifetime Achievement Award from the XXIV International Ballet Festival of Miami, and the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism in 2010.
David Nelson is an associate professor emeritus at Medill. Since retiring from the school in 2012 after teaching for 40 years, he has continued to teach writing to adult professionals at Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies. While at Medill, he held several positions, including associate dean, director of graduate studies and chair of the promotion and tenure committee. He helped launch Medill’s Teaching Newspaper program, now known as Journalism Residency, and helped build the Chicago Medill Graduate newsroom at Illinois Center. Before turning his career to teaching, Nelson was a reporter and editor at the Miami Herald, and a writer and editor for Pioneer Press, Time and Money magazines. While in Miami, he created the template for Knight Newspapers, Inc.’s local news coverage. He is a founding member of the New York Times College Advisory Board and served as a management training consultant for the Modern Media Institute (now the Poynter Institute), as well as a senior consultant to AR&D.
CEO and Co-Founder of Tequila Casa Dragones, Bertha González Nieves is an entrepreneur with a career rooted in the luxury consumer goods space. Dedicated to the tequila industry for 25 years, González Nieves is the first certified female Maestra Tequilera by the Academia Mexicana de Catadores de Tequila. Forbes has identified her as “One of the 50 Most Powerful Women in Mexico.” She was also named one of Mexico’s top young businesswomen by Revista Expansión, Mexico’s leading business magazine; “The Most Innovative Women in Food + Drink” by Food & Wine and Fortune; and “The First Lady of Tequila” by the Los Angeles Times. The New York Times calls her “The Spirit Behind High-End Tequila.” In 2022, Revista Quien recognized her as “One of the 50 People Transforming Mexico.” Prior to co-founding Casa Dragones, González Nieves spent more than a decade in leading roles in the tequila industry as well as a consultant at Booz Allen & Hamilton working closely with leading global consumer goods companies.
Emily Ramshaw is the CEO and co-founder of The 19th*, the nation’s first independent nonprofit newsroom at the intersection of gender, politics and policy. The 19th* aims to elevate the voices of women and LGBTQ+ people — particularly those left at the margins of American media — with free-to-consume and free-to-republish daily journalism, newsletters and live events. Ramshaw started her career at The Dallas Morning News, where she broke national stories about sexual abuse inside Texas’ youth lock-ups, reported from inside a West Texas polygamist compound and uncovered “fight clubs” at state institutions for people with disabilities. Prior to The 19th*, Ramshaw was editor-in-chief of The Texas Tribune, an award-winning local news startup and the largest statehouse news operation in the nation. She is on the board of the Pulitzer Prize where she is serving a nine-year term. In 2020, Ramshaw was named to Fortune’s “40 Under 40” list.
Andrew Rowan (BSJ23), a journalism major with minors in data science and business institutions, is the 2023 Medill convocation undergraduate student speaker. Andrew was the News Director of the Northwestern News Network and also served as an executive producer, reporter and anchor. He held leadership roles at Northwestern Hillel and in the Medill Undergraduate Student Advisory Council.
Chelsea Zhao (MSJ23), a journalism masters student in the health, environment and science specialization, is the 2023 Medill convocation graduate student speaker. Zhao was a Medill Student Ambassador and a member of both the Chicago Journalists Association and Asian American Journalists Association. She was a member of the first cohort of Chicago Reader’s Racial Justice Writer’s Cohort and a freelance contributor to many publications including South Side Weekly, Cicero Independiente and Chicago Health.
