Jackie Spinner
Shaw Local
Chicago, IL, United States
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Discover and connect with journalists and influencers around the world, save time on email research, monitor the news, and more.
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Past articles by Jackie:
Associated Press democracy editor post should be newsroom model
Opinion: New democracy editor position at Associated Press should be model for all newsrooms. → Read More
The Triibe roams a Chicago overlooked by legacy media
EVERY TIME THEY SAW A STORY about Chicago, Tiffany Walden and Morgan Elise Johnson—best friends and sorority sisters from Northwestern University—were heartbroken and angry. Headlines and news coverage didn’t reflect the Chicago they knew: a city of young entrepreneurs and music stars, of people whose grief and despair deserved more than the journalistic hit-and-run that mainstream […] → Read More
Editorial pages in ‘Trump Country’ respond to demand for new columnists
WAYNE GREEN, the editorial pages editor at the Tulsa World, was in a bind. After Donald Trump won the US presidential election, carrying Oklahoma with more than 65 percent of the vote, Green wanted to give World readers a resonant selection of national conservative voices from The Washington Post’s news service and syndicate. The problem […] → Read More
How one AP veteran exposes corruption in Illinois
IN HIS 20 YEARS as an Illinois statehouse reporter, the Associated Press’ John O’Connor has exposed corruption at nearly every level of Illinois government. His reporting on lies and government waste across five administrations have been one of few constants in a statehouse press corps that, like most others, is a shell of what it was […] → Read More
Fifty years after Chicago ‘riot,’ new photos emerge—and develop a story
DAYS AFTER THE ASSASSINATION of Martin Luther King, Jr., an amateur photographer named Karega Kofi Moyo took his camera to the Lawndale neighborhood of Chicago. At the intersection of Spaulding and West Madison, Moyo photographed a young black boy standing near a group of armed National Guardsmen, their faces hidden by gas masks. In one photo, […] → Read More
With school discrimination coverage, a suburban weekly flexes its muscles
ANGELA SIMMONS spent the past year breaking stories on the schools beat for the tiny O’Fallon Weekly, named for its suburban St. Louis community on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. Her reporting on the Central 104 school district exposed teacher discrimination against African American students and retribution by the school board when parents spoke […] → Read More
A toast to undercover journalism’s greatest coup, when reporters bought a bar
THE MIRAGE TAVERN was never only what it seemed. In 1977, the Chicago Sun-Times bought a tavern in downtown Chicago and set up one of the most elaborate undercover stings in American journalism history. The bartenders were reporters and investigators. The repairman was a photographer. There was a hole in the ceiling for cameras, and bar […] → Read More
Lens of an insider: Photographer defies media portrait of Chicago neighborhood
WHEN TONIKA JOHNSON walks into the Kusanya Cafe in Englewood, it is as if she inhabits a scene from one of her photographs. Neighbors drink from coffee mugs, and there’s small talk at the metal counter. The cafe’s fogged and frosted windows restrict the view from the snow-covered sidewalk. Englewood, which consistently has been named one […] → Read More
Study: Educating news consumers about the media can curb conspiracy theory appeal
THE MORE CONSUMERS UNDERSTAND the news media and how journalists do their jobs, the less likely they are to buy into conspiracy theories—even ones that might be “politically tempting,” a new study by a trio of journalism professors has found. People who believe conspiracy theories are not “the proverbial nut job,” the study notes. Instead they […] → Read More
Q&A: Filmmaker on FBI surveillance of her neighborhood and the fight for the records that prove it
Growing up, Assia Boundaoui felt like she was being watched. She wasn’t the only one. Just about everyone she knew in her Arab-American community of Bridgeview, just south of Chicago, suspected that the US government was spying on them. Even after Boundaoui left Bridgeview in 2010—to attend New York University for her master’s degree in […] → Read More
‘I know more about errors than anyone in Western civilization’
MARGARET C. HOLT JUMPS UP from her chair in her sunny office at the Tribune Tower, a building the Chicago Architecture Foundation calls a “cathedral for journalism.” If the building is a sacred space, then Holt, as standards editor, is its bishop, enforcing the Chicago Tribune’s ethics policy and making certain that mistakes get corrected. At […] → Read More
A local paper’s dogged search for details about Alexandria shooter
Reporter Joseph Bustos ran into the Belleville News-Democrat newsroom yesterday, nearly plowing into the sports editor. He had been home watching news coverage of the Virginia shooting at a congressional baseball practice when he heard a report that the alleged gunman was from Belleville. He was getting dressed and brushing his teeth when his editor […] → Read More
What a hyperlocal investigative powerhouse looks like
SINCE JEFF EGBERT STARTED PUBLISHING the Pinckneyville Press eight years ago, the southern Illinois weekly has exposed a police coverup involving a mayor’s son, discovered high school teachers hauling off air conditioners and desks that were intended for public auction, and caught an employee from the county assessor’s office stealing gas and hiding the cans behind […] → Read More
Chicago’s ‘one owner, two newspapers’ dilemma
WHEN THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES reported on plans for its acquisition by the Chicago Tribune’s parent company, Tronc, media observers may have been tempted to throw back a cold one and prepare for the inevitable wake. Under preliminary terms of the deal, Tronc would purchase the Sun-Times and the alternative weekly Chicago Reader from Wrapports LLC. Tronc […] → Read More
‘Another day, another shooting’: Photographing Chicago’s violence
FOR FOUR YEARS, WHILE COMMUNITIES on the south and west sides of Chicago fought an ongoing war against street violence—while people wailed and stumbled and somehow mothers and brothers and kindergarten teachers kept going—Jason Wambsgans captured the blood washed in orange light, the broken bodies, the grief. This year, Wambsgans, a 44-year-old Detroit native, won the […] → Read More
Watchdog reporting in East St. Louis highlights potential in under-covered areas
THE STORY STARTED WITH A TIP from a trusted source in a community that doesn’t much trust reporters. The top elected officials in impoverished East St. Louis Township in southwestern Illinois were “covering up trips to Las Vegas,” the source told George Pawlaczyk, an investigative reporter at the Belleville News-Democrat. In a series that earned Pawlaczyk […] → Read More
Chicago reporters on covering the city’s violence during the Trump era
DRESSED IN A CUBS JACKET, his hair slightly damp from the rain, Jeff Mayes rushed into a third-floor reading room at the Columbia College Chicago Library last week. Mayes, who runs the breaking news desk at the Chicago Sun-Times and is the paper’s Homicide Watch editor, was one of four participants in “Covering Trump’s Vision […] → Read More
Cleveland.com resets its politics coverage with ‘Ohio Matters’
A FEW WEEKS AFTER DONALD TRUMP’S decisive victory in Ohio, Chris Quinn—the president and editor of Advance Ohio, which publishes Cleveland.com—recounted his politics team’s “miscalculation” on the news site. “I made the call early to focus on Cuyahoga County, where the size of the Democratic margin of victory decided the previous elections,” wrote Quinn. As a […] → Read More
How the Indy Star navigated a public records minefield to break its Pence email story
THE REVELATION THAT VICE PRESIDENT Mike Pence used a private AOL.com email address to conduct state business during his tenure as the governor of Indiana prompted swift condemnations and a rush of coverage that touched on everything from information security to public records accessibility to partisan hypocrisy. By Saturday, even the “Weekend Update” anchors at “Saturday […] → Read More
Q&A: Louise Kiernan says ProPublica Illinois will ‘find areas where we can have impact’
LOUISE KIERNAN, A PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING veteran journalist and associate professor at Northwestern University’s Medill journalism school, will be the first editor-in-chief of ProPublica Illinois. Kiernan, who starts her new position on April 4, spent 18 years as a reporter and editor at the Chicago Tribune, a tenure that included a decade as a special projects reporter. […] → Read More