Posted by Bud on May 09, 2010 at 14:47:14:
Courtesy of Phil Rosenthal at the Chicago Tribune:
"Jim Kirk, who left the Chicago Tribune 17 months ago to oversee Bloomberg News' Washington bureau coverage of the White House and Congress, is heading home to become managing editor of the nonprofit Chicago News Cooperative.
A former Tribune columnist and associate managing editor for business, Kirk is just the latest Trib alumnus to join the CNC, which launched last fall as something of an experiment in how to fund and produce local journalism.
(Update on Tuesday afternoon: Bloomberg has snagged Tribune Washington bureau stalwart Mark Silva to replace Kirk. Silva begins his new job May 17.)
"We're at a stage in the industry where everybody is looking for a new model," Kirk, who expects to be available to the CNC by the end of the week, said Monday. "I don't think (this) is what some people have painted, as one media outlet against another at this point. I think the whole city benefits if this model is successful, and certainly readers benefit."
The CNC supplies content semi-weekly for Chicago editions of the New York Times and for public television's WTTW-Ch. 11, under whose nonprofit status the CNC currently operates, as well as its own chicagonewscoop.org site.
"I always thought I really needed a strong newsman in that job and he's one of the strongest I know, so I always was hoping he would come and join us," said Jim O'Shea, the CNC's editor and co-founder.
"No one works harder or smarter than Jim Kirk," said David Greising, the CNC's general manager.
Kirk will oversee the CNC's editorial efforts, while Greising, who was a Tribune business columnist under Kirk, manages the organization's business operations and partnerships as general manager. O'Shea, former Tribune managing editor and Los Angeles Times editor, believes this should free him to work toward securing additional funding.
"But given the size of this thing, we're all journalists," O'Shea said.
The CNC seeks to shift from operating under the nonprofit status of WTTW's parent and strike out on its own by the end of the year. "We can't be a project of WTTW all our life," O'Shea said.
Part of that effort included last month's appointment of Chicago civic leader John Canning its chairman. Canning, founder and chairman of the Chicago private-equity group Madison Dearborn Partners, is also chairman the Chicago Community Trust and Field Museum.
A planned transition to a low-profit limited-liability company, or L3C -- a move that theoretically would enable it to straddle between nonprofit and for-profit status but still solicit donations -- has been put on hold. The CNC, O'Shea said last month, needs clarification from the Internal Revenue Service as to how a L3C news organization would be viewed.
Part of the CNC's game plan is to use its Web site to help sustain it. But a requisite upgrade of the site has been pushed to the fall. O'Shea said necessary software being developed by the Texas Tribune, another emerging nonprofit news organization, won't be available until July.
"By September or a little after, we'll see a more visible part of the CNC on a local level," Kirk said. "Hopefully, it will become more apparent to all of us about where the CNC plays in Chicago."
Of his time with Bloomberg, Kirk said: "It was great to be part of a media organization that is full-throttle growing at this point. And being in the middle of that story in Washington at that time was incredible."
But his family was unable to join him in Washington, which meant flying home on weekends, which began to wear on him, his wife and kids over time.
Kirk grew up in south suburban Dolton and is a graduate of Illinois State University. He joined the Tribune in June 1997 as a marketing and advertising writer. He served as a columnist and business editor before his appointment to the business section's top job in February 2005. Previously, Kirk had been a columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times and Midwest managing editor for Adweek magazine.
"For me, it's great to be on the ground floor of something," Kirk said of joining the CNC. "It's a risk for sure, but it's a risk worth taking, especially in Chicago. I think you have a sophisticated enough audience here that wants a lot of news.""