Gazette begins its 25th year as publisher recalls paper’s accomplishments
By Mark J.
Valentino
Editor and Publisher
There are some things in life that you think might happen, hope might happen, but doubt that you will ever see them take shape. The younger you are when you place such dreams in your heart, the further off in the distance they seem to be. In many instances life itself gets in the way, and your dreams wind up being pushed to the side while you tend to day-to-day things such as getting an education, earning a living, raising a family, caring for elderly parents, and so on.
When I was 24 years old, I had a dream. With a mixture of God’s grace; youthful confidence (or naivete); a burning passion for the people and places of my childhood; the support of family, friends, and colleagues; and a confidence that I could use the power of the written word to combat the injustices I saw all around me; I launched my dream on Friday, May 5, 1983.
It was on that day that the Near West Gazette hit the streets for the first time. The Gazette of yesteryear looked much different than the newspaper that you enjoy today. Aside from the name change (more on that later), it was merely four pages in length and was in the shape of a newsletter. All the text and photos were in black-and-white. The front page lead story, written by reporter Ray Klimko, was “Protests meet Academy Square.” The second page-one story told of how the “Near West Gazette begins with sense of purpose.” The first issue also had an editorial supporting the Academy Square protest, a Mother’s Day greeting, a kick-off of our Sports section with reporter Joe Napolitano, and our “Around the Neighborhood” calendar of events.
William S. Bike, Dismas G. Fernandez, and Barbara Januszewski served as the paper’s associate editors. Bill and Barb were colleagues from DePaul University where we served on the student newspaper, The DePaulia, and Dismas had life-long roots in the Near West Side community and helped publish the West Side Gazette newsletter out of the Midtown Center on South Loomis Street during the mid-1960s and 1970s. Anne Nordhaus-Bike, who would serve for 20 years as our Fine Arts editor and now is our "Living in Harmony" columnist, was on board for the first issue as well.
While students at Notre Dame de Chicago Academy and St. Ignatius College Prep, my twin brother Michael and I attended Midtown Center’s annual summer programs and during the school year received tutoring from the staff. I remember contacting the fine gentlemen at Midtown Center—Joe Major, Lawrence Kaufman, and Peter Dunbar—and sharing with them my plans for a community newspaper. I asked if I could use the name Gazette as a linkage to the past and their efforts to keep the neighborhood informed. They said that they were honored. Little did they know how honored I was to pick up where they left off and how much their blessings and good wishes inspired me.
Both Barb and Dismas have moved on from the Gazette. Dismas has found other ways to give back to the community as a deacon at St. Maurice Church on the outer edges of the Gazette’s coverage area where Bridgeport meets Brighton Park. In one of those "small world” coincidences, St. Maurice is one of the paper’s distribution sites.
The one constant in the Gazette’s leadership team has been Bill Bike. Bill has been with me every step of the way and I am proud to say that his journalistic skills, political acumen, and down-to-earth focus have helped make the Gazette the quality publication that it is today. Besides Bill’s dedication to the newspaper I could not have asked for a better friend. In all the years of publishing, through the thousands of discussions and decisions that have had to be made, even through our disagreements (newspaper editors do have their share of those), I cannot recall a time when Bill or I raised our voices at one another or got angry at each other. It has been said by those who know us both well that Bill brings a sense of pragmatism to the table while I bring the passion and humanitarianism. I guess after all these years this mixture of talents and personalities have served us and the Gazette well.
We printed 500 copies of that first issue and delivered them to ten different locations along Taylor Street from Morgan Street west to Ashland Avenue. No sooner had we put the papers on the street than “they flew off the shelf” according to the late Eraldo Rinaldi of Chiarugi Hardware. Fontano’s Subs, Luke’s Corner, Pompei Bakery, Joe’s Cleaners, The Godflower, and Holy Family, Notre Dame, and Our Lady of Pompeii churches were among our drop-off sites.
There were four ads in the inaugural issue of the Gazette. Life-long friend James “Jimmy” Martinez was in the insurance business at the time with A.L. Williams Inc.; Mr. Anthony Bartucci—Freddie’s dad--placed an ad for his company, Lou’s Delivery Service; Mickey Carioscia put in an ad for his produce store at Taylor and Loomis Streets; and Anthony DeVito and his family advertised for J. Falbo Cheese Store at 1335 W. Taylor St.
Jimmy and I remain close friends and have held one another up through the tragic losses of three childhood friends—Bobby Marcum, Donnie Piemonte, and Mark Whittinghill. I still see Freddie Bartucci from time to time at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) campus where he and his mom, Mary, worked for many years. Carioscia Produce is long gone and I haven’t seen Mickey in some time but I know that he still has roots in the old neighborhood. As for J. Falbo Cheese, the store closed several years ago and I bid a tearful farewell to Anthony DeVito, one of my most cherished friends, who succumbed to cancer on Christmas Eve of this past year at age 47.
Whenever I flip through the bound volumes of the Gazette I remember these early advertisers and those who followed, and I remain eternally grateful--particularly to my wife, Carmen, who now is our advertising manager.
One other footnote to that inaugural issue of the Near West Gazette is that in the months leading up to the official launch of the newspaper, I didn’t realize it at the time but my mother, Della, was in the final stage of her year-long battle with breast cancer. In a lighthearted moment between us, I recall coming home from work at lunch one day and overhearing my mother answer the phone. She simply said, “hello.” Afterwards, I had to gently remind her that during the hours of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. she had to answer the telephone this way, “Near West Gazette, may I help you?” I had started the paper on such a “wing and a prayer” that I was using my home telephone as the Gazette’s business phone and my home address as the paper’s office address. My mom and I shared a hearty laugh and I remember her saying that she hoped I’d make enough money in the future to get a phone line just for the Gazette. She added that she wouldn’t mind answering the phone for me all day long.
My mom was a patient at Rush Medical Center the day the paper came out and I hurried to her room with the issue after finishing the circulation route. She was so proud of what I had accomplished that tears came to her eyes. I told her how much I loved her and that if it weren’t for the sacrifices she and my father, Ralph, had made, there was no way I could see my dream become a reality. I assured her that there would be many more issues of the Gazette for her to enjoy and she smiled and said that she knew that. I often wonder to this day if she knew in her heart that would be the lone issue she would see. Mom died just two weeks later on May 18. In the second issue of the paper, on June 2, 1983, the Gazette ran its first obituary. My brother, Michael told the story of how “A family bids farewell to a special woman.”
Building bridges in the community
In that first issue, in the article on “sense of purpose,” I was quoted as saying. “We are making a commitment to work with the people in the community. We want to build bridges and narrow the communication gaps that now exist.”
Over the past twenty-five years, I am proud to say that members of the Gazette staff have won 44 local, state, national, and international awards for journalistic excellence. I am extremely proud of each and every staff member for their achievements and I know that with each award came the impact of “making a difference” in the lives of the people we serve: our readers and advertisers.
The award that I am most proud of receiving, however, is the Bernadine C. Washington Media Award from the City of Chicago Commission of Human Relations. I will never forget that January day in 1997 at the Palmer House Hilton, when Mayor Richard M. Daley and Commissioner Clarence Woods invited me to the podium in front of more than 700 guests to honor the Gazette for “building bridges in the diverse communities within its coverage area.”
Building bridges.
That’s what it has been about for the Gazette all these years.
From our humble beginnings in May 1983 when we launched the Near West Gazette to our expansion over the years into some of Chicago’s most vibrant and diverse neighborhoods, it has always been about bringing people together and providing them with a voice. A voice for them to be heard. To tell their stories. To help them better themselves and their children and their children’s children. To right injustices and to keep injustices from occurring.
Not long after our launch, the Gazette expanded into the Tri-Taylor community where the Illinois Medical Center ended at Ogden Avenue and there existed an enclave of homes where Italian-Americans and Hispanics had long lived. For 14 years, my family also called Tri-Taylor home. As the West Loop community began to take shape in the late 1980s the Near West Gazette was there to help build a bridge between the Near West Side and Tri-Taylor communities with their new neighbors to the north. We weren’t about to let a concrete barrier known as the Eisenhower Expressway get in our way.
In 1991, community and political leaders asked the Near West Gazette to cover a fledging community known by several names: Printers Row, Dearborn Park, and the South Loop. We were honored to serve and changed our name to Near West/South Gazette to reflect our expansion to the south.
In the years that followed, the newspaper grew in size and circulation. More importantly, it gained an even greater amount of respect among its neighbors and civic, community, and political leaders for being a source of fairness and integrity and for striving to tell all sides of the story—in spite of those who wished we never existed.
I also am proud to say that the Gazette began as an independent newspaper and these many years later it remains one of the few left standing in Illinois. The Gazette editorial team answers to no one but ourselves—there are no board members to tell us what to write or how to write it or that expanding into a particular neighborhood doesn’t make good economic sense. We have never been in it for the money and don’t ever have to worry about dividends or making stockholders happy.
With the respect and appreciation we have received also comes a sense of responsibility to serve others who lacked a voice, and so we found ourselves in places like the far reaches of the Near West Side, later to be called West Haven, and the Maxwell Street area that would eventually lose its sense of place and history but would later be transformed into University Village/UIC South Campus. At the dawn of the 21st Century, the Near West/South Gazette expanded into Bridgeport/Armour Square, Bronzeville, and West Town to once again offer a voice for those who needed one. We also became the English-speaking newspaper for Chinatown at the request of the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce—to—you guessed it—build a bridge with the Asian-American community and its neighbors to the east, west, north, and south.
Much more to follow
There is so much more to reflect on and there are so many more stories to tell as the Gazette begins its 25th year. We will do just that in the issues to follow.
We will retrace our steps and speak to the leaders in our communities as well as some of our neighbors whose lives we have touched. You’ll hear more about the dedicated staff who have played such an important role in the growth of the Gazette over the years and of the advertisers who have supported us so faithfully and have allowed us to bring you all sides of an issue.
So, please join with us as we celebrate the past and look forward to the future.
I also invite you to drop me a line or call and let me know what you think as the Gazette reaches such a historic milestone. My email address is mark@nearwestgazette.com and my telephone number is (312) 243-4288, ext. 3. My mom won’t be answering the phone but she remains with me, deep within my heart, and forever a part of my dreams, each and every day.
Finally, let me say, from the bottom of my heart, thank you, to each and every one of you: to our readers; advertisers; reporters, photographers, designers, and distribution staff; to the people in the neighborhoods that we rely on for stories and support; and to my family and friends.
Thanks for allowing me to serve you for all these years. It has been an honor and a joy.
Thank you for making my dream come true.
