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Illinois Issues
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Editor's Notebook: A milestone offers the chance to take stock

Peggy Boyer Long
WUIS/Illinois Issues

This June edition of the magazine represents a milestone for me. Seventy-five in just under seven. That's the number of issues I've edited from start to finish since I came on staff in the summer of '94. It's an arbitrary marker for sure, and a personal one. But as we approach the end of another publication year, this milestone affords as good a time as any to take stock.

It goes without saying - but I'll say it anyway - that in the 26 1/2 years since the first edition rolled off the presses, Illinois Issues has built a solid reputation for credibility, a credibility that rests, necessarily, on independence. The pages of this magazine are not subject to pressure from any one party, any one official, any one institution. Our readers can trust that what they read here is the truth, as best we know it, that the magazine is fair, and that, over the long haul, it offers a balanced and comprehensive picture of public affairs in Illinois.

For these reasons, I was proud to become the third editor of this magazine. But each editor is responsible for setting the best course, as she sees it, for any publication she leads. And when I came to this magazine I had four goals.

- To be timely. A public affairs news magazine, even a monthly one, should give its readers information that is as up-to-the-minute as possible. On this, I have advantages my predecessors didn't. In the past few years, technology has advanced to the point that we can zip an edition, or last-minute substitute pages, to the printer electronically in an instant. The pages containing legislative news in this issue, for example, were sent separately, days after the rest of the magazine and hours after the end of the legislative session.

Why should our readers have to wait until July to read in this magazine about a legislative session that ended in May? They shouldn't.

Along the way, we recast some sections of the magazine, and the way we use them, to enable us to provide this kind of "breaking" news. The Briefly and People sections, and sometimes our columns, give us the flexibility to fold in the latest information, or even tear up what we've written and start over.

Of course, none of this would matter without a staff that sees its role in this light. In that, I've been fortunate, too.

- To encourage more voices. A magazine necessarily reflects the sensibilities and standards of its editor. Otherwise, it appears to lack focus or direction. But on this point an editor walks a fine line. A magazine shouldn't seem to be written by one person from beginning to end, either. That would kill reader interest. Besides, there are simply too many good writers out there. The idea is to blend a multiplicity of styles into one purpose. To accomplish that, we want to move easily from reported pieces to essays and back, to open our pages to different approaches, different views.

Why should our readers, a sophisticated lot, feel as though they are eating nothing but vegetables when they consume important information in this magazine? They shouldn't.

- To be expansive. Public affairs, even politics in its purest form, is about an endless range of subjects: the arts, the environment - two topics that now have their own annual issues - science, technology, business. When we were preparing a story about the Chicago grain markets, someone asked what that had to do with politics. But, of course, an economic engine of that magnitude is political by its very nature. Bioethics is a policy conundrum, and therefore ultimately political. What will happen to our air and water, to our poets and painters? These are political questions.

Why should our readers learn only about those things that happen under the Statehouse dome? They shouldn't.

- To be inclusive. Illinois is a vast and diverse state. It comprises many races, many cultures and encompasses many kinds of places. A magazine with a statewide focus should reflect that. In this issue we write, for instance, of Arabs in the southwest suburbs and of economic redevelopment in Joliet. We write of farmland in Kane County and urban zoning in Chicago.

Why should our readers draw from our pages a narrow and oversimplified picture of a wonderfully complex state? They shouldn't.

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