A few years ago, Denver's FOX affiliate had the brilliant idea to give commentary of their St. Patrick's Day coverage over to a reveler. And when we say "brilliant" we're not being snarky. The result was classic and makes us wonder why our local television news outlets don't do the same. more ›

The Chicago Community Trust, a foundation that funds programs to benefit Chicago, announced today that it will award 12 local news organizations with $500,000. The awards are part of a new program by the trust, Community News Matters, designed to support the sources of Chicago news and information. more ›

Between Amy Jacobsen and Mark Suppelsa, we've been thinking a lot about local news today. Mostly, why is there so much alliteration? more ›

Our biggest local news crush Mark Suppelsa will be back on the air starting in a few weeks. The plan from June has indeed come to fruition: Suppelsa will anchor the 9pm news on WGN alongside Allison Payne. Come September, station veteran Steve Sanders will move from the 9 o'clock spot to a newly-formed 11:30am–1pm newscast, and Suppelsa and Payne will anchor a new 5:30pm cast. That brings WGN's local news programming to a grand total to 37 hours per week. more ›

Silver fox Mark Suppelsa is going to be back on TV, according to Robert Feder. Within the next few weeks, WGN-9 is expected to make Suppelsa an offer. The 'Pels left WFLD in March and is currently waiting out the period on his contract that would allow WFLD to match any other offer he gets. Feder says the official WGN announcement should come later next week. more ›

We guess this is what happens when you live in the suburbs. Oak Lawn has recently had a rash of theft. The object, manhole covers. There's been eight stolen since mid March, but authorities think it's more than just a prank. more ›

More local news mayhem. CBS 2 on-air employees Mary Ann Childers, Katie McCall and Rafael Romo were among the 18 people whose positions were eliminated today at the station. more ›

Red Bull. Love it or hate it, the energy drink knows how to make its mark. In fact, Red Bull just announced this year's flugtag (flying day) events and they're coming back to Chicago! This time at the North Avenue Beach. more ›

Mark Suppelsa, don't leave us! Suppelsa, our favorite silver fox news anchor, announced today that he's leaving WFLD. more ›

The clock is ticking for Diann Burns, one of Chicago's top-paid news anchors. WBBM announced yesterday that starting April 21, six months before her $2 million contract is up, they're replacing Burns for the 5pm weekday news with California anchor Anne State. Burns will continue to coanchor the 6pm and 10pm newscasts with Rob Johnson, and State will report for the 10pm broadcast as well. more ›

Send good thoughts Roger Ebert's way tomorrow. He's having surgery again. [S-T] more ›

• SFist saw Christmas Day turn tragic after a Siberian tiger escaped from her pen at the San Francisco Zoo, killing a visitor and mauling two others.
• Phillyist counted down the top ten items on Philadelphia's New Year's wish list.
• Gothamist looked at the wooden bikes being offered for NYC's first bike share program on Governors Island.

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Breaking news: An Amtrak train and a freight train collided at 48th and South Shields Ave about an hour ago, and passengers are being pulled out as we write this. Developing. UPDATE 12:27: Don Rashid from Stroger Hospital is on NBC5 saying that Stroger is in a "stage 3 disaster." The footage is showing color-coded triage areas, and so far the green zone is empty. 12:30 Witnesses are describing a sound "like an explosion" when... more ›

A little while ago, we told you about Granny Ball, a basketball league for cougars. Well, attention ladies over 50: There's another round of tryouts tomorrow for the newly formed Granny All-Star League. More than 250 people submitted adoption applications for the 41 horses that survived that truck crash. Wonder where we can see a bunch of local news promos....oh. Right here. Donda West's doctor confirms that she had plastic surgery but denies any... more ›

Did you get an e-mail from the CTA a little while ago? Some customers did with a severe weather warning. Dear CTA Customer, This email is to alert you that there is currently severe weather, including heavy rain and high winds, forecasted to reach Chicago during the afternoon and evening rush-hour period today, October 18. It is possible that this severe weather could impact CTA bus and train service. Please take this into account... more ›

The City's already poured $2 million into a park in Bronzeville, but now Alderman Pat Dowell and Mayor Daley want to sell the property. Ex-alderman Dorothy Tillman is not pleased. Chicago's lone Wal-Mart paid more than $5 million in state and local taxes during its first year, including $1.3 million to the City and $400,000 to Cook County. That means the store brought in between $55 and $60 million for the year, which is... more ›

CBS2 busts out a local news classic: bogus parking tickets. Take it away, Pam Zekman! more ›

We at the Gothamist network would like to express our heartfelt wishes to the people of Minnesota in the days after their tragic bridge collapse. We're not trying to discount the severity of the accident by making note of it in opposition to our usual -Ist lightheartedness - we just wanted to take a moment and recognize those affected last week. After the Minneapolis bridge collapse, Bostonist did a little research and found that Massachusetts... more ›

Yes, we know, we too may scratch our eyes out if we hear one more thing about the damn cicadas. But, we're here to inform, so here we go. As we (and everyone else) have mentioned before: The cicadas are coming! But, not as predicted. The original predicted date for the cicada Billion Bug Breakout was May 22, and if you have a calendar, you know that this day has come and gone (with... more ›

Normally Chicagoist doesn’t watch the local news. We prefer to read our news on paper or online. We find that local news is too garish, too tainted, too … unhealthy; we just stopped watching altogether. But we were curious to see Fox’s new news show “The Ten.” We got a press release about it that stated that it was a “fast-paced, concise format designed for today’s news viewer.” We’re not even sure what that means,... more ›

One thing we've learned in our time as a font of synopsis, synthesis and snark of local news and events, is that when Da Mare gets in the press, it's all at once. And yesterday was no exception. After being gone for two weeks, Daley had a little bit to say about the Cline resignation, the recent settlement of patronage hiring, and the indictment of Al "Dirty" Sanchez. Daley indicated that after "the mistakes of... more ›

Over these months we've been bringing you articles on the weekend here at Chicagoist we have become quite adept at perusing the internets for news, events, and numerous other noteworthy happenings in the area. Every day, no, every hour, in this city has something significant in it. We've been noticing lately that our friends, the blind ones that don't read Chicagoist, are pretty unaware of a lot of the things going on the city. As we were searching this morning, we stumbled upon what may be one reason why. The "local news" sections of the widely read publication and news pages are dwelling on news that is sensational at best. We aren't saying there aren't great articles too, they are just hidden. A lot of the stories we cover are read in the paper first, then it takes some keyword searches to find it on the site. Murders still deserve articles, we just believe the city has so much going as far as arts, culture, music, etc. and these items are just as important. more ›

You know what Chicago needs? More news programs. We just can’t get enough of morning news, along with news at 4, 4:30, 5, 5:30, 6, 9 and 10 p.m. And that’s just the networks. You cable and satellite-lovers must be in headline heaven! more ›

Seriously. Look it up. What Rosie Costello did to her kids falls under the first definition. She asked them to fake mental retardation (now having the preferred term developmentally disabled — DD for short) so that she could collect Social Security benefits on their behalf. Wow. She coached her kids starting with her daughter at age 4, and later taught her son. He pretended to be mentally retarded into his mid-20s, "picking at his face, slouching and appearing uncommunicative in meetings with Social Security officials." more ›

-->Today is the day that we have all been waiting for. If you haven't taken advantage of Early Voting (and if you live in the 25th Ward, that might be a good thing), your ass needs to get up this morning, or leave work early, to go and vote. If you aren't sure where your polling place is (and with voting broken down by precinct it can be difficult to be sure), you can... more ›

This week, for the first time since we started this smarmy little feature, Chicagoist came up empty-handed looking for random acts of stupidity. Maybe you were well-behaved this week, Chicago, or maybe our stupid sensors have just been worn down by the relentless onslaught of Britney Spears "news," but Chicagoist wants to try a new approach. We want you, our readers, to help us spot stupid stories each week and submit them to us. We'll still scour the local rags for forehead-slapping acts of idiocy on our own, but we'd like to tap the hive mind for its ideas too. more ›

We tend to keep the 10 p.m. local news on for background noise as we work on perfecting our next blogging masterpiece. Night after night, the stories tend to be about the same – a few robberies, some new business merger, speculation about the Bears future, and a health piece about how some food that will really make us fat may also help us fend of diseases. But on Tuesday night, our ears perked up... more ›

This morning, Chicagoist hopped on the bus to Navy Pier to listen to a presentation by Chicago Public Radio (CPR) explaining the rationale for their new 2007 schedule. Torey Malatia, the president and general manager of the station, explained the purpose of restructuring the schedule and doing away with the music formats. Malatia described how CPR was simultaneously a local, regional, national, and global broadcaster. In order to remain relevant with local and regional... more ›

Many local news outlets are finding ways to consolidate the news, and it appears that the Daily Herald is not going to be left behind. The suburban newspaper has formed "an allegiance" (that's one tick below a fellowship) with the local ABC/Disney-owned television station, ABC7. more ›