Decisions and details

Add comment April 30th, 2008

      The last few days have been all about putting dozens of pieces in place for the project launch on the Web site and in the newspaper. We’re selecting photos, creating a map and timeline, editing stories and videos and writing headlines.

By the time we’re done, more than two dozen talented journalists will have had their hands on some piece of this project launch.  It’s creative teamwork and that feels good.

Rockford has known good, bad times; now we’re going to be a part of Chicagoland

6 comments April 30th, 2008

Hi, I’m Chuck Sweeny, political editor of the Rockford Register Star, or rrstar.com if you prefer. Listen up:

Rockford adapts.

The city started as a manufacturing center in the old water power district south of downtown. There, fast-running water from a mill race channeled off the Rock River turned gears attached to leather belts that ran machines, in the days before electricity.

Rockford built — and still builds — all kinds of things out of wood, metal, plastic and fiberglass.

Because manufacturing is essentially all we’ve ever done, we’ve gone through disastrous economic situations — 1893 was awful. More than a dozen furniture factories went bust. Luckily, P.A. Peterson rescued them in a co-op arrangement.

When the Depression hit in 1929, Rockford had its own shanty towns, one near Charles and 22nd Street, which an old Swede remembered when he returned to Rockford a few years back from Stockholm to relive memories of his youth here in the 1930s. Times were so bad here back then that the man’s immigrant family had to leave the Not-So-Promised Land and returned to the Old Country. They were not the only ones.

Rockford lost 10,000 people during the 30s, but the population began growing with the onset of World War II. After that war, the economy took off like gangbusters as Rockford’s dynamic companies, most of them home-owned, provided valuable products to the auto , machine tool and aviation industries. Baby Boomers, who grew up here in those prospeous times, tend to think that Rockford was always riding on easy street.

We hit a major speed bump in the early 80s, and the population declined 9,000 in that decade. But, back we came in the 90s, as manufacturers learned to work smarter and began to realize that “export” doesn’t mean sending products to Cincinnatti.

Now, Rockford is uneasy again, and once more is trying to find its place in the world. Unlike cities such as Dayton, Flint or Peoria, we’re not dependent totally on one company. But we are still largely a manufacturing center, and we’ve taken another big hit as competition from Asia has drained jobs away from us.

What’s the next Rockford going to look like? One thing I know for sure: We’ll become more and more integrated into greater Chicagoland. Don’t fret: That’s what’s going to save Rockford from the fates of isolated small cities like those in Iowa, which are dying because they’re not part of a huge, metropolitan area.

Like it or not, people no longer live in cities and towns. The majority of Americans live in large population blobs I call “megametros.” In one series on Rockford’s challenges, which I did back in the 1990s, I referred to our region as “The Chi-Waukee Metroplex.” I don’t like that monicker anymore; it’s too Cheesehead-heavy.

But hear this warning: Unless Rockford upgrades our public schools and adds significantly to our post secondary education opportunities, our importance to Chicagoland is going to be minimal and we’ll be left to be the distribution center kings and queens.

Where children live

2 comments April 30th, 2008

As I examine the increasingly urban character of Rockford schools, Joel Cowen of the University of Illinois College of Medicine’s Health Systems Research shared some interesting facts with those of us journalists working on the 180 Degrees project.

According to Cowen in 2000: Area black children were the least likely to live in what is generally considered a traditional family. Nearly half of all black children in Winnebago County live with a single mother, 26.5 percent live with a married couple, and 12.2 percent live with a grandparent. Meanwhile, white and Hispanic children are more likely to live with a couple. More than 73 percent of white children and 60.7 percent of Hispanic children live with a married couple. 

How do you measure success?

1 comment April 30th, 2008

Once of the challenges of a project like 180 Degrees is how to decide whether the community is making progress.

There are numbers that can easily be tracked, graduation rates, unemployment, wages, etc, but do the numbers tell the real story?

For example, the stats may say the crime rate is down, but if your garage has been broken into twice in a month you probably wouldn’t care what the numbers said, you wouldn’t feel safe.

And on graduation rates, just because a kid graduates from high school doesn’t mean that kid is ready to join the work force.

So what do you think. What is the best way to measure success?