180 Degrees
Want an inside look at a yearlong project by journalists at the newspaper and the Web site to help Rockford solve serious problems and turn around? We’re focusing on five areas that are key to our way of life in the Rock River Valley: Crime, education, the local economy, state and local government and our culture/sense of place. Would you like to help us in this campaign to bring about change? Give us your ideas and insights and help guide us to better solutions for Rockford. You can join the conversation here.

Archive for May 29th, 2008

We’ll miss Judy

Add comment May 29th, 2008

Judy Emerson is leaving the Register Star after 22 years.

Judy is one of six newsroom employees who applied and were accepted for a buyout. She has been an award-winning writer, a wonderful writing coach and a joy to work with. All of us here at the News Tower will miss her. I tell her daily that she can still change her mind, but she insists she won’t. Her last day will be June 5.

The reason I post this on this blog is because Judy is the reason that we started the 180 degrees project. It all started at an Editorial Board meeting where she, Lind Grist Cunningham and I were the only members who could attend.

Judy talked about an opportunity to interview Karl Fort, who was the leader of the Black Gangster Disciples in the early 1990s and who is blamed for bringing crack cocaine to Rockford.

The three of us then talked somewhat nostalgically about how Rockford used to be before the drug trade corrupted everything. That was the seed that began 180 degrees, the next installment of which probably will be ready for publication online next week and in print June 8.

The project will continue — it continues to grow as reporters find out more — despite the fact that we’ll have to do it without Judy.

It will be much more difficult without her.