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| Photo by Karie Angell Luc |
I've known Karie Angell Luc for many years, and always admire her work ethic, her photographs and her positive disposition. So I was shocked, a few weeks ago, when she told me she had abandoned journalism because she felt threatened while doing her job. That is not the town I thought we live in, and I am not willing to let it become like that. I told her she could not give up, she is not alone, should not stop doing what she loves, and that her fellow journalists have her back. I offered to write a column about her situation, but she preferred to do that herself and run it here, and I am glad that I can share it with you. If anyone in Northbrook feels Karie is someone who can be pushed around, they are sorely mistaken. With the holidays here, I wish to be kind. As 2024 winds down, I am reevaluating who I am.
I am thankful for my opportunities and hope to uplift others.
I joke I have two personalities. One who smiles to be patient with patients. As a proud qualified immunizer, I can give a good shot in the arm. I care about patients and their privacy.
Then there is this other me who needed a shot in the arm. I believe the truth is the truth and that’s that. This other side of me wears this silly but sensible vest (like a mom purse). I carry no pen and newsgather on the latest iPhone.
Sports announcers do color commentary and play by play. I do pray by pray. I make things up as I go on faith.
So, as this one-mom-bander or solopreneur who loves local journalism, I must say the truth.
I feel unsafe.
And guess where I feel the most unsafe?
Here in my own leafy suburban paradise of Northbrook.
Now that really ruffles my second good sport personality. At home, I have Etsy handmade plushies to snuggle with on my couch while I squeeze in precious moments watching Svengoolie or the Hallmark Channel (when allowed by football fans) while laptop editing photos after assignments.
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| Karie Angell Luc |
For a self-employed reinventor lacking time for chores, I’ve seen household dust bunnies and danger. I was at George Floyd protests with no COVID-19 vaccine. I had no one at my back but a frontal PPE mask.
My husband stopped me from driving to Kenosha, Wisconsin to cover that protest where I might have met that vigilante rifle toting dude.
I did interview Bobby Crimo in person in 2020 at a downtown Northbrook corner protest. Like most cell phone recorded interviews, folks get erased as did Crimo, who backpedaled on providing a name. Then this same kid smiled at me in a photo I made published again on July 5, 2022. That Highland Park parade shooting suspect has that telltale facial tattoo.
Crimo could have had a gun that day. The parent in me wishes I could rewind time to offer mom sense. Crimo was dressed as Where’s Waldo. I cringe seeing that Halloween costume. People were killed and injured.
Aftershock. I still picked something close to that intersection, covering Northbrook Village Hall where I could walk to, if needed, having one family car. I was welcomed heartily. But evolution caused coverage to become controversial with Freedom of Information requests (FOIA), asks like that.
Sure, I can take it when during a public meeting, I’m called out in a packed room. But the second time I’m called out, I stand up and make photos as visual journalists do.
Maybe this ain’t worth it with the hours invested. But who’s gonna regularly show up in person, take photos and snapshots, text snippets, fact check not easy legalese and replay audio on village videos to ensure people are quoted correctly? We have these journalism labs and accelerators saving local news. Do I exist?
I have news for them, good local journalism is fading like newspaper printed ink. Add in tax escrows for freelance risk. Don’t even bring up artificial intelligence.
What happened last summer was the final straw. I received social media backlash for a story I broke about a proposed tax. People who won’t invest in local journalism past a paywall accused me of publishing misleading facts. I almost didn’t cover a veterans event amid the backfire. I feared their special occasion would get ruined if angry folks working doors away confronted me. I then photographed Northbrook veterans outside for a later assignment and was heckled by a business owner in front of them.
I will not let veterans down. Do the work. Do what you know.
My mind decided to fire Northbrook. Heck, Village Hall threatened to fire me in a past life. I skipped covering one community event to avoid naysayers. Then came a request to cover a Northbrook Park District/village event because no one else could do it. It should be safe, right?
When I covered a Northbrook protest after the Oct. 7, 2023 story regarding Israel, Northbrook Police Chief Christopher Kennedy kept me safe. Kennedy has always been gracious to me but is now abruptly gone.
So I covered this village/park district op, minding my own business as I mined, and a sanctioned vendor who is 6 foot 2 overshadowed me as I made photos in front of the stage. Imagine a yelling vendor invading your physical space. No filed complaint but Northbrook Police spoke to this person.
Northbrook Park District Executive Director Chris Leiner said via email on Nov. 21, “When you reported an alleged physical incident…I promptly involved the Northbrook Police.
“The business owner provided a different account of the events,” and the district, “has not made any modifications to its relationship” with them, Leiner said.
So I guess it’s a wildcard then to keep using a vendor who may purposefully vacate their post at public bookings.
Being freelance is lonely. I was thrilled to run into Neil Steinberg. With Neil’s shot in the arm, I got back up on the horse after I fell. I returned to Village Hall. Neil stood up for me by showing up to sit down next to me at a Nov. 12 meeting. I had been in that boardroom once since Aug. 27 to vote early.
To amazing editors, thank you. To local journalists, please try your best with limited resources. If it gets too tiresome but more crosses the public safety line amid unsustainable economics to pay leafy and lofty hometown bills, find a reasonable gig or reinvent.
It’s a shame local entities cannot be held accountable by consistent watchdog journalism. It’s shameful when people think they’re too big to apologize when they have the chance. I was just doing my job in a public setting where what was said and published was spoken openly in a public space.
In the 1980s, my former news director, the late great Glen Moberg, said we did great news on a shoestring.
Shoes with shoestrings. I can’t trip in my fuzzy black slippers, sandals or winter boots, using taxed second-use Northbrook plastic bags tucked between dry cozy socks worn on slushy assignments.
I am 62. My comfort zone can be no danger zone. With those grounded low camera angles that make it harder to get back up, I won’t drag anyone down with my shadow. But I will stand up for what’s right.
A sad commentary on what the 47 environment has given us...
ReplyDeleteIt's not a sudden corruption. It's been going on since time began. It's just more blatant and accepted. Even applauded. Public officials are so rarely held responsible for their lack of ethics, racketeering, skullduggery that they know there are no real consequences. Their laws are written to guarantee this.
Deleteim not surprised that working as a journalist is dangerous. 129 of your comrades were killed in 2023. I hope you will be able to continue with your work as it is clearly important and you seem to get satisfaction from it.
ReplyDeleteHeroic
ReplyDeleteThis is such an important perspective on a critical symptom of the state of our society. We are so polarized and riled up and angry. At everything and everyone. Things that used to be boring, like school board meetings or town hall hearings are now like bone dry undergrowth in a forest, waiting for a spark. And local journalists are right in it. I don't blame you at all for deciding to step away.
ReplyDeleteThis brought to mind the movie Civil War (not the Ken Burns documentary, but the recent Alex Garland science fiction movie), which I highly recommend. In times of societal collapse journalism is a combat profession and requires unreasonable amounts of recklessness.
We all have your back.
ReplyDeleteDo we? How? Thoughts and prayers?
DeleteMy ex does this work in a small town in NM same kinda shit. Belligerent assholes acting threatening about water. An officer is present at all the meetings now
I was a local / community journalist who covered his share of government meetings and while I never had any specific threats directed at me there were several times when a local gadfly would be going off during a meeting and I would look toward the exit door and consider my options just in case. I left the industry 6 years ago but I can't imagine the environment now.
ReplyDelete❤️
DeleteThings may have been even worse during the Plague Years, and now that the circus is coming back to town, they are about to descend to that level again.
DeleteBack in 2021, anti-vaxxers and mask-holes and all those goddam "MOMS" began to turn mundane schoolboard meetings into shit-shows. They caused disruptions and disturbances and there were even honking truck caravans outside, with their "Fuck Joe" banners, parading in front of children.
Many of the problems were caused by non-resident Storm Trumpers, and armed officers were required at these formerly placid BOE affairs. Watched the local coverage, and as a Covid survivor, grew increasingly riled-up, angry, and furious. I had absolutely no dog in the suburban BOE fight closest to my own city neighborhood, and was even a non-resident myself. But a third-generation antifa non-resident.
Consequently, I felt it necessary to confront the troublemakers, even at 74, and was physically present at one of those seething cauldrons, along with my small but cutting-edge friend. There were disruptions and evictions and a number of arrests outside, but nothing more. The worst of the Storm Trumpers had to be content with making faces at the windows.
Three years older now, and perhaps a little wiser, or maybe just tired and sad and still in mourning. Don't yet know whether or not I'll be motivated to engage in similar behavior in the future. But the opportunities will certainly present themselves. November Fifth has guaranteed that.
Even civic meetings in the leafy suburbs will not be any paradise. Quite the opposite. If I were younger, and still employed, and required to cover any of them, advance preparations would be made. Better to face jail-time and the courtroom than the all-too-real possibilities of the hospital or the graveyard.
I lived in NB for 22 years. Sometimes the beautiful leafy burb felt quite restrictive, even ominous, like Stepford.
ReplyDeleteIt changed in character through time as all places do. I became aware of tragedies and “breaches of truth” that reminded me of the vulnerabilities beneath the veneer of all places, including NB.
Please keep writing. What you produce is the beating, vital heart of the place and I wish I’d known you while I was there.
To live in service to the truth of what you see is really hard wherever you go. Keep close to your own heart however you must, and express your unique being in the world however you are able.
Henry Kissinger said, "The reason that university politics is so vicious is because the stakes are so small". This seems to pertain to local politics, as well, with an added, unavoidable, personal factor. Thank you, Karie, for doing what needs to be done. I hope more members of your community will stand in support of local journalism.
ReplyDeleteFrom Kate in Chicago: If I lived closer i would offer to be there with you on your assignments! You need residents to be there for you! Perhaps Neil can find a way to publish this more broadly on the Northbrook community. I am a sexual assault survivor so I understand your need to retreat and protect yourself. Please don't let the bastards get you down!!!
ReplyDeleteIn the last ten years or so I have continually listed to people say that these kind of behaviors are “not who we are”. I suggest that this crap is exactly who a good percentage of us are and the percentage is getting bigger. I am done with the American public. Everything I learned when growing up and what I tried to teach my children, honesty, politeness, helping othes, , protecting the weak, paying your bills, etc.Now I find it was all a lie. Every bit of it. Money and power are all that matter. If only I had found out this earlier. Good luck America, you’re gonna need it.
ReplyDeleteNeil, I've lived in Northbrook for over 30 years and I often shake my head at the shenanigans in the North Shore communities as well as in this leafy village, the latest that I'm aware of is the granting of 1.5 million to a local resident to open a coffee shop here to be repaid by sales taxes (which the village would get anyway) when there already are a half dozen places to get coffee in the immediate area. We may be 20 miles from Chicago, but I'm not surprised that there are folks who want to dim the light from a free journalism press. I know we'll get through this, but for the nation, it'll be a long 4 years.
ReplyDeleteBest wishes to Ms. Luc.
ReplyDeleteOh Karie, this hurts my heart. We keep hearing that legacy media is the problem but how can you do the job when this is happening to you. I am so sorry and so glad you are still showing up and standing up. Grateful for your stories and beautiful photos.
ReplyDeleteKarie Angell Luc has been a gift to Northbrook for decades. Her articles in our local paper are often the only pieces worth reading. I trust every word she writes, she brings a depth to her reporting that is unmatched in our local news coverage. Her absence will leave a gaping hole in the fabric of our community.
ReplyDeleteI am also a longtime resident of Northbrook and want to add my support and appreciation for Karie Angell Luc. She performs the difficult and thankless job of covering important local news that otherwise we might never hear about and she does so with grace, integrity, and a sense of humor. She deserves to be treated with courtesy and respect and kindness. Such consideration should be the standard for our village, not an aspiration.
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