Jon J. Kerr's Blog, page 3

Boys in Brown Blog: Speaking Appearance in Vernon Hills

Hello! I hope all of you enjoyed your Easter holiday with your families.

I few announcements:

SPEAKING APPEARANCE AT ASPEN PUBLIC LIBRARY

I’m very excited to be a part of a local author’s initiative started by Lake County libraries called Authors Out Loud. They sponsor appearances from local authors. This is important as it gives readers a chance to interact with authors and introduce books to new readers. On Thursday April 7, at 7 pm, I’ll be speaking at Aspen Public Library in Vernon Hills. Click here for info on how to register. Feel free to email me at jon@boysinbrown.com with any questions or suggestions on what topics you’d like to see discussed at the event. I’ll be sending out a few more reminders. Hope to see you at the event!

LINK TO WSFI RADIO SHOW 

Earlier this month, Coach Bitto and I were guests on WSFI 88.5 FM for an interview program called Spotlight. With host Bill Snyder, we went in depth with topics and subject matter around The Boys in Brown. If you missed the show when it aired or would like to listen again, here is a link to the broadcast.

Thanks. Have a great spring.

Jon

ICM006: Inside the World of Football Recruiting Analysis with expert “Edgy” Tim O’Halloran

 

Before ESPN Recruiting Nation, Scout.com or 247Sports.com commercialized the recruiting analysis industry, there was a lone cowboy roaming the internet (and fax machines before .com).

His name is Tim O’Halloran. Or for subscribers of his website, edgytim.com, he is known as Edgy Tim.

Since 1995, Edgy Tim has been the premier voice in the Chicago area for high school football fans ravenous for information about the college destination of their favorite Jimmy’s and Joe’s.

You can listen below on iTunes or subscribe to the show using your Android or iOS podcast app.

Read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights of our conversation:

• How Tim worked his day job as a trader in Chicago while building up his recruiting analysis business.

• In the early days of the internet, there was no such thing as a recruiting analyst. Tim listened to his audience which demanded more. How the evolution of his community helped shape the business model.

• A partner with the Rivals network, how Tim distinguishes himself from competitors with a subscription model.

• There is so much free content on the internet these days. How delivering unique content to a niche audience is a key to keeping subscribers.

• No one has shaken up the current recruiting landscape quite like Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh. We talk about Harbaugh’s methods and the challenges coaches have with connecting with the modern teenage recruit.

You can learn more about Edgy Tim by visiting his website, www.edgytim.com. He is also the recruiting expert for csnchicago.com. He is on Twitter @edgytim.

Boys in Brown Blog: Radio Show, Speaking Appearance Details

Hello, everyone! We march on to March. Can you believe Easter is in less than four weeks? Or that Opening Day is in less than five? Bring them on!

A few announcements to make:

APPEARANCE ON WSFI RADIO SHOW

Tonight, March 1 at 7 pm, I will appear with Carmel Catholic football coach Andy Bitto on WSFI 88.5 FM. The show is called Spotlight. It’s a half hour show hosted by Bill Snyder. We go in depth with topics and subject matter around The Boys in Brown. There are a couple of different ways you can listen to the show. One is traditional, over-the-air radio on 88.5 FM. Or, you can stream the program  on your laptop, tablet or mobile device. There is a re-broadcast scheduled for March 8 at 7:30 pm. Hope you can tune in.

SPEAKING APPEARANCE AT ASPEN PUBLIC LIBRARY

I’m very excited to be a part of a local author’s initiative started by Lake County libraries called Authors Out Loud. They sponsor appearances from local authors. This is important as it gives readers a chance to interact with authors and introduce books to new readers. On April 7, I’ll be speaking at Aspen Public Library in Vernon Hills. Click here for info on how to register. Feel free to email me at jon@boysinbrown.com with any questions or suggestions on what topics you’d like to see discussed at the event. I’ll be sending out a few more reminders. Hope to see you at the event.

One other thing. In February, I was asked by the Catholic Mom website to write an essay during Catholic Schools Week. If you missed, it here’s a link:

http://catholicmom.com/2016/02/04/the-boys-in-brown/

Hope all of you are well. Will be in touch again very soon.

Jon

 

ICM005: The Secrets of Great Enterprise Reporting With Former Chicago Sun-Times Writer Neil Hayes

 

Neil Hayes came to Chicago from the Bay Area in the mid-2000’s. A newspaperman his entire career, he had hit the big time. His new job? Enterprise reporter for the one of the two big dailies in town, the Chicago Sun-Times.

During his time with the Sun-Times, Hayes found himself in many locales researching stories; one  memorable trip took him to rural Louisiana for a feature story on Hall of Fame running back Marshall Faulk. Neil has covered Super Bowls and Daytona 500’s, but says no sporting event can simulate the adrenaline rush of chasing down a good narrative long form story.

You can listen below on iTunes. Read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights of our conversation:

• Chicago is one of the most competitive media markets in the country. How Neil was able to leverage sources from his time at a newspaper in another market to use for his CST pieces.

• Soon after Neil arrived at CST, his job changed. How his versatility as a reporter allowed him to seamlessly pivot into other roles.

• The death of the general sports columnist is not rumored, its reality. How legacy newspaper companies, as well as internet media outlets like ESPN, Yahoo and Comcast, now brand writers as “experts” in their beat to serve a more splintered audience.

• Neil wrote a book, “When the Game Stands Tall” that became a Hollywood-produced film. We talk about the process from page to screen and how Neil’s once-in-a-lifetime experience on the movie set changed his life.

• Now a self-professed, “writer for hire”, how Neil is carving out a career writing more books and with other projects.

You can learn more about Neil by visiting his website, www.neilhayeswriter.com. He is on Twitter @bynhayes.

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ICM004: From Print to Digital, Two Decades covering the NFL with John “Moon” Mullin

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John “Moon” Mullin is the Chicago Bears beat reporter for CSNChicago.com. He has covered the Bears since 1992, working previously at the Chicago Tribune and the Daily Herald.

You can listen below or on iTunes. Read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights of our conversation:

• What has changed about how a beat reporter does his job since John’s first year in 1992.

• How digital is first. Reporters and editors now have to think about mobile strategy when crafting stories.

• The process of reporting, how sourcing is done. How close should a reporter get with a source?

• How competition from national media outlets like ESPN, Yahoo or NFL.com impact local reporter’s jobs.

• Who are the most interesting athletes John has covered in two decades? Why?

• John is a guitar player. If he could play like one guitarist in history, whom would it be?

• What famous baseball game did John attend as a young man living in Pennsylvania? He’ll share his memories.

You can read John Mullin at CSNChicago.com/bears. He is on twitter @csnmoonmullin..

ICM003: 10 Wishes from Chicago Media for 2016

We wrap up 2015 with a wish–well, actually more than one.

If I were Chicago Media Czar for a day–a frightening thought–here are the 10 ideas I would implement for 2016.

They are idealistic but by no means impractical.

Tell me what you think. What is your wish or wishes from Chicago media outlets for 2016?

Leave a comment below.

Happy New Year everyone. We’ll be talking in 2016.

Jon.

Announcement: Radio Appearance with Andy Bitto

Merry Christmas, everyone!

If you happen to driving around later this afternoon–in search of a parking spot, no less–take a moment and turn your radio to 88.5 FM (WSFI)

Between 4-5 pm, I will be on the air with Carmel football coach Andy Bitto. We will be chatting about The Boys in Brown and other topics around the book.

If you are not in your car, but at home or wrapping up a day at the office, you can also hear our discussion on the Tune In app.

Hope you can listen in later today at 4 pm.

Best Wishes for a safe and healthy holiday season.

Jon

 

ICM002: Derrick Rose, Kobe Bryant and Pat Fitzgerald. Writing about the NBA and College Athletics With Mark Perlman [Podcast]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What’s it like to cover the NBA? Is Derrick Rose portrayed fairly by the media? Are pro athletes more or less thoughtful than college athletes?

These are questions posed to Mark Perlman, this week’s guest of the Inside Chicago Media podcast. Mark is a sports writer for the Associated Press. He has covered the NBA and the Bulls for over a decade. He also writes about Northwestern University.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Covering the NBA. A typical day in the life of an NBA reporter.

• Interviewing Kobe Bryant. The Lakers great recently announced his retirement. Mark had a one-on-one with Kobe. 

• The saga of Derrick Rose. Once thought to be the next Michael Jordan, Rose is now often a punch line in Chicago. Mark shares his experiences dealing with Rose and whether or not he is fairly portrayed by the Chicago media.

• Use of social media. How does Mark uses social media tools such as Twitter to do his job. 

• Life with Fitz. The colorful Northwestern football coach is synonymous with the university. What it’s really like to cover Pat Fitzgerald.

• College sports culture. Starting with an attempt by Northwestern football players to unionize, and most recently with Missouri football players threatening to boycott, there’s been quite a few stories involving college athletes lately that delve into culture. How should the media cover these stories? We discuss.

• Advice for young writers. Mark is also an instructor at Columbia College in Chicago. He gives tips for aspiring reporters and shares an example of one resourceful student who went Paris to cover the recent terrorist attacks.

You can find Mark on Twitter at @markdavidperlma.

Listen to the show below or on iTunes..

Blog: Behind the Book Reader Interview with Ed Ravine

Readers of The Boys in Brown are familiar with the character of Marion Biere. She was one of the book’s main protagonists, a retired healthcare worker who adopted a sick black child, LaRon, and nursed him back to health. Her late-in-life mission was to raise LaRon, educate him in a religious environment and finish high school at Carmel Catholic. What possessed this woman, in her 60′s at the time, to do such a thing?

Ed Ravine (left) worked with Marion Biere (right) at the Lake County Health Department in the 1970′s and 1980′s. Currently a licensed clinical professional counselor who lives in Evanston, he was a great source in The Boys in Brown, providing first hand accounts of Marion’s actions during that stretch of her life. He was kind enough to share more stories of his time working with Marion and insights on her character, spirit and deep faith.

Marion Biere and her husband, Jim, were born during the Great Depression. They came up in an age where humility and service were not advertising key words but authentic human qualities. How much did her background inform her decision to adopt LaRon?

Jim and Marion Biere were Korean War era people who were on the tail end of the World War II generation, so they were selfless, serve your family, serve your community, serve your country kind of people without needing any accolades. Good Catholics, good parents and maybe pretty modest about all of that. I don’t think Jim or Marion beat their chest about their kids at school, but there was a deep pride anyway. The generation that followed Marion had some promise.

So the next generation that comes along, the 1960’s, which had the potential for some altruism ends up failing, ends up coming out. There’s civil rights, there’s women’s rights, there voting rights, international human rights. That World War II, Korean War-veteran, war era, Eisenhower people come up against that hopeful altruism. I feel like I was a big part of it and a lot of my generation departs from that for sex, drugs and rock and roll. Houses and raising their kids and removed from doing anything to help others. They are self-contained. What’s importnat about Marion is it’s a portrait of the last generation that was selfless.

Any Korean War veteran will tell you they weren’t really celebrating when they came home. With Vietnam vets it was a different thing. The country was in turmoil and the reason they weren’t celebrated was much more complicated. When the Korean War vets came home, they are very quiet about their service and about the result of the war. I have an uncle, ironically Uncle Sam, who served in Korea and that’s the way he was. The selflessness with which Marion grew up with and the way she was educated as a nurse, it carries through from the time I spent with her on and off for 20 years. To see how quiet she was, utterly devoted to the poor men and women who came into the clinics that she served in a very quiet way. They said to me they couldn’t lie to her for some reason. That was resounding universal things that people said to me. They coudn’t look into Marion’s eyes during a conversation and not lie.

Is there a story of her time at the clinic that illuminates how giving she was?

Marion dispensed methadone to heroin addicts. One day she hurt her hands in a car accident. She calls and asks me to come pick her up. She said she couldn’t drive but that she was coming in anyway, that we’ll work this out, we’ll figure out how to do the medication although her hands were hurt. We must have had 50 people coming in that day for medication. She came in and showed me how to do the medication, which was totally illegal – I’m not a nurse, I’m not a doctor –  but she said ‘we have to do this, I’m supervising you, it’s relly simple.’ So I prepare the 50 doses and I’m handing it out. I realized just how dedicated she was. Jim picked her up and took her to a hospital and we had a subsitute nurse for awhile as her hands were injured. She was our mother. She was a mother for a core of Vietnam veterans. She was everybody’s mother.

In the book, there are sections about Marion’s time at the LCDH, about her work helping to rehabilitate drug addicts and ensure expectant mothers got proper care. She was an unsung hero, a pioneer in the health care field of that era. What is her legacy?

An addict stops maturing emotionally the year he or she starts using. So when an addict starts using in their early teens their maturing level is exactly that – 12, 13, 14 years old. They need a good parent figure. Part of the trust and virtue of having someone like Marion Biere is really good therapy and re-parenting people, so when they stop using they can catch up with their maturing.

Marion would go out and get the nurses on the various units to donate complete Thanksgiving dinners. And for those families where there were just the kids, or a father who was disabled, or a mom, she’d help these families cook a Thanksgiving dinner. We had a residential facility and she’d come help on Christmas Eve. What she did with LaRon is what she did in our clinic. Really authentically religious people can harvest that peace of mind; that faith, hope and love can get you through anything. Marion had that. It got her through the years of working with these unusual people who came in to see us. Her care for those in the clinic – for all of us really – was deep and I think she parented us the way she parented LaRon. I know she harvested the good in her heart, in her family’s heart. I know she harvested mine.

The Boys in Brown is available now on Amazon.

ICM001: Welcome to the Inside Chicago Media Podcast

When you have something to say, it’s best to just get it out.

So beginning with this first episode, I am launching the Chicago Media Podcast. This is my third attempt at starting a podcast. My plan is to fight off that cut fastball and stay in the batter’s box this time.

The mission of the show is to inform and entertain with conversation on topics surrounding the intersection of media, sports and culture, specifically as they relate to Chicago. Every day there is an event that unfolds in Chicago that commands our attention. Most recently we had the Patrick Kane investigation, the Fox Lake policeman suicide, the Bears (always the Bears). The public’s insatiable appetite for news does not allow time for consumption assessment or examination. There is always another news hole to fill, a Facebook feed to saturate with outbound links.

What I hope with this podcast is to do a deep dive on topics that otherwise get flushed down the merciless data rabbit hole. This directive starts and stops with engaging conversation with interesting people.

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For this first week, I have a conversation with Joe Aguilar. Joe is the definition of a multi-platform journalist–newspaper, digital and television. He is a sports columnist for the Daily Herald, a suburban Chicago newspaper. He writes about the Bears, Blackhawks, Cubs and prep sports. He does a weekly video segment on the DH website. And in his spare time, he is a commentator on the ABC-7 morning news. There is no topic out of bounds for Joe, he seamlessly bounces back and forth on all issues Chicago sports.

In this episode, Joe and I discuss:

• Today’s definition of being a reporter

• The importance doing many things, of having an entrepreneurship mindset

• Covering the Chicago Bears in an NFL age of minimal information allocation

• How the Chicago media covered the Patrick Kane investigation

You can find Joe on Twitter @joeaguilar64 and online at dailyherald.com.

To listen to the show, click the player below. Subscribe on iTunes..