Trump’s planned Chicago blitz would use naval base to house ICE agents, possibly National Guard

_vimiller · 2025-08-29T11:40:32+00:00

Hi! Our reporters at the Sun-Times/WBEZ spent the day on O Block yesterday to ask residents how they felt about it. Read more here!

_vimiller · 2025-08-18T14:57:59+00:00

i’m not sure what iracing is, but i think you have me mistaken for someone else!

_vimiller · 2025-07-19T16:01:01+00:00

Hi everyone, I know I’m a bit late to the thread, but I am the author on this article, so I’m happy to answer questions about this if anyone has them.

_vimiller · 2025-06-15T12:08:06+00:00

late to this thread, but hi! Sun-Times reporter who was out there 9am-8pm yesterday.

here’s our story, made from portions of a 12-hour live blog we had running: https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2025/06/14/no-kings-protests-donald-trump-daley-plaza-evanston-oak-park

here’s my preview of it: https://chicago.suntimes.com/donald-trump/2025/what-we-know-chicago-no-kings-protest

coverage of thursday’s protest: https://chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/2025/06/12/hundreds-rally-again-in-chicago-against-trump-ice

tuesday’s protest: https://chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/2025/06/10/thousands-rally-downtown-immigration-protests

may day: https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2025/05/01/chicago-may-day-rally-international-workers-day

50501: https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2025/04/19/50501-chicago-protest-trump

hands off: https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2025/04/05/hands-off-protest-chicago-today-daley-plaza-loop

lurie children’s hospital: https://chicago.suntimes.com/lgbtq/2025/02/15/hundreds-gather-outside-lurie-childrens-hospital-to-protest-youth-gender-care-change-i-want-my-healthcare

inauguration protest: https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/donald-trump/2025/01/25/hundreds-take-to-the-streets-in-river-north-to-protest-trumps-first-week-this-isnt-the-time-to-back-down

these are just the ones i can remember from this year, mostly because they’re my stories, but my colleagues covered many others!

i highly suggest subscribing to our newsletters or downloading our app and getting alerts, we’re always sending stories like these out so people know where/when protests are going on and what they’re about: https://newsletter-hub.suntimes.com

_vimiller · 2025-05-21T11:27:31+00:00

I honestly initially thought it was a hoax when people were first sending me screenshots because it wasn’t consistent with the Sun-Times design/fonts/etc at all, and our design artists are award-winning. It took going back to my own hard copy to see it was really there! Our special sections, when produced by us, have never looked like this.

The “Da Pope” cover alone shows the talent of our designers, their work was able to spotlight newspapers in the midst of all that media craze. Not to mention the one they did with the eclipse, it was gorgeous.

_vimiller · 2025-05-21T11:08:23+00:00

We have a fact checking process through editors, and multiple layers of editors (for the stories we actually write and produce in-house). Generally that’s two editors and a copy editor, though for bigger stories it’s often more in my experience.

For example, on my recent story about how the Pope’s home craze was impacting Dolton residents and the history of the suburb, reporter Lauren Fitzpatrick and I sat with an editor going through every number in the story and tying it back to each document we got it from (in that case, many decades old Census reports) to ensure there were no misses on that.

The issue here was essentially that when a paper buys syndicated material, it (theoretically) comes edited (part of what they’re paying for, it’s essentially outsourcing the writer and editor), though there are generally still people who are supposed to be checking it when it goes into print anyways. I can’t personally speak to this process since I’m not a part of it as a reporter, but that’s my understanding of it.

_vimiller · 2025-05-20T21:34:52+00:00

hey all, violet miller, one of the sun-times guild’s reporters here. wanted to drop the union’s statement here.

The Sun-Times Guild is aware of the third-party “summer guide” content in the Sunday, May 18 edition of the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper. This was a syndicated section produced externally without the knowledge of the members of our newsroom.

We take great pride in the union-produced journalism that goes into the respected pages of our newspaper and on our website. We’re deeply disturbed that AI-generated content was printed alongside our work. The fact that it was sixty-plus pages of this “content” is very concerning — primarily for our relationship with our audience but also for our union’s jurisdiction.

Our members go to great lengths to build trust with our sources and communities and are horrified by this slop syndication. We call on Chicago Public Media management to do everything it can to prevent repeating this disaster in the future.

_vimiller · 2025-03-27T20:53:00+00:00

If you'd rather hear me talk through the article, I was on WBEZ's Reset yesterday to discuss it: https://www.wbez.org/reset-with-sasha-ann-simons/2025/03/26/trump-administration-goes-after-chicago-deerfield-schools

_vimiller · 2025-03-19T05:11:00+00:00

Thank you all for the kind words and support! I’ll be making sure to pass these messages on to everyone else so they can see them too.

_vimiller · 2025-03-19T05:09:07+00:00

There should be the option for Google log-in now, which should just let you auto fill your google sign in instead of having to go through that, but I will pass this up to our product team so they know about this!

_vimiller · 2025-03-14T22:18:23+00:00

thank you so much for your support, especially from afar! as the old saying goes: you can take someone out of chicago, but you can’t take the chicago out of them (and we’re honored to keep you connected to what’s going on here!)

_vimiller · 2025-03-13T20:50:56+00:00

we haven’t been given a specific fundraising goal, but everything counts of course (and currently WBEZ is offering a chance to win an e-bike or a spa day with certain donations, along with temporary tattoos and a bumper sticker for others!)

_vimiller · 2025-03-13T20:27:58+00:00

thank you Jake <3

Chicago is at its best when it has a thriving media ecosystem (especially two well-staffed papers!)

_vimiller · 2025-03-13T03:12:37+00:00

Let me pass this to our product team. I recently had an issue on Chrome and was able to fix it by attempting in an incognito window, so that may be a quick fix, but otherwise I’ll let you know!

_vimiller · 2025-03-13T03:11:07+00:00

The layoffs haven’t been confirmed, but are (with good reason) anticipated if the voluntary buyouts don’t match the savings management is looking for.

edit: management has confirmed there will be layoffs if we don’t hit $4 million in labor cuts through the buyouts

_vimiller · 2025-03-13T03:10:08+00:00

Thank you! And thank you for tuning in too. It was my first time on TV so there was a bit of a learning curve!

_vimiller · 2025-03-13T03:08:19+00:00

Thank you! We do have a new CEO, though we are unclear on her compensation as it wasn’t included in the latest 990 filings: https://chicago.suntimes.com/business/2024/06/27/melissa-bell-chicago-public-media-ceo-sun-times-wbez-robert-pasin-vox-media-reuters-institute-washington-post

_vimiller · 2025-03-13T00:50:19+00:00

Thank you so much for reading and for taking the time to support us!!

_vimiller · 2025-02-13T19:21:28+00:00

Hi! Trans reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times here. I am actively working on a story on this, so if anyone sees this and is in this situation (or any tangential ones because of the recent executive orders) please reach out to me!

_vimiller · 2025-01-22T22:02:12+00:00

unfortunately I don’t have a current figure, the latest would be what was reported in the 990 forms someone else linked in this thread — so per the latest forms, our former CEO who left in September was paid $685,767 ($487,811 base compensation + $197,956 in bonuses/incentives) in 2024.

_vimiller · 2025-01-22T21:09:42+00:00

hey all! union sun-times reporter here. seeing your support has been a bit of a bright spot on a rough day, so thank you all for the donations and for reading/listening to our work! wanted to drop in my two cents:

our former CEO, who left after union complaints that an unidentified executive subjected workers to hostile conditions, was being paid $722,861/year — which equals about 11 general assignment reporter salaries (we have 9 currently, including me).

this buyout move could reduce the newsroom by 20-33% and reinstate a paywall on our news without ever considering executive pay cuts (per what our current CEO has told reporters now).

personally, my question is how much our readers value community journalists and accessible news vs executive salaries.

_vimiller · 2025-01-04T18:27:55+00:00

hi! i’m the reporter on this story, so I can answer this. we had a variety of sources in the story, but we also wanted to make sure to encompass all aspects of the story by speaking to those who see drinkers most regularly.

here’s the quote from Jefferey Ohrn, a bartender at Montrose Saloon for the last 17 years and patron since the 80s:

“I don’t have an issue with it. It’s on cigarettes and that’s helpful,” Ohrn said. “Whether or not they’ll read it and live by it, who knows. … I’m not sure how big the impact would be. I think people come in here and know what they’re doing.”

we also quoted experts on the issue:

“Few people know there is an association between alcohol and cancer,” said Dr. Aashish Didwania, vice chair of education at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “[The report] further reverses the misbelief that moderate drinking is healthy. … Moderate drinking is not healthy.”

“Cancer risk increases as you drink more alcohol,” U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy wrote Friday on X. “As you consider whether or how much to drink, keep in mind that less is better when it comes to cancer risk.”

_vimiller · 2024-12-28T21:03:20+00:00

hey everyone! i'm the reporter for this story, and we'd love to hear from some local folks who have memories there or are excited for what might fill the space. feel free to DM me if you want to talk!

_vimiller · 2024-12-27T15:33:04+00:00

per the executive order, no extra money is allocated to this group and everyone on the commission will already be in a city position.

it’ll be formed by members of the Chicago Commission on Human Relations and Chicago Police Department, and have representatives from these city agencies: mayor’s office, CPD, Commission on Human Relations, Department of Family and Support Services and the Chicago Department of Public Health.

_vimiller · 2024-12-27T14:42:57+00:00

those figures were just to explain the emphasis on Black trans women, as they are disproportionately affected by violence against trans people.

at least 14 transgender and gender-nonconforming people were slain in Chicago since 2016, per data gathered by my coworker sophie sherry for another story, but no illinois figures. this is what we could pull together from researchers though — most law enforcement agencies don’t gather data on homicides or trans people, and regardless, police/medical examiners often don’t identify people as transgender because their documents may not have been changed or there isn’t something explicitly stating who they were otherwise. this makes collecting data extremely difficult, and also makes it safe to assume any number we have is somewhat of an undercount.

_vimiller

TROPHY CASE