WIA opportunity knocks

Program to pay for retraining as Web master

It’s been more than nine months in the making, apparently delayed largely — in recent months anyway — by the state of Illinois’ interminable bureaucracy. But this week, the paperwork went through and I now am preparing to begin training for something that may or may not expand the possibility of continuing my career as a journalist. But ultimately I hope it will serve to open doors.

Hoping for light at end of tunnel

There have been some recent developments I find encouraging after nearly six months on the unemployment, although I’ve had one part-time digital reporting job at BocaJump.com since January.

I have been particularly grateful for that one as it allowed me to work again with Mike Bailey, a great newsman and former managing editor of The Courier-News in Elgin, Ill., my hometown. I grew up reading The Courier, The Chicago Tribune, and for a while, the Chicago Daily News, which my Dad subscribed to until it folded in March 1978, nearly a year after I’d graduated high school.