CHICAGO – I was talking to a subscriber today and mentioned that our editorial office – the place where these very pages get put together week-after-week – was moving from New York City to Chicago. He was a little surprised, but then said he thought he had “heard about it.” That struck me: the tried and true method of communication – word of mouth! Ironically, I know this subscriber wouldn’t have “heard” about it from reading this paper.
Too bad we don’t have a radio show to broadcast all that’s happening at the People’s Weekly World/Nuestro Mundo. All we have right now are these 20 pages in which we pack as much information, analysis, and opinions as possible. Our small staff and dedicated volunteers are so focused on reporting the stories we think are important to the lives of working-class families, we forget to write about stories a little closer to home. So let me try to fill that gap.
Yes, the People’s Weekly World/Nuestro Mundo editorial office is moving to Chicago – we expect to complete the shift by summer’s end. Our business and circulation offices will remain in New York City, so please continue to send all subscriptions and donations to NYC.
Our editorial board, staff and many supporters who have “heard” about the move are very excited about it. Chicago is a great working-class city – the birthplace of May Day, and the place where the Communist Party was founded in 1919. It’s the nation’s “great midland,” the crossroads between the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River and the western prairie. Sandra Cisneros places her wonderful novel, The House on Mango Street, in this melting pot of people, the “city of broad shoulders.”
Chicago is also the home of ground-breaking people’s journalism. It’s here that the fearless civil and women’s rights advocate and journalist Ida B. Wells published her expose of lynching, “A Red Record,” poet Carl Sandburg wrote for the International Socialist Review, and our pioneering predecessor, The Daily Worker, was published.
We are working hard to make the most of this opportunity to bring you a better newspaper. We know that today the independent press and especially a newspaper like ours is more important than ever as a mass educator and mobilizer to stop and roll back the far-right Bush administration assault on life and liberty here and around the world.
And, going forward, we’ll try to keep you up to date about future improvements in your World/Mundo.
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