The Elmwood Park Advocate's First 'Community Conversation'
The first 'Community Conversation' held at the Elmwood Park Public Library was well attended
By Kevin Gosztola, Editor-in-Chief
Elmwood Park residents showed up for the first in a series of community conversations that the newsletter plans to hold at the Elmwood Park Public Library.
On June 21, at 1 p.m., 22 residents filled seats that were setup in the room for a previous event. The turnout surpassed attendance at many village, school, or library board meetings.
I facilitated the conversation and introduced the topic: “Staying Informed In Elmwood Park—The Village As a News Desert.”
A definition for news desert was shared: “a community, either rural or urban, with limited access to the sort of credible and comprehensive news and information that feeds democracy at the grassroots level.”
According to the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media, “225 counties in the United States do not have a local newspaper. Half of all the counties—1,528—have only one newspaper, usually a weekly.”
The Elm Leaves, founded in 1913, was Elmwood Park’s newspaper. However, since the 1980s, it has gone through significant changes. It is owned by Pioneer Press, which is owned by Nexstar Media—a media corporation that merged with the Tribune Media Group in 2019. (The Tribune Media Group owned the Chicago Tribune.)
We highlighted the June 19, 2025, edition of the Elm Leaves. It had stories on Oak Park, Elmhurst, La Grange, and Naperville. There were no stories in the newspaper about Elmwood Park.
With that, we started the conversation with a question about local news and what it meant to residents. We specifically asked people to share whether they received a local newspaper when they were growing up and whether they continued to read that newspaper as an adult. For those people who were not born in Elmwood Park, we invited them to speak about the local newspaper that they had received in their hometown.
The question encouraged residents to consider what so many Americans have lost as thousands of local newspapers have closed or merged with other papers in the past 20 years.
Nearly every resident in the room engaged with this question in some form or another. One resident said that the Elm Leaves used to be their source for news on crime in the village, but the newspaper doesn’t provide that anymore. Someone expressed concern about depending on Facebook to keep informed about what is happening in the village.
Another resident spoke about the loss of a physical newspaper that they could read each day and contended it was difficult to get to know neighbors. Furthermore, diversity in Elmwood Park is not reflected in the village’s media landscape. A newspaper could help make up for this lack of community.
Many in the room were interested in the Elmwood Park Advocate’s plans and immediately offered suggestions and constructive feedback. A resident who moved to Elmwood Park described the Palm Springs Post, a free newsletter published every weekday, as an example of the kind of newsletter that the Advocate could become.
The Palm Springs Post was started by Mark Talkington in February 2021. He had worked for over three decades at newspapers and digital media sites. Talkington invited readers to donate to the newsletter, and that enabled the Post to hire a reporter named Kendall Balchan to report on city council meetings, forum events, and other developments in Palm Springs.
A question was asked about the news and information that the Elmwood Park Advocate plans to publish. Initially, the newsletter will cover the village board, school board, and library board when they regularly meet. But there is so much more to cover and write about for Elmwood Park.
We would like to report on records obtained through freedom of information requests, and we’re open to covering high school sports, restaurant openings, and various village events—particularly those not featured in the Elmwood Park News [PDF].
It was mentioned by a resident that numerous people learn about news and important issues by watching short videos, like on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. Perhaps, at some point, we could produce videos for subscribers.
An incident occurred a few months ago where swastikas were drawn on the playground at the John Mills Elementary School. A resident expressed their hope that incidents like this would not go ignored by the newsletter, especially since village leaders were rather quiet about what happened.
Carlos Rodriguez, an Elmwood Park police sergeant, attended. He hosts “Coffee with a Cop” and “Gelato with a Cop” gatherings and told residents that they could go to the Village of Elmwood Park’s website if they would like to see calls to the police. There’s also a “Report a Concern” form on the village website that residents can fill out, which encourages police or officials in Elmwood Park to attend to residents’ needs.
Before ending the conversation, we asked residents what the newsletter should cover and what topic should be discussed at our next community conversation. Two suggestions for stories to cover were the Grand Gateway underpass project and the lead service line replacement project.
We do not have a date or topic set for the next conversation. This was initially conceived as a monthly gathering, but we may choose to skip July and do this again in August.
Please feel free to offer suggestions for topics in the comments or by emailing newsletter@elmwoodparkadvocate.org
If there’s anything you think the newsletter should specifically cover, email news tips to newsletter@elmwoodparkadvocate.org
Additionally, we invite you to send in your own op-eds or letters to the editor, which we will consider for publication. You can email editor@elmwoodparkadvocate.org
Thank you again to everyone who attended and made this first conversation an incredible success. We look forward to seeing you again.