“The personal journalism that Chicago newspapers were famous for [a century and more ago] has now shifted over to television,” writes Garry Wills in the New York Review of Books (September 25). “Oprah is the modern Eugene Field, folksily homiletic, dispensing tart street wisdoms. Studs Terkel, in his long-running radio interviews for WFMT, is the equivalent of Carl Sandburg in his labor-reporting days–radical, but in ways that connect with ordinary people….The prurient scandal stories…now appear on talk shows like those hosted from Chicago by Jenny Jones and Jerry Springer.”
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At least they know better. In a recent study Julie Zerwic of the University of Illinois at Chicago and colleagues surveyed 105 patients hospitalized with heart disease. “Only 15 percent of patients with high blood pressure recognized high blood pressure as a cause, while 64 percent of smokers recognized smoking as a cause of their heart disease.”
The University of Illinois’ downstate campus is number eight on the list of the ten most activist campuses in the nation, according to Mother Jones (September/October). U. of I. students join hardy perennials the University of Wisconsin (Madison) and the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) because they lobbied successfully for a “Latina/Latino studies program” and a voting student member of the university board of trustees.
