If everything had gone right, Jim Ylisela would be working like a dog now.

He would be talking with reporters about their stories, lining up advertisers and putting the finishing touches on the design for Clout magazine, Ylisela’s vision for a monthly urban journal serving Chicago.

If things had gone right, Clout would hit stands next month.

But things didn’t, and Ylisela isn’t.

Instead, Ylisela, a professor of the Medill School of Journalism’s graduate program, is doing some local consultation work and using his leave-time to put together the money for his dream.

“I really think we had a good idea for a magazine,” he said. Clout would have investigative writing and features about the big names in Chicago news, looking into the stories that the city’s daily newspapers don’t have the time to report.

“We were going to do stories that, for one reason or another, don’t get done in Chicago,” Ylisela said. “We could do some of the more politically sensitive stories. We weren’t beholden to anyone.”

He cited as an example the story of former Chicago police officer Joseph Miedzianowski, who was found guilty April 24 on charges of corruption concerning a drug ring the former officer had run. Headlines on local newspapers said Miedzianowski was among the most corrupt cops in Chicago’s history.

“One story that never got done is to go back and find out how that happened,” Ylisela said. “Where is the point that he goes from being a good guy to a bad guy?”

Ylisela has called Chicago home since he was 7. He grew up on the South Side, studied political science at DePaul University and then went to work for some community newspapers, as well Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago magazine. For the last 10 years, he has been a contributing editor for the Chicago Reporter.

Meanwhile, Ylisela came to work for Medill in 1988. He has taught “Urban Reporting” to graduate students for the last few years. Before that, he taught “Investigative Reporting” to undergraduates.

Though he now teaches journalism, Ylisela said that what he knows about the job didn’t come from a classroom.

“I learned the old fashioned way,” Ylisela said. “I messed up.”

But all the while, he felt Chicago was missing something. About two years ago, Ylisela formed a vision for a magazine about Chicago that would combine great writers with the strong local news.

“I think it was something Chicago needed,” he said. “They would be stories that people would have wanted and talked about.”

And Ylisela wasn’t alone. Three fellow journalists from the Reporter followed Ylisela and constituted a staff for the magazine.

The dream was clear but undefinable. Ylisela said the magazine had no clear inspirations.

“We borrowed from a lot of magazines,” he said. “They were things about the New Yorker we liked, stuff about Harper’s Monthly, stuff about Mother Jones.”

But in the end, nothing quite matched what Ylisela had in mind. Everything was falling into place, except for the magazine’s name.

“We went through about 80 possibilities,” he said. The group went from more conservative names such as City to more outlandish ideas, like Alley Cat.

In the end – almost by default – Clout stuck.

“Nobody could think of anything better,” Ylisela said.

And Clout was in full swing. Ylisela was assigning stories to free-lance writers, hiring advertising executives, interviewing publishers and working with designers on the layout for the first issue.

Then things fell apart. George Ball, the venture’s primary backer, told Ylisela in February he had to back out. Ylisela understood Ball’s decision. The two had approached the magazine realistically in January 1999 and talked openly about the problems facing it. Ylisela knew it might be years before the magazine turned a profit.

As the economy began to slump and the projected numbers from the newsstands didn’t add up, Ball decided the magazine was no longer a safe investment.

“Talking about it is one thing,” Ylisela said. “Forking over the dough is another.”

Clout does have alternatives. Ylisela maintains control of the name and the URLs for the Web site, but Ylisela says he never envisioned Clout to be strictly an Internet magazine.

“I liked the idea of doing something you can touch, hold and look at; something that would be attractive,” he said.

Now Clout is dormant while Ylisela tracks down other financiers. Still, Ylisela believes Clout has a chance to succeed despite its bad luck.

“It makes it tougher, but not impossible,” Ylisela said.

His dream may be up in the air, but Ylisela’s feet remain firmly on the ground. nyou