What has the last quarter of Daily coverage looked like? What changes have been made to The Daily? How is the city of Evanston using its Sustain Evanston grants? The Daily answers these questions and recaps other top stories from the last week.
ANAVI PRAKASH: The Daily’s editor in chief recaps the last three months of coverage, and Evanston begins its third round of Sustain Evanston grants.
From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Anavi Prakash
FINIAN HAZEN: And I’m Finian Hazen. This is The Weekly, a breakdown of the top headlines from the past week.
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ANAVI PRAKASH: This week’s episode is a special edition of The Weekly because it includes a recap of The Daily’s coverage of the last three months. To start, we have Editor in Chief Lily Ogburn to talk about the main storylines and changes to The Daily’s operations this quarter.
There were a lot of storylines reporters followed throughout the quarter, whether that be Evanston elections, the impact of federal executive orders on higher education or the big sports wins.
What storylines stick out to you?
LILY OGBURN: First of all, a lot of these storylines that have started this quarter will be the big ones that continue into next quarter. So we’ve been dealing with a lot of breaking news on campus coming from, like you were saying, those executive orders and threats to federal funding to the University, and kind of along with that — those executive orders — has been a lot of cutbacks on DEI websites, and that’s across schools, a lot of schools taking down their DEI pages, like awards announcements, even faculty hiring announcements related to DEI initiatives. So I think those stories will continue to grow, and we’ll be writing more longer-form coverage on that as we kind of head into the next quarter.
On top of that, I think that there’s now recently, with the federal government canceling $400 million worth of Columbia’s funding, I think that we’re going to be watching that pretty closely, because we’ve obviously talked a lot this quarter about threats to funding, but now that we’ve seen it in a peer institution, we will definitely be ready to cover that if that happens here at Northwestern.
Also, we found out this quarter that the (U.S.) Department of Justice, their new Federal Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, will be visiting Northwestern and working with impacted communities and also evaluating antisemitism on Northwestern’s campus. And we don’t really know exactly what that’s going to look like yet, and what the impacts of that could be, but I think that is going to be a big storyline that we were able to kind of break out this quarter.
We also have a new category for national policy on our website in the Campus page. I think that if readers are looking for a place to kind of just see all that coverage related to Trump administration orders and stuff, it’s going to make it really a lot easier to read all of that at once. So yeah, I’m excited to continue that and maybe even expand how we use that next quarter.
Beyond the campus though, Evanston elections are coming up on April 1. The whole quarter, we’ve been covering lots of different stuff, from all the (Evanston/Skokie School District) 65 candidates through Q&As and the (Evanston Township High School District) 202 candidates through Q&As too. I guess I’ll use a sub headline from a recent story, which was forums, feuds and fundraising for City Council. Tons of forums started by different organizations, including one that was co-hosted by us, and lots of feuds between the candidates. And I think some really interesting races to watch will be, obviously the mayoral race, but also 7th Ward. No matter what the result is of the 7th Ward election, it will be the first Black 7th Ward councilmember, which is pretty exciting. The 3rd Ward should be interesting, and I think the 6th Ward will be interesting. So, I think that there’s a lot to look out for there, and we’ve been able to follow that throughout the quarter.
And then on the sports end of things, we have some interesting spring sports to follow. The Big Ten Wrestling Championship was this weekend in Evanston, and so we’ll be seeing some good stories on that. And as for next quarter with spring sports, I think lacrosse will be a really fun one to watch. We are certainly going to be one of the top 10 teams in the country throughout the season, and yeah, hopefully we can make a championship run.
ANAVI PRAKASH: The Daily itself saw some changes this quarter, from the launch of the Features desk to a new layout for our newsletter. Based on these changes, what are you looking forward to in The Daily’s next quarter of coverage?
LILY OGBURN: Like you mentioned, the Features desk is probably the biggest one. For anyone that doesn’t know, the Features desk is essentially a new desk that has stories from all our different kind of sections of The Daily, but they’re longer-form and allow writers to kind of branch out, try to get more sourcing, write longer pieces, and that’s been really successful. I think we’ve had a lot of great longer-form reporting that’s gotten to be in our print paper. Since switching to only one print paper per week, I think that we have really tried to prioritize coverage that’s more relevant throughout the week, and also makes it worth picking up a weekly paper, so I think that the Features desk is really helping us do that. We’ve had some excellent features. The desk is headed by Jake Epstein, and I think that he’s done a really good job starting that off, and I’m excited to see where it goes next quarter. I’d love to see more stories from our Arts & Entertainment desk, and some more diverse stories beyond politics and that sort of thing.
I think there’s a lot of room to cover Campus stories with the Features desk, especially considering how much we’re going to have going on with (the) Department of Justice visiting and the DEI initiatives kind of getting phased out. So yeah, I think there’s a lot to see there.
Another thing I think has been a huge success this quarter has been our newsletter, Nineth Kanieski Koso and Taylor Hancock have been our newsletter co-editors this quarter, and they’ve done a really great job of redesigning our newsletters and making them more pointed at our audiences. I would say our two biggest successes on this front have been a complete redesign of The Daily Digest that makes it more readable for our audience and also just includes more content for people to click on. Also, we launched a breaking newsletter that we’ve only used a few times this quarter, which I think has been ideal. It really, we send it when we think that it’s necessary, and it seems like our readers are really enjoying that as well. So I think the newsletter has been a really good thing this quarter that we’re hoping to continue into next quarter, new initiatives and, yeah, just keeping it strong.
We had some great special issues this quarter, including our Spring Sports Preview, our election issue, as well as our Best of Evanston issue. So lots of great special issues that I think really engaged well with our audiences and covered a lot of diverse things. So those were pretty great. We also had an In Focus on an alleged toxic work environment at the Colectivo Coffee shop in Evanston, and then throughout the chain as well. So I think that was a really good piece of work.
Some things to look forward to for next quarter are, we’ll be doing a spring campus poll. We’re really excited to do that again, and Scott Hwang will be heading that once again. And then we’ve recently launched a tech team here at The Daily, and that’s led by Yong-Yu Huang, and she will be kind of working on potential plans for our mobile app, and we kind of have been doing user research on that. So, that’ll be something to look forward to next quarter.
And also, this is the first time I’m talking about this, actually, but something exciting that we are launching are comics in the print paper. We’ve had editorial cartoons before, but we actually have a masters student who is going to share their comics with us, and we will have them in our print paper starting next quarter. So, that is very exciting and yeah, I’m really looking forward to another great quarter.
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ANAVI PRAKSH: Thank you so much, Lily.
FINIAN HAZEN: Next, we spoke to The Daily Reporter Evelyn Heath about the Sustain Evanston Grant.
2025 will be the third year Evanston offers this grant, with the total allocation having tripled from $250,000 to $750,000 since its first year.
Thank you for being here, Evelyn. To start, could you give us a brief overview of the Sustain Evanston grant and how it fits into Evanston’s Climate Action and Resilience Plan?
EVELYN HEATH: Yeah, so I can start with talking a little bit about what the Evanston Climate Action and Resilience Plan is. It’s also called CARP for short, but basically, CARP is a plan that was adopted by the City Council in 2018 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. So, the funding initiative aimed to support local businesses in implementing these sustainable practices aligned with the CARP plan, and the grant basically gives out money for businesses to do that. So being more sustainable also helps these businesses reduce certain costs that they have with running not very energy efficient appliances, for example. They’ve also enhanced their capacity to provide eco-friendly solutions to their customers.
FINIAN HAZEN: What are some of the ways that Evanston businesses have been using this funding?
EVELYN HEATH: With the grant, businesses can apply and receive up to $25,000 and they can apply multiple times, but that’s only if they don’t receive the full $25,000. So let’s say they receive $5,000 one year, and then the next year they can get $20,000. So, they started this grant in 2023 and they had $250,000 altogether to give out. Eventually, in 2024 it increased to $500,000 and then in 2025 it increased to $750,000. Basically what that means for businesses is that there is a lot more money to allocate. If a business has already been granted the total amount, they can’t get more, but the city is doing a really amazing job at increasing that allocation fund so they can reach as many local business owners as possible in Evanston to really reach this carbon neutrality that they have set out through the CARP plan, and just to get as many businesses in general switching over to more efficient appliances, electric appliances, transitioning to electric landscaping equipment, integrating some sort of composting, recycling systems, anything like that. But the more money that they have to allocate means the more businesses they can reach.
FINIAN HAZEN: Who are some of the local business owners you got to talk to, and what did they have to say about the grant?
EVELYN HEATH: One of the people I talked to, her name is Kalpana Waikar. She’s the founder and CEO of this business called Inspired Indian Cooking. With Inspired Indian Cooking, she actually began selling these spice kits, first at a storefront in Evanston, and she applied for the grant to buy a dishwasher, and then she applied for an extra $20,000 which helped her open up an entire restaurant to start selling food, and her spice kits had a much larger quantity. So, she was able to use the grant to completely renovate and gut that kitchen that was there and create a very energy efficient, very sustainable appliance system that allowed her to start her restaurant for two years now, and she’s been very successful in it because of this grant.
I also talked to Cesar Marron, who is the head brewer and managing partner of Sketchbook Brewing Company. He was super interested in sustainability, and he talked about that he was involved in a whole plethora of climate change engagement programs in Evanston, he was actually one of the first businesses to apply when the Sustain grant came out, and he told me that he told all of these other businesses about it, to apply for it, because it’s basically free money that the council is giving out just for businesses to be more sustainable, to renovate their kitchens, be more electric.
It’s not only helping them reduce their costs, but it’s helping them look more professional, be more innovative. I mean, another business I spoke to was actually nonprofit, the Woman’s Club of Evanston. I spoke with their member, Michelle Salazar, and she was telling me the same thing — they got to renovate their entire kitchen, which was a whole $90,000 endeavor, but $25,000 were able to be used towards that from the city. And she says that, yeah, obviously it’s great to be helping the environment, but it also helps the way that their business looks to people that want to use their space to caterers, and just helps them feel more modern.
FINIAN HAZEN: For local businesses that may be interested in a 2025 Sustain Evanston grant, who is eligible and by what deadline should they apply?
EVELYN HEATH: The Sustain Evanston grant for 2025 just opened February 17, and any local businesses who have not applied for the grant yet, or have not received the entire $25,000 they can apply for are eligible to apply and rolling basis until the money’s gone.
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FINIAN HAZEN: Evelyn, thank you so much.
ANAVI PRAKASH: And a sneak peak into later this week: Photo Editor Ashley Dong will release ‘The Quarter in Photos,’ a visual look into the quarter that was. There were a lot of photos taken this quarter — what puts one in the running to be featured in this gallery?
ASHLEY DONG: We are choosing our photos based on number one, of course, whether or not it is objectively a good photo. A photo is a good photo if it makes you think when you look at it, and it’s not something that is just like any other photo that you look at and you kind of forget about. And we have some pretty amazing photographers on The Daily that check out our cameras and take them to all these events that are going on, on campus and off campus, and we really wanted to highlight the work that they’re doing and the impact that their photography is having on our community.
And number two, because most of our photos are tied to stories, we also weigh the impacts of that story on the community, how it was received.
ANAVI PRAKASH: This is the first quarter The Daily will put out a gallery like this — what inspired you to do it?
ASHLEY DONG: We are inspired by The New York Times, and their ‘(The) Year in Pictures,’ and we wanted to sort of recreate that with The Daily, but just in a quarter, because we’re doing turnovers pretty soon.
When we’re in a quarter, everything is happening so quickly, and we’re just publishing galleries and stories without really realizing all the work that we’re doing. So it’s really nice to, at the end of the quarter, take a second to look back and reflect on all that we’ve accomplished this quarter and everything that we’ve covered. And I think because photos are such a crucial part to every story, it’s a really easy and really gratifying way to look back at everything that’s happened, and sort of celebrate all the work that we’ve done this quarter.
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ANAVI PRAKASH: Ashley, thank you so much.
FINIAN HAZEN: Here are the other top headlines from the week:
Police arrest man with loaded handgun near Evanston Public Library.
Jill Stein talks oligarchy, foreign policy at Political Union winter speaker event.
Northwestern softball bounces back from weekend-opening loss, wins 3 straight.
Marriage 101 professors reflect on course as it turns 25.
From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Finian Hazen.
ANAVI PRAKASH: And I’m Anavi Prakash
Thank you for listening to another episode of The Weekly. This episode was reported by Anavi Prakash, Finian Hazen, Lily Ogburn, Evelyn Heath and Ashley Dong and produced by Anavi Prakash and Finian Hazen.
The Audio Editor is Anavi Prakash. The Multimedia Managing Editors are Kelley Lu and Jillian Moore. The Editor in Chief is Lily Ogburn.
Our theme music is “Night Owl” by Broke for Free, used under a Creative Commons Attribution License and provided by the Free Music Archive.
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