Is this horrible? Yes. Is the fight over? No.

Q101 has made it very clear that they plan to continue Chicago’s Alternative on Q101.com.

They also provide a glimpse of hope for avid listeners.

“We are negotiating with area broadcasters to bring Q101 back on the air.”

Support your alternative station by going to Q101.com and listening live. Tweet, Facebook, and blog about them. Go mobile and download their iPhone app.

This fight is far from over.

With all the artists performing at Lollapalooza, which bands are a must-see? Well, this week I’ll give you three.

1.) Two Door Cinema Club (TDCC)

I’ve been in love since Spring 2010. Can’t recall how I ran across their music but the first track I heard was their infectious track, “Undercover Martyn.” Like candy to your ears, it is sweet, delightful, and just plain fun. Their album Tourist History deserves a lot of play. Their song, “Something Good Can Work” is paired with a video that seems to be a celebration of summer. From swimming in pools, enjoying nature’s beauty, and carnival rides, it is definitely a song for summer and something to watch when Chicago reaches 20 below in January.

TDCC will be playing at Lollapalooza on Friday, August 5th on the Sony stage from 5-6 p.m. They will also be headlining the following night, Saturday, August 6th at Lincoln Hall for a Lollapalooza Aftershow that starts at 11 p.m. Tickets are sold out.

2.) Friendly Fires

I’ve learned to always trust Friendly Fires. Their new album, Pala brings the same funky dance beats from their self-titled debut, but surprises the listener with something new and as colorful as the album cover. Simply put, every track stands out. Ed Macfarlane is one of the most mesmerizing performers in the music business. It’s hard not to adore his erratic dancing and nonstop energy. The new music video for their track, “Hawaiian Air” makes me want to book a nonstop flight to Honolulu, even if I have to endure the annoying people Macfarlane sits next to on the plane in the video.

Catch Friendly Fires at Lollapalooza on Saturday, August 6 from 2:15-3 p.m. on the Bud Light stage.

3.)Foster the People (FTP)

As soon as I heard, “Pumped Up Kicks” I knew this was a band to watch. With the release of their first album, Torches, FTP have been winning the hearts of music lovers everywhere. Needless to say, Foster the People are on their way to the top with their catchy hooks and a sound all of their own. It’s no wonder their songs are addicting, lead singer Mark Foster created jingles for commercials prior to the creating the band. One listen to “Houdini” and it’ll be on replay for at least a month.

FTP will be performing at Lollapalooza on Friday, August 5th from 3-4 p.m. on the Sony stage.

Chicago Force players watch from the sidelines during their game against Western Michigan. Photo Credit by Lauren Camplin

By Ali Trumbull and Lauren Camplin 

They refer to themselves as the “Band of Sisters”. They’re teachers, singers, police officers, full-time moms and nurses.

Despite differing backgrounds, the group of over 60 women come together every week for the same reason—to play tackle football for the Chicago Force.

“We have a camaraderie with one another and that was one of the reasons why I came back because I missed the team and I missed being around my band of sisters,” said offensive linesman Rosalyn Bennett.

Formed in 2003, the Chicago Force joined the Women’s Football Alliance after spending eight seasons with the Independent Women’s Football League.

“The new league is an opportunity to play different competition,” said George Howe, Director of Media Relations. “We were looking for new challenges after playing the same teams for eight years.”

The league is not to be confused with the well-known Lingerie Football League’s Chicago Bliss. The WFA women wear full gear and play tackle football.  This can come as a shock even to those trying out for the team.

“Seeing what it takes to run a team was a shock to my system,” said Samantha Powell, head of game day operations. “I had no idea all the moving parts of an offensive team and coaching staff, defensive team, special teams, special plays.”

While many of the rules in the league mirror those of the NFL, there are strong differences between the two besides gender. The players in the Women’s Football Alliance have to pay $600 to play on the team in order to cover expenses. Some women have multiple jobs along with being on the team.

“I’m an actress and I’m also a bartender to pay the bills and I play music,” said starting quarterback Samantha Grisafe. “I have a band, The Wick, so we play all around Chicago-Double Door, Martyr’s, Reggie’s, that’s a lot of fun. So I basically get to perform in all aspects of the word.”

Bennett, Dean of Students at Dyett High School, works 12 hours a day before coming to the Force’s practice. She is trying to find a way to balance these two worlds with her schedule.

“I haven’t mastered that yet, trying to find that balance, you know,” said Bennett. “I deal with discipline so of course, the course of my day is pretty much at times, negativity. This gives me a chance to relax from the job, the responsibilities, and to just get rid of some of that tension that I experience at the job.”

While it can be a handful to balance personal and professional lives, the team gets plenty of help through fundraising and volunteers.

“Almost all of us are volunteers,” said Howe. “That in itself takes a special kind of people. You have to have people like that.”

The team holds golf outings, calendar raffles, and bowling outings to raise money. Even with volunteers, getting a strong  following is no easy task.

“The biggest obstacle is getting the word out,” said Howe. “A lot of newspapers don’t take small teams seriously. When you ask about women’s football people think lingerie league.”

Powell also agrees getting the word out is the toughest part of getting participation, adding that the team takes a “grass-roots approach” to building a fan base.

The Force beat the Western Michigan Mayhem 15-6 in a cold, rainy May game. Photo Credit by Ali Trumbull 

Getting attention is also difficult when the women wear full padding instead of lingerie. Chicago Force assistant coach Stacey Baker acknowledges that while the Lingerie Football League has competitive players, it doesn’t compare to the type of game the Chicago Force play.

“You know how there’s WWE wrestling and there’s Olympic wrestling?,” said Baker. “I don’t really see it as football. Are there good athletes on the team? Absolutely.”

Baker is one example of the athletic ability required to play in the Women’s Football Alliance. After playing football for five years, she was forced to retire after enduring a neck injury last season. Despite the injury, Baker remained committed to the league and became an Assistant Coach.

“I couldn’t stay away,” said Baker. “I loved it. It’s been hard not to play but I hope I’m making an impact on the team now.”

Even with a dedicated team, generating interest can be difficult because of the stereotypes often affiliated with women sports.

Quarterback Samantha Grisafe, who has been playing football since she was 10-years-old, has dealt with the stereotypes her whole life. When asked how she responds to it, she didn’t hesitate before answering.

“You show ‘em.”

Out of the 13 players on the team, nine are seniors, leaving a lot of room for next year’s varsity team. Coach Kimberly Richard may have a lot of work to do to prepare for next year’s season, and the four juniors currently on the team will have to step it up as leaders.

If they need any tips, they could always look to senior Anthony Harb who was awarded a Posse Scholarship for his excellence in leadership and academics. The Posse Foundation allows well-rounded students from urban settings, such as Chicago, to attend selective schools in the nation based on the skills they’ve shown in high school.

Harb received a full tuition scholarship to Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota through the Posse Foundation. He was one of the 85 in the nation to receive a Posse scholarship.

Lane Tech is one of the many Chicago Public Schools (CPS) that may be losing many older players due to the cut of sophomore programming last year. Unable to find the funding, many programs were majorly impacted by this cut, leaving last year’s sophomores without a team.

“There’s only enough spots for Regionals for 15 players on your bench,” said Richard. “A lot of teams had to cut sophomores, so teams didn’t have any sophomores and they didn’t come back after.”

Explains why majority of the varsity team is made up of seniors.

With playoffs right around the corner, the entire team needs to be ready to play, including senior Uran Kabashi who injured his ankle playing in a recreational basketball league. Kabashi hopes to be able to get back out on the court in time for the first match next week.

Senior floor captain, Peter Albright hopes that the Indians play up to their full potential during the playoffs.

“I think we didn’t play at our level this game, from the beginning it seemed,” said Albright.

The Indians trailed the Panthers at the beginning of each game, but Lane Tech always came back during the game, allowing them to win the match.

Albright had over nine assists, three kills in the first game and twelve assists, an ace, and two kills in the second game. Seniors Simon Tran and Cameron Carson play well at the net with Albright, especially Carson who scored 8 points in the second game.

The second game was close, Lane Tech only winning by 3 points, but a kill by Tran assisted by Albright won the match.

“We beat Lincoln Park on Friday, which they were undefeated going into Friday’s match, and I think that helped us but we did lose two matches,” said Richard.

Lane Tech will find out what they will be seeded in the playoffs on Thursday night. Coach Richard hopes to be ranked second or third based on their performance during the season.

Chuck Garfien, an anchor at CSN Chicago, stressed the importance of being able to write, blog, utilize social media, among other things in addition to his duties on camera. Garfien hosts the White Sox Pre Game and Post Game Live and sometimes contributes to Chicago Tribune Live. Garfien writes about the White Sox in Sox Drawer, his blog on CSN’s Web site.

Twitter proves to be useful resource that Garfien and Chris Clark, senior editorial producer, originally saw as “just another thing.” Not only is it a way to promote their work or CSN’s work, but a way to connect with viewers and fans of the beloved Chicago sports teams. Of course, it allows for not-so-friendly viewers and social media users to connect with anchors and journalists like Garfien and Clark, but they seem to know how to handle it professionally.

“Follow somebody else,” Clark simply states. They can read another person’s tweets.

Unlike Garfien, Clark has never spent time on camera, but he’s contributed to big names in sports such as MLB and the White Sox. He was an editorial producer at MLB.com and an original founder of whitesox.com. He had to adapt to the new age of journalism, adopting blogging, social media, and the switch to sports news being a 24/7 thing with the birth of the Internet. It continues to change and is constantly changing so journalists need to be able to adopt the new ways to tell a story or present a story, as they are developed.

CSN Chicago is owned partially by the Blackhawks, Bulls, Cubs, and White Sox, which can bring up issues of biased reporting. Obviously, CSN is a sports news outlet and should provide fair and balanced reporting, but it would appear to be difficult to report with the eyes of these teams watching over you. Garfien notes they always want their Chicago sports team to win each game or match, obviously, but they have a job to do as reporters.

“They know we have a job to do and we know they have a job to do too,” says Garfien on reporting on Chicago’s professional sports teams.

Exploring Chicago’s Comcast SportsNet studio was enlightening and supplied me with a lot of insight on what it is like to be a sports journalist. My eyes were also opened to the possibility of being a reporter for a broadcast sports media outlet, as I’ve always considered being more of a print journalist. Spending a few hours with Clark and Garfien was exciting, interesting, and I’m now considering this realm of reporting. It is nice to know there are plenty of options out there.

Okay, maybe new sports journalism deserves a rebuttal, as long as we are talking about online sports journalism. Personally, I still notice a lack of storytelling in print sports journalism. Online sports publications are taking the idea of storytelling to a whole new level with interactive digital storytelling.

I find this to be an attractive and refreshing change. In this age of technology, journalists have limitless options when deciding how to tell a story, and I’ve included some of my favorite examples below.

1.) Andy Roddick’s serve, one move at a time.

USA Today doesn’t just tell you about Roddick’s light speed serve, they show you in a unique frame-by-frame example where the reader controls how fast, what position, and when they move Roddick’s serve step-by-step. This is a great tool for tennis enthusiasts and players wanting to analyze Roddick’s serve.

2.) Super Bowl Ads: 1984-2007

Obviously, each year the Super Bowl ads are a huge deal and for those not fixated on the game, the only reason to watch the Super Bowl. The New York Times published this article in February 2007 paying tribute to Super Bowl ads from the past 23 years. Although it’s four years old and not necessarily the most appealing to the eye, it allows the reader to scroll through the years, see what sort of companies purchased ads during the game and shows popular commercials from each year. The infamous Macintosh commercial from Apple Computer, now known as Apple, from 1984 is included in the piece.

3.) This is why Tampa has hosted the Super Bowl four times.

One of my all-time favorite examples of great interactive storytelling, this insider’s guide allows fans traveling to Raymond James Stadium to know what they should do when they aren’t cheering on their team at the Super Bowl. With a map of the Tampa area as a background, readers can click on the different signs which include information about parties, restaurants, beaches, among other things so their visitors are well-informed on Tampa’s hot spots. Informative, interactive, appealing, and exciting, this is modern storytelling at its best.

4.) 2010 Vancouver Olympics

The Olympic games means constant media coverage for all the events. The problem I find is that with so many events, it is hard to keep track on what is being covered on certain days and times. Boston.com released this interactive map during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. This map allows readers to click on a date and see what events are going on and where in Vancouver. It is an easy, interactive, and organized way to keep track of when your favorite events will be on television.

While reading some sports articles in the “old school” journalistic style, I noticed that I became completely engrossed in the words on the page. So much so, that I can’t think of the last time a piece on sports has grabbed my attention and I couldn’t put it down. Maybe it was because it was about the glory days of Michael Jordan and the Bulls? Yes, I’m a Bulls fan, but I would like to attribute it to the writer’s storytelling.

Jonathan Eig wrote about the Bulls in a way that readers could relate to them. The focus was obviously on that night’s game or upcoming match-up, but reporters didn’t lose sight of the things that readers can’t see on the court or the field.

What is Christmas like at the Jordan household? What is your secret guilty pleasure in music? Those are the kinds of questions that fans would love to know the answers to, especially if Derrick Rose’s choice would be the likes of Cyndi Lauper.

The art of storytelling is what made me want to become a journalist. Unfortunately, it’s evident in every publication that this new school of journalism tends to favor dry reporting that you’d see when reading reports on a school board meeting. Sports journalism needs a mix of both.

We need the hard facts, the box scores, the reporting on what happened in each play that new school journalism brings to the table. Fans read about a game to find out the outcome, but who’s to say that it needs to be all facts?

Bringing some life to the pages with descriptive and detailed storytelling allows the reader to experience the game in a different way. Good storytelling can put the reader in the stands, at the game, and allow them to feel like they are there at the interview. That is what I think is lacking in sports journalism today. In the “Back to the Future” article in Columbia Journalism Review, I think Gary Andrew Poole says it best.

“But go to any major sporting event and you’ll see that the importance of sports to our culture is obvious; they are part of people’s dreams, of how they define themselves. The sports pages used to hold the honor as one of the best-written and best-reported sections in a newspaper. It’s important for sports, for newspapers, and our society that they recapture that mantle.”

The Internet has truly made the news a 24/7 thing, which is beautiful.

What’s the catch? There is always a catch.

How does a media outlet make money off something that is accessible to everyone at any time for free?

Sally Duros and fellow journalists are trying to figure that out. Sally Duros has worked in the news for many years and thinks of strategies for successful online media outlets that focus on a specialized audience while making a profit.

The new way to think about journalism is by using a Low Profit Limited Liability Company (L3C) Newsroom. In the past, we’ve been thinking that the advertising is the most important, rather than the editors and reporters for the publication. A L3C Newsroom is the key because it is run more by a social benefit development.

The L3C is designed to be self-sustaining, attractive to smaller communities by focusing in on that community and all the issues surrounding it, and capable of running like a regular newsroom.

So how successful is this L3C model?

A publication in Point Reyes, California seems to be the guinea pig. Web sites like VillageSoup plan on following in the California publication’s footsteps in May.

The main point of this model is to focus on what is going on in your neighborhood. By breaking up the city of Chicago into the many neighborhoods (Old Town, Gold Coast, Lakeview) we are honing in on the issues in each area and not allowing one story to be missed if at all possible.

Remember “local” is even more local. What could be more important than what is going on outside your front door? There is a story on every street corner, publications just need to keep their eyes open and remember local, local, local.

Chicago is one city with many, many neighborhoods so it is time to take “local” to the next level. Time to focus on the neighborhoods, not the city as a whole.

Multimedia packages are the best way to tell a story. Readers can get a feel for the news, issues, and important topics to a community by more than just reading words on a Web site. Videos, audio, and Soundslides are just a few outlets for bringing the reader into the story.

“North and Clybourn is next.”

The new owners for the Lincoln Park Hospital are thinking big picture. Creating a proposal for hospital redevelopments, ideas for upgrading buildings for multiple uses is a heated discussion in the Lincoln Park community. If the proposal is passed, buildings could be used for residential, retail, and senior living purposes. This proposal is in the beginning stages. This is a great opportunity for people who live within the area to voice their opinions on the Northside Chicago hospital.

“Doors open on the left at Jackson.”

Politics is always a hot topic in the “Windy City,” especially with the elections coming up on February 22nd. The 2nd Ward Alderman is running for re-election. Robert Fioretti considered running for Mayor but due to health reasons, decided to try to continue his duties with the 2nd Ward. This could make for an interesting political, community involvement story. Greg Hinz, a blogger for Crain’s Chicago Business, talks politics and could be a great reference.