Best of luck to the Illini getting through this crisis. College news organizations are every bit at risk as commercial news publishers, for many of the same reasons.

One thing about your article, though, raised my eyebrows: that among the vendors they need to pay is the AP. Why does a collegiate news outlet even need to run AP stories? Those can be found in a million other places online, and the Illini should focus on its original campus and community coverage, in my view. Wouldn't that be a logical place to trim the budget?

Are there plans to replace board members and management? Seems like a cavalcade of bad decisions, and any donations
, sans new leadership, would just kick the can.

Ebert: Without getting into management issues, I will observe that the new publisher is a recent addition to the paper.

The DI was an important part of my education and I was lucky to have had the opportunity to work there. I would hate to see it go away and not provide a similar opportunity to others.

This is sad, but discussing it with the folks I worked with at DI and buzz has led to some nostalgia on facebook. Hopefully they figure out a way to get their finances straight and keep the ship afloat. I have great memories of working for that paper.

I worked at WPGU radio for five years. I didn't end up going into radio, but I learned a lot and did a lot of things I would never have done in a classroom. I still operate by the "give it a try and - assuming you survive - you will be the grizzled veteran expert in a few months" routine as a consultant. I made my donation and am crossing my fingers for others to come through as well.

Dear Mr. Ebert,

My name is Patrick Shea, and I'm a journalist for Urbana High School's newspaper, The Echo- a publication that I understand you are familiar with! As I read your memoir, Life Itself, I was thrilled to hear what life was like in my hometown when you were my age, and I recognized many of the landmarks you mentioned. I too love the city of Urbana, and have enjoyed growing up here immensely. I have biked, walked, or taken the bus to every corner of our city, and I even recognized your childhood home by description- the white stucco house on Washington street. I pass it all the time! As a small child I was raised just down the street in a little white house (which is now a little yellow house), although I now live near Yankee Ridge elementary. I enjoyed hearing about the Tiger's Den, and wish it was still around today! Where exactly was it located? In my mind I am picturing it in that small shut-down Asian grocery on the corner of Race and Washington.

In Journalism class, we recently added a Broadcasting department. We upload sports highlights, interviews, and we even have our own talk show, which I am an anchor on. You can view all of our videos here: http://www.youtube.com/user/UHSBroadcasting.

We have set up one of the school’s backrooms with a green screen, camera, and desktop computer. We found a light green piece of fabric to use as a green screen, and we use the Sony Vegas computer program to put in the background and add captions. The camera we're currently filming with has a cracked screen, and we can't see what we're filming, so we have to hook it up to a monitor to see what the camera is pointing at (this process can be quite frustrating!) We hope to eventually be able to purchase higher quality cameras and microphones, making it easier to stream live sports games at the high school. With nice microphones, we could even have journalism students give commentary on the live sporting events.

The journalism program at UHS is able to release a print paper each semester. Our spring semester paper was available to students on May 10 and went out as an insert in the News Gazette on May 19. However, you can read all of the articles written by Urbana students, including myself, on our online paper at http://www.uhsecho.com/.

Our goal for the broadcasting and journalism programs is to get more students involved, and we believe the higher quality equipment could encourage more students to be a part of broadcasting. The more equipment we get, the more students would be interested, and with more people involved and talking about broadcasting, our popularity could grow. Before long our videos could be viewed on local TV channels. As the journalism department grows, hopefully we will be able to afford more printed papers throughout the school year, which will be easily accessible to the students, staff, and local community members. We can achieve this goal by donations from the local community, and other journalism enthusiasts.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,
Patrick Shea

Ebert: Wow, the Echo is way ahead of the old days!

The Tiger's Den was in downtown Urbana, ome block south of Main Street, in the middle of that block. Sigh.