City Beat

DeWayne Bartels is dead. He died the way he wanted to, working on a story. His wife found him sitting on the floor of their home, hunched over his laptop. DeWayne was a former co-worker of mine at the Peoria Times-Observer. He got his start in journalism at the former Tazewell Publishing Company, which later became Times Newspapers, which were...
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“This is a really, really bad situation,” said Gregory Johnson. He’s a cashier at the East Peoria Kroger’s Store. He normally takes the bus to work. Except Sunday. On Sunday he walks. And it isn’t for the exercise. The problem is two-fold. The Greater Peoria Mass Transit District (City Link) doesn’t have late evening bus...
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I used to work at a newspaper called the Cape Girardeau News Guardian. It was a rare thing: a start-up newspaper. It began about six months before I joined up, and it ceased publication about a year after I left to return toPeoria. But could you just imagine? Someone STARTING a newspaper! And it was a glorious...
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Bishop Daniel Jenky claims that Barack Obama is behaving like Hitler did. More precisely, he said that Obama is on the path that Hitler and Stalin took. He said this in a homily, given from the pulpit of the church. Let us examine this statement. Hitler wrote a book detailing his hatred for the Jewish people....
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Sometimes, you just have to wonder what Aaron Schock is thinking. Obviously, it’s not: “Hey, I better watch myself or I’m going to get my butt kicked in the next election.” Aaron Schock’s campaign reimbursed the Congressman (or friends and family members) for more than $150,000 in the 2008 and 2010 campaigns. This is according to...
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There’s a rumor we’ve burned some Korans in Afghanistan and some Muslims go on a murder spree. Oh, really not good. President Obama apologizes for the burnt Korans. And the religious right goes nuts. Also not good. Iran starts burning Bibles (or so the Washington Times says, and they aren’t the most reliable rag, so I’m not really sure that really happened). And the religious...
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Well, not literally murder. But he nearly killed his own career. Or, maybe not. Here’s the problem. The Peoria City manager wanted to move some $29 million around to help pay for bonds that the city is buying to finance the Mariott Plaza project. Actually, there no Mariott in place now. Let’s just call it the...
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And if by “labor problem,” you mean a “management-is-trying-to-screw-workers-around” problem, you’re right. WMBD 31 electrical workers recently put out an informational picket describing how WMBD 31 management — actually Nexstar — has them working without a contract. So, WMBD 31 joins WEEK/WHOI in the not-treating-their-workers-right camp. And then you have the Journal Star, which is...
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It’s amazing. A couple of years ago, the Peoria County State’s Attorney had some cops arrested and changed with police brutality. The arrest was based on a YouTube video taken immediately after a nighttime race through Peoria’s streets. The convicted drug dealer suspect claimed he was horribly beaten by Peoria police who were trying...
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I had a little bit of a confrontation. Call it a discussion, if you like. For the past four weeks or so, I’ve been collecting information from daily police reports from the Peoria Police Department and including them in blotter reports I’ve been running on Blogger News Net. This online-only news organization operates at tellpeoria.com/news. No big...
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