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This summer, the JJIE brings you The Chicago Project, a sometimes multimedia, sometimes straight news, sometimes long form and always objective effort to cover a broad variety of reporting on youth issues from that city. The Project is a collaboration between the JJIE and seasoned reporters and students and is led by Eric Ferkenhoff, a former criminal justice and education beat reporter with the Chicago Tribune who is currently a professor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. His creation, The Chicago Bureau is a platform that seeks, “through an objective and narrow lens, to make sense of macro issues.” Now, through the JJIE, that reporting, that exploration of the issues and the lives of young people, will reach a wider readership. The aim here is good, solid journalism, but this is also an effort to give voice to some of the nation’s most talented young journalists so they can give voice to other young people who have no voice at all.

Quinn, Hoping to Fill Huge Budget Hole, Sends Mixed Message to State’s Neediest

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By Eric Ferkenhoff and Maryam Jameel

Only hours before a Sunday deadline, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn inked a $33.7 billion budget Saturday, balancing the books but angering some education and child welfare experts and confounding political observers who said the Democrat may well have done more harm than good to the state’s neediest residents. Quinn, facing a $43.8 billion budget deficit – reportedly the nation’s worst — before the new fiscal year 2013 kicked in,  took a budget that the General Assembly handed him on Friday, and cut it by $57 million. In doing so, Quinn said  ”our priority should always be the safety and well-being of our children,” and promised to return some of the Illinois’ legislature’s planned $50 million in cuts to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, or DCFS, the agency that handles most abuse and neglect cases and shelters the most at-risk. But critics said just the opposite could happen as Quinn, while saying he was protecting children and their education, cut $200 million in education funding and $85 million in child-welfare funding. Kent Redfield, an Illinois political expert and a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Springfield, said that while the cuts bring immediate savings, they could deepen problems, leading to bigger spending down the road.