Isaac Jones still remembers the walk-in closet of his Austin home doubling as a darkroom.
It was back when he and fellow West Sider Brad Cummings were just launching what would become their life’s work: their very own hyperlocalized, Austin-centered community newspaper.
Jones’ closet is where they’d develop photos for the two-man venture. Then they’d sprawl out on the living room floor of Cummings’ apartment a few minutes down the road and — using scissors and glue — cut and paste their neighborhood paper together by hand.
That same scrappy, community-driven pursuit has persisted for 40 years.
It may not for much longer.
The publication, today known as the Voice Newspapers, faces an uncertain future after Cummings — who was its acting editor — died in an apartment fire in Austin, which also killed three others, nearly two months ago. In his absence, Jones, likewise still at the top of the Voice masthead as publisher and photography director, has been confronted with how to carry the publication forward. It has not only lost its linchpin, but is also tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
Jones, who now lives in Virginia but sat down for an interview with the Tribune about 3 miles west of the Voice Newspapers’ office at 5236 W. North Ave., said he hopes to eventually pass the venture onto successors in the community who will provide the same entrenched coverage he and Cummings brought to the West Side for decades. To do so, though, Jones first needs to ensure the publication is fiscally sound, he said.
If he can’t, he’ll have to say goodbye to more than his friend.
‘Glue of a community’
Jones, 67, met Cummings in the 1980s. It was the Voice that brought them together.
Born on the South Side but a longtime West Sider by the time he crossed paths with Cummings, Jones was working as a photographer when he caught wind that someone was launching a community newspaper for the neighborhood and needed a partner who was good with the lens. That someone was Cummings.
The publication officially started nearly four decades ago to the day, launching on Labor Day weekend of 1985, according to a 1998 Chicago Reader article. At first, it was just known as The Austin Voice. Twenty years later, a sister publication, The Garfield-Lawndale Voice, also started to circulate. Together, they became known as the Voice Newspapers.
The publication was one of 8,891 local newspapers circulating across the United States in 2005, according to the Medill Local News Initiative at Northwestern University. As of last year, that number was down to 5,595, a decrease of 37%.
The business model for local news has collapsed, said Tim Franklin, founding director of the Medill Local News Initiative. Amid technological changes, people have turned to digital platforms, social media and online searches to get their news and information, which diverts readers away from traditional news sources, he said. Advertising is also pivoting away from newspapers to those same digital platforms. On average, the U.S. is losing about two and a half newspapers a week, Franklin said. But those publications, in many ways, are the “glue of a community,” he said.
The Voice Newspapers covered local events, profiled notable West Siders, ran columns from area clergy and produced front-page features with a spread of photos about the latest in the neighborhood. In June, the Voice wrote about an affordable housing development breaking ground in West Humboldt Park. The week before, the paper featured a set of East Garfield Park triplets headed to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on full-ride scholarships in the fall.
“Three outstanding young men just graduated after stellar academic careers at Providence-St. Mel High School, 119 South Central Park Avenue,” the Voice wrote in its May 28 issue. “What makes them different from other 17-year-olds walking across a stage and picking up diplomas is that these three are triplets.”
In its early years, the paper took on street gangs, drugs and crime. The Tribune wrote about The Austin Voice in 1991 after the newspaper took on a notorious street gang that had a stranglehold on the community for years, according to Tribune archives. The headline read, “Little newspaper a really big voice.”
From the get-go, Jones was more than just a photographer. Between him and Cummings, they’d “go out and cover everything,” Jones said, from landing stories and laying out pages to canvassing the neighborhood for advertising and hand-delivering issues by the truckload. It was hard, even tedious at times, but fun, Jones said.
Through the long hours spent together on the job, Cummings became more than a business partner to Jones. He was his brother, Jones said, and the Voice Newspapers was their legacy.
What that legacy would look like without them at the helm was something Jones had been grappling with for much longer than just the past couple of months. Jones recalled raising the question of their succession to Cummings years ago as he prepared to leave the city and move to Virginia to be closer to family.
But, Jones recalled, “Brad kept saying, ‘No, I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to live forever.’”
The fire erupted
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across the street from the Voice Newspapers office in the early hours of June 26, quickly engulfing an apartment building in the 5200 block of West North Avenue. It took firefighters about 45 minutes to extinguish the blaze and eight ladders to rescue people from the building. Four didn’t get out: Gina Henry, 32, her 5-year-old son and her sister, Destiny Henry, 28, and Cummings, 76, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office and several published reports. Gina, Destiny and Cummings’ deaths were ruled as homicides, caused by inhalational injuries and carbon monoxide toxicity, per the medical examiner’s office.On July 11, a Humboldt Park man was charged with multiple counts of first-degree murder and aggravated arson in connection to the fatal blaze. Lontray Clark, 23, is accused of intentionally starting the fire. On Aug. 18, Clark pleaded not guilty to all 107 charges against him, Cook County court records show.
Meanwhile, for more than a month, Jones has been fundraising to save the Voice.
‘Keep the VOICE alive’
Prior to Cummings’ death, the overdue payments had been mounting. Declining advertisement dollars, the Voice Newspapers’ primary source of income, made it so “we couldn’t pay the bills,” Jones said. But after the fire, the problem came to a head.
As it stands today, the Voice Newspapers owes some $65,000 in printing, rent and utility payments, according to Jones.
Days before Cummings died, the Voice met with the Medill Local News Initiative, where they discussed the challenges the publication was facing and started brainstorming ideas and steps it could take to transform for today’s media landscape, Franklin said. The initiative runs a “Local News Accelerator” program that works with news organizations throughout Chicago to help them grow and become sustainable, according to Franklin. But then, “we had this tragedy,” he said. Medill has since been giving the Voice space but is “still very open to continuing that conversation,” Franklin said.
After hopping on the first flight to Chicago once he heard what had happened and spending days in the wake of the fire trying to reach and notify Cummings’ next of kin, Jones launched a GoFundMe page to try and help clamp down on the paper’s debt.
“Keep the VOICE Alive,” the GoFundMe page reads. “In memory of Brad. 40 Years and Beyond.”
As of Friday afternoon, the fundraiser has raised just under $1,800.
Jones is trying to get the Voice on a clean slate, not for him, but for the paper’s next newsroom, he said. If he can get the debt down, Jones would start the interview process for a new publisher and editor who’d want to step in and continue the publication, he said. Ideally, the positions would be filled by “individuals from the community, (who) know the community and are sincere, like Brad and I were,” he said.
Jones’ main goal is seeing the paper carry on, he said. He’s in good company.
Across the road from the site of the fatal blaze, a stack of old copies of The Austin Voice sat on So Much Style’s 5233 W. North Ave. windowsill Thursday afternoon. Inside the barbershop, owner Anthony Heard gave a customer a midday haircut.
A longtime resident of Austin who has known about The Austin Voice since he was 10 years old, Heard, 57, said the paper “is a value to our community” because it had a “hands-on” pulse on the neighborhood, adding he wishes it would come back.
Every week since the fire, a group of people have stopped by Shine King at 338 N. Central Ave., looking for a copy of the Voice, according to its owner, Vernon Cole.
“I can tell you,” Cole said, “the community is missing it.”
So is he.
The Voice and Shine King, an old-school shoeshine shop founded by Cole’s father in 1964, have worked together “forever,” Cole said. That relationship, especially for a small business like his, he said, has been instrumental as customers cycled through his store Thursday, either sitting down for a $6 shine or leaving their shoes behind for an off-the-feet buff.
“Trying to advertise in the larger mediums … is very expensive,” Cole said. But the Voice met him where he was at. Noting that the past few years “haven’t been the easiest,” Cole said Cummings was accommodating when he struggled to make ends meet. He recalled once needing a new advertisement in the paper and Cummings offering to do so without payment up front.
“He was more excited about wanting to run that ad than he was about me paying him,” Cole said, his eyes shining with tears.
It’s been hard for Cole to get used to Cummings being gone.
“It just seemed like somebody was trying to reach for me and then all of a sudden,” Cole faltered, shaking his head.
Dathan Threatt, who’s spent most of his life living in Austin, said the Voice “has always been able to see what’s (happening) in this neighborhood.” Threatt, 48, remembered when he was younger, he’d run into Cummings walking around just asking “what was going on,” he said. He wants to see that again, with new reporters taking up the torch.
Threatt pointed to himself as a testament to the need for a community newspaper. Earlier this spring, Threatt and his 25-year-old son opened their own resource center at 5247 W. North Ave., where they sell clothes, electronics, toys, accessories and other items at marked-down prices. “A lot of people don’t know about us” and getting in the paper would have helped them promote the center, Threat said.
“It’s needed,” he said. “It’s needed back.”
Brian Nadig, publisher of Nadig Newspapers, which has covered the Far Northwest Side of the city since 1940, says it’s “really important” to have local media.
“We might cover, each week, 20 (or) 24 different crimes in the neighborhood,” Nadig said. “Where else are they going to get that information? You know, (say) the local school is closing. Why is it closing? … I think that’s sort of the gap. Who’s going to be the trusted local source for news?”
Community members and elected officials gathered at New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church in West Garfield Park on Friday to mourn Cummings. Some 75 people filled the pews. Programs for the service were fashioned to look like newspapers.
“Celebrating the life of Bradley ‘Brad’ Cummings: Though the pen is still, the impact of this writing will continue to inspire,” the program read.
It’s difficult now for Jones to return to the Voice Newspapers office. Inside is everything Cummings left behind, while outside is an everyday reminder he’s gone. One day, Jones hopes to have closure, he said. He’s not sure he ever will.
Still, he’s determined to do “everything and anything” in his power to ensure what he and Cummings built together continues, he said, even as he wrestles with the understanding that he can only do so much.
“I’m resigned to the fact that if I can’t generate an income, (Voice Newspapers is) going to have to fold,” he said. “Forty years in existence is going to cease.”
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