2010 Making Media Connections Conference

Glenn Reedus is a native Chicagoan and continues to build on a childhood ambition of being a newspaper reporter. Currently, the publisher of the online newspaper South Suburban News – www.southsnews.com . Prior to launching the paper last June, he worked as the interim executive editor , and then managing editor at the Chicago Defender. During his tenure at the Defender, he also servedas the paper’s editorial writer, columnist and Web site editor. He is adamant about newspapers’ futures are in television (video on newspapers’ Web sites)

Reedus has  worked as a business, general assignment reporter, night city editor, and online editor at The Oakland Press (Pontiac, MI); a general assignment reporter at The Blade newspaper in Toledo, Ohio;  a business reporter in Waterloo, Iowa, and on the re-write desk at the Omaha World Herald. On a few occasions, boredom led Reedus out of the newspaper business and into other arenas including; municipal government as the public information officer and executive assistant to the Mayor of Pontiac; MI. Reedus parlayed a stint with the largest public relations firm in Michigan into a seven-year career heading up his own P.R. firm. He mixed his passion for education and Journalism by teaching three years at Michigan State University.

A graduate of Creighton University (Omaha, NE)., Reedus was awarded the “Journalism Activist” award from the Illinois Violence Prevention Project in 2008 for several columns on shootings and violence in Chicago. He is the recipient of an Associated Press Editorial News Writing and Photo award for team coverage of the 10-year anniversary of the crash of Flight 255, at Detroit Metro Airport that killed 155 people. In November 2009, the South Suburban News received a Chicago Community Trust Community News Matters grant to train citizen journalists to cover Markham, IL using an iPhone-Qik software combination. Known as The Markham Project, the initiative is the first in the country to use non-professionals to stream community news.

His other  professional achievements include a Newspaper Association of America New Media Fellowship, three Council for Advancement and Support of Education Excellence in Writing awards, and a Herbert Davenport University of Missouri Economic Reporting Fellowship. Reedus was a charter board member of African American Community Broadcasting Inc. – the non-profit that built KBBG.FM – the nation’s first Black FM educational radio station.