News-Record.com

The Chicago Tribune is a long way from our little citizen journalism site, YourNews. At least, that's what I used to think.

On Aug. 31, Lex posted citizen journalist Lori Wilson's three-paragraph story about her children and a friend selling lemonade to raise money for hurricane victims. She wrote:

Banks Wilson, his sister, Avery Wilson, and their neighbor Clay Millsaps raised $71.29 in one evening. The money will be turned over to a fund-raising effort at the Wilsons' school, Brooks Global Studies Extended Year Magnet School.

Three days later, the Chicago Tribune wrote a story with this "nut graf:" In Illinois and across the country, millions of Americans have watched a catastrophe unfold along the Gulf Coast and tried to do, in big ways and small, whatever they could to help victims of one of the nation's worst natural disasters.

Two paragraphs later, the writer said: On a smaller scale in Greensboro, N.C., Avery Wilson, 7, and her brother Banks, 10, said they raised $74.45 at their lemonade stand in the Historic College Hill neighborhood. "It seems like people care a lot about what's happening down there," Banks said.

The Greensboro kids get another 5 paragraphs at the end of the story, too.

As Lex said, it "looks like YourNews has served as a tip sheet for the Chicago Tribune."