Steve Tarter
CorrespondentSteve Tarter retired from the Peoria Journal Star in 2019 after spending 20 years at the paper as both reporter and business editor.
He joined WCBU in 2020 shortly before the pandemic hit. Tarter, married with four adult children, enjoys old movies, especially film noir. The former president of the Apollo Theater in Peoria loves those old black-and-white crime movies so much he hosts a free annual film noir series at the Peoria Public Library every spring. He also continues to host a weekly podcast, Tarter Source, started at the Journal Star several years ago, with a spotlight on Peoria-area personalities.
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Steve Gossard will tell you that Illinois is a circus state. The former curator of special collections—including circus collections—at Milner Library at Illinois State University in Normal has made it his business to research the state’s rich circus history.
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What do you do to energize students who might be disenchanted with their rural surroundings? If you’re Joe Brewer, a history teacher at Cuba High School, you develop a website with students to celebrate the accomplishments, past and present, of western Illinois.
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Demarkius Medley, 37 lives in Galesburg with his wife and four children, hoping to succeed as an African American farmer despite growing up in the inner city with virtually no experience in the field.
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When you talk about the state of rural America, the story usually involves boarded-up storefronts and shrinking downtowns. Declines in jobs and population in small towns in Illinois and across America stretch back decades.
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Kira Santiago is on a mission: as she enters her ninth year as a flower farmer in East Peoria, she wants to promote Illinois flower power.
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So the Midwest is flyover country, is it? Don’t tell Jon Lauck that.
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As executive director of the Everett Dirksen Congressional Center in Pekin, Tiffany White believes more people not only need to know more about the center but how government works in the United States.
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Downtown Peoria isn’t as lively as it used to be. That’s probably an understatement even for downtown boosters.
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Bob McChesney, professor emeritus of communication at the University of Illinois, has been writing about the state of journalism for years. Along with a string of books, numerous articles and a program on public radio, McChesney has now collaborated with Wisconsin journalist John Nichols to offer the Local Journalism Initiative.