What happened this month? Eight Forty-Eight remembers

What happened this month? Eight Forty-Eight remembers
AP/M. Spencer Green
What happened this month? Eight Forty-Eight remembers
AP/M. Spencer Green

What happened this month? Eight Forty-Eight remembers

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(AP/M. Spencer Green)
It’s the last day of March, so it’s clearly time for our Month-in-Review segment. We’ll be talking with some of the biggest names in Chicago news today. Here’s a preview of what they’re still fixated on:

Hal Weitzman, Chicago and Midwest correspondent for the Financial Times; author of the book, Latin Lessons: How South America Stopped Listening to the United States and Started Prospering

Weitzman says he finds the most under-reported story to be “the likely postponement of Pat Quinn’s ‘rendezvous with reality’ as we hear nothing about whether Illinois will try to pass pension reform before the government’s self-imposed deadline of April 17.” He’s also been taking a look at President Obama’s nomination of Jim Yong Kim, president of Dartmouth, to head the World Bank: “It raises the thorny question of why we always have to have an American running the World Bank.”

But Weitzman is sick of one mega-story: coverage of the GOP primary. “Enough already,” he says.

Listen to Weitzman, Anderson and Wildeboer talk over their picks on Eight Forty-Eight

Monroe Anderson, veteran Chicago journalist and blogger

You might be surprised at Anderson’s first pick: Trayvon Martin. But Anderson says that it’s how long it took for the story to hit the press in the big way it has that makes it noteworthy. “The story is more than a month old and only got legs in the last 10 days or so,” he explains. He also thinks a Republican effort to discourage voter participation in Philadelphia through voter ID laws is worth discussng.

But what you won’t hear Anderson begging for more of: Rick Santorum’s “threat” to Mitt Romney. Stuff he’s still interested in: the Republican party’s “war on women” via the anti-contraceptive, abortion measures, and the alleged murders of innocent Afghanistan civilians by Sgt. Robert Bales and how our all-volunteer military may be a contributing factor.

Rob Wildeboer, WBEZ criminal justice reporter

Wildeboer, WBEZ’s resident Blagojevich expert, of course, has to pick Illinois’ former governor’s trip to jail as his story of the month. He’s also been covering John Harris’ 10 day sentence, Chicago’s record weekend in violence, and Dorothy Brown’s overwhelming win in the primary election.

What are the stories you were following this month? And which are the ones you never want to hear about again?