About me - Leslie Jones McCloud

About me

I attended Indiana State University. While
there, I underwent a career assessment that indicated a
career in Journalism would satisfy my curiosity and fulfill a need to help the community around me. I graduated.
My professional writing experience has been interlaced with starting a family-a difficult task.
I began working free of charge at small niche newspaper in Indianapolis, Indiana where lived at the time. I also worked full time at a mental health facility because I was exploring the possibility of returning to school for an advanced degree in Psychology.
However, I went on to work at a radio station freelance at $75 per news story.
Our whole family moved back to my then husband's hometown
of Chicago where I began as a police reporter at the City
News Bureau of Chicago after the birth of my son in 1998.
When the agency closed in 1999 after 100 years, I was hired at the Chicago Defender that same year. I wrote many hardhitting stories as hard news was my forte. I became a reporter at Alliance News, a wire service started by Hollinger International to replace the City News Bureau.
That business closed less than five years after its start.
I began to freelance in 2001 at a local newspaper, the
Post-Tribune-then owned by Hollinger for the next several years.
My editor Richard Grey trained me to write community based news and brites-a break from the hard news I was used to writing. I took a short break to work at the Boca Raton News in Florida before returning to Gary. I had very little time left to learn from her mentor. Mr. Grey died in 2005 at a young age. It is my belief that he worked himself to death during a weeks-long hectic work schedule. Death by work is not uncommon to reporters.
Enough about me.

Briefly me

My passion is ...

writing and reporting

I know too much about ...

no comment

My parents always told me ...

get a normal job

My childhood ambition ...

to become a copywriter and be famous for my commercials

My favorite memory ...

being at the top of my game

Why I write ...

I have to-it clears my mind

What I am reading/watching/listening to ...

the newspaper/Half and Half/Kanye West

My first job ...

waitress

My best moment ...

whenever I am being helpful and not destructive

My inspiration ...

to live very well-high on the hog even-off of the interest

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Featured article by Leslie Jones McCloud

Politics, News & Issues > US Elections Election 2008: Obama meets the Clinton machine in the primaries

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)is the Michael Jordan of politics-if not told by the rabid cheers of his supporters then the fire of his campaign and rally speeches-even when he is late. He got heckled by a group of right-to-lifers who were in the crowd and he handled it beautifully. "I have no problem with you guys," he said, promising to speak with them after the rally if they wanted. "They organized to do that and that is a part of the American tradition," he said of them. This is why he will be elected the next president of the USA. "Organizing is hard to d...

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