Our Story & Mission
Rooted in local news since 1942
A Conversation That Wouldn’t Go Away
Windmill Media didn’t start with a business plan. It started with a conversation — the kind you overhear at the store, the diner, the gas station — where a neighbor says, “I didn’t even know they were voting on that.”
That conversation has been happening more and more across small-town Illinois, and it shouldn’t be.
Three Generations of Community Journalism
My grandfather bought the local newspaper in 1942. My father carried it forward, and so did I. For decades, our family understood that a local newspaper wasn’t just a business — it was the connective tissue of a community. It told people what their elected officials were doing, who won Friday night’s game, who passed away, and what was coming up at the library.
In 2021, I sold our family newspaper and stepped back from the newsroom. But I never stopped caring about the communities I’d spent a career serving.
The Gap That Couldn’t Be Ignored
What happened next is a story playing out across rural Illinois and across the country. Newsrooms cut staff. Print costs climbed. Advertising moved online. Papers that had served their communities for generations quietly reduced their coverage — or closed their doors entirely.
As a result, residents are left without a reliable source for the news that affects their daily lives most directly — local government, schools, parks, libraries, and community events.
“I didn’t know what the County Planning and Zoning Board had on their agenda. By the time I found out, the vote had already happened.”
That’s not how democracy is supposed to work.
A New Model for Local News
Windmill Media is my answer to that gap.
We’re 100% digital — no print overhead, no delivery trucks, no paper costs. That model lets us do something that a traditional newspaper struggling to survive simply can’t: cover more, charge readers nothing, and grow.
We leverage artificial intelligence to help gather, summarize, and organize coverage across our network of local sites. That technology doesn’t replace journalism — it makes it possible at a scale that one person couldn’t otherwise sustain. And we pair it with real reporters on the ground. We have a human presence in Peotone today, and we’re working to add community correspondents in every county we serve as our advertising base grows.
Our sites cover village board meetings, school boards, park districts, library boards, county board sessions, and committee meetings — the ones that most people never knew existed until a decision showed up on their doorstep. We also cover high school sports, community events, classifieds, weather, and give readers the ability to submit news and events directly.
Who We Serve
Windmill Media currently publishes local news sites serving communities across Illinois:
Will County
Monee
Peotone
Crete
Manhattan
New Lenox
Frankfort
Mokena
Green Garden
Clark County
Marshall
Martinsville
Montgomery County
Kankakee County Coming Soon
We’re actively expanding. If your community needs local news coverage, we’d like to talk.
This Is Personal
I didn’t come back to local news because I had to. I came back because after more than 30 years in community journalism, I believe what I always believed: that people deserve to know what’s happening in their own hometown.
The technology has changed. The mission hasn’t.