The Illinois Eagle, a LGBTQA+ nonprofit online newspaper, has opened its first brick-and-mortar location in Springfield.
Editor and publisher of the Illinois Eagle Tom Wray said it was time to expand the news organization to its own solid location and stop cluttering his living space with the news.
“Literally it was the past few years in the backroom of my house,” Wray said. “Either the house I rented, or the house I own now. It’s getting to the point I simply don’t have the room in my house anymore. I also needed the separation of working from my home; I already have ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) and have to work at concentrating.”The new location for the online newspaper is the historic 1133 W. Governor St. which was previously the House + Garden reSource gallery home decor until owner Greg Pierceall relocated to 1220 W. Governor St. last year.
The building was originally built to be Springfield’s west-side Community Bakery over 100 years ago and now houses Stella Coffee and Tea to the left of the newspaper and Junk in the Trunk vintage to its right.
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Wray is sub-leasing the building from Stella Coffee and Tea next door and still has lots of work to do but overall, the step forward for the paper is a major one.
“We haven’t had a grand opening or anything like that yet – a few friends have come in and said ‘ooh I love this look’ (in regards to the walls),” Wray said. “It’s literally patchy spackle and bare walls. They say it’s got a nice kind of vibe but I don’t want that vibe.”
Wray, 49, has over 31 years of journalism experience in Indiana and Illinois; he went to Franklin college Indiana, graduating with a bachelors of journalism and theater in 1995.
After graduating from college, Wray worked at a newspaper in Kokomo where the Ryan White case took place. White was a 13-year-old boy who was diagnosed with AIDS after a blood transfusion in 1984 and faced AIDS-related discrimination from his community. Congress passed the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act in August 1990 after his death.
“When you’re a gay man in Indiana in the ‘90s and working in Kokomo … I had to actually interview the radio host who was one of the people who was (vocal against White) the most,” Wray said. “Some of the staff knew I was gay, I never told the editor – he found out. Then started to be a pattern of being … pushed out. I went from having a section to having a page and a half.”
According to Wray, it got to a point where he took the first job he could and moved to Chicago and fell in love with Illinois. After 23 years in the windy city where he started the Illinois Eagle, Wray needed a change of pace and decided to move to Springfield during the pandemic, as an accepting city he could fall in love with all over again.
To fund the newsrooms, Wray is applying for national grants like Press Forward, which strengthens communities by reinvigorating locally owned news outlets through donors.
A grand opening is scheduled to take place during Springfield’s PrideFest later this month.
Claire Grant writes about business, growth and development and other news topics for the State Journal-Register. She can be reached at CLGrant@gannett.com; and on X (Formerly known as Twitter): @Claire_Granted
