I don’t live in Chicago (or in Illinois, for that matter), but the small store I visited earlier today carried the Chicago Tribune. Glancing above the fold on the front page as I checked out, I saw a picture of chess. Unfortunately, there was no major chess event in Chicago; fortunately, it had nothing to do with anything related to the Hans Niemann affair.
Instead, it was a story of a local boy done good: 16-year-old Avi Kaplan achieving his national master title. It’s very surprising, but he’s apparently the only junior in Chicago with the master title. Congrats to the youngster, and hats-off to the Trib for making it a front-page story, which you can read here. (I recommend clicking through, if only to encourage the Trib and other mass media papers to cover chess - especially in non-scandalous situations.)