Our programs equip people with skills and connections rooted in Chicago and beyond
By City Bureau
A Chicago Documenters training equips local residents with journalism skills. Photo: Grace Del Vecchio/City Bureau
City Bureau’s vision has been guided in part by the meaningful change we can enact together block-by-block at the neighborhood level. As our impact grows across the country, we’re committed to the grassroots approach we’ve been cultivating in Chicago for more than eight years.
Honing the Tools
When we equip each other with information and resources, we create the pathways to build stronger communities everywhere. People in our programs are linking communities to the news they need to know to navigate civic structures and take action. In 2019, City Bureau Civic Reporting Fellow alumna Irene Romulo co-founded Cicero Independiente, a bilingual, hyperlocal news organization serving Cicero and Berwyn in the Southwest suburbs of Chicago.
Irene said, “It wasn’t until I did my reporting fellowship with City Bureau that I started learning about journalism and how I could use my organizing skills to really create an organization that centers the needs of a bilingual community.” Last year, Cicero Independiente partnered with MuckRock to produce a year-long investigative project shedding light on the environmental and health effects of industry in Cicero, connecting with community members to monitor air pollution and share information about their findings. One result of the investigation is that it spurred local residents to call for more transparency from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency about violations by a coal tar plant in the area. The agency published a resource guide documenting the plant’s EPA violations due to “significant public interest.”
Across our programs, people are building on the tools of participatory, community-centered journalism to raise awareness on critical issues and hold power to account. Take Rukiya Colvin, a freelance reporter and community organizer who signed up to attend and take notes at public meetings as a Detroit Documenter. During one of their first assignments, they heard concerning details about living conditions during a Detroit Housing Commission meeting and decided to dig deeper – kick-starting a major investigation into the commission. Rukiya worked with reporters at Outlier Media to help develop a sweeping two-year, multi-part investigation and shed light on major shortcomings in providing safe and affordable housing.
Being Part of the Solution
Chicago Documenter Samantha Jordan said her work covering public meetings, such as those of the Chicago Committee on Economic, Capital and Technology Development, sparked an interest in housing and development – and opened her eyes to how much funding was available for economic development and infrastructure on the West Side of Chicago. Influenced by her work as a Documenter, she secured a job with a housing non-profit organization and won a $1 million grant to upgrade Columbus Park in the Austin neighborhood. As part of this grant, Samantha led engagement efforts to understand what improvements residents wanted for the park.
In San Diego, the Documenters program based in inewsource has partnered with local libraries to host training workshops, provide an accessible space for people to learn about civic news, and is now offering the Documenters Network’s first bilingual Documenters program in Spanish so even more people can access the tools of participatory journalism. The inewsource team also created a partnership with San Diego State University to embed Documenters assignments into students’ curriculum. Training and paying residents to attend meetings and gather information pays off – San Diego Documenters found an Open Meetings Act violation during their first assignment.
City Bureau launched the Documenters program in part to address the lack of public attendance and participation in local government meetings. The program creates points of access that allow anyone to practice journalism skills and establishes a powerful mechanism of public accountability. Eight years later, Documenters are actively covering public meetings in collaboration with 16 partner organizations across the country through our Documenters Network, helping more people understand the ins and outs of local government, ensuring community members can witness and participate in government proceedings, and holding their elected officials accountable.
The impact of our Documenters Network is firmly rooted in our hyperlocal approach to community-centered local media in Chicago. Similarly, through our Civic Reporting Fellowship, the emerging journalists we train and mentor inform people about the issues affecting their communities and the resources available to make a positive difference. In 2021, fellows reported on Chicago’s housing and eviction crisis, sharing information on support available for people who are housing- or food-insecure. As a result of their reporting in “The Housing Cliff,” fellows were able to connect one of the renters in the story to the Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing, who provided her free legal representation and got her eviction case thrown out.
City Bureau’s work is based on the belief that we can address inequities in our communities when we enable people to be part of solutions, and these stories showcase some of the tangible solutions our program participants make a reality. There’s more work to do to ensure everyone has the information resources they need to thrive, and our collaborators in Chicago and beyond are on the ground showing how much is possible when we do that work together.
Take the next step in this movement with us! Sign up to be a Documenter here.