This organizer and writer is joining our team to support our sustainability through grant writing and by growing our foundation relationships.
By Yasmin Zacaria Mikhaiel
Portrait of Louise Macaraniag taken by Caroline Olsen
We are excited to welcome Louise Macaraniag to the team as City Bureau’s new Development Coordinator!
Louise brings a breadth of experience across the operations side of community journalism. A recent graduate with a degree in political science and professional writing, Louise holds experience as a community organizer, researcher and student journalist. Their journalism experience gave them an understanding of the many barriers early-career reporters face, which is partly why they’re passionate about building a more sustainable, equitable and pro-people media landscape. As our new Development Coordinator, Louise will be resourcing our mission and helping us build a movement around participatory, local media.
We asked Louise to share a little bit about her experiences, her background and what she’s bringing to the role. Here are some of the highlights.
Can you share a little bit about yourself and your background?
Before City Bureau, I had just graduated from the University of Illinois in Chicago. I had always wanted to be a journalist. I've been doing school newspaper stuff ever since I was in high school and continued in college with an independent student-run paper called Bonfire. But along with being a reporter, I've also always had an interest in the operational side of things. Coming from a DIY newspaper that a bunch of students started, I saw that there's so much that goes into running a publication and making it last. I worked to preserve our school newspaper even after graduating.. The experience made me realize how there're so many different roles in the journalism field and that you don’t need to be a reporter to participate in producing this important work. It's a whole ecosystem of work to be part of. That’s why I’m really proud of the work City Bureau does in creating and sustaining that ecosystem, and I really love being on the supporting end of that.
What excites you about your role as development coordinator at City Bureau?
We need money to sustain and to do good work. I’m excited that as the Development Coordinator I can be part of funding these programs that pay community members who are doing important work to strengthen our information systems. Journalism is labor, and reporters deserve to be paid, especially those who have been historically marginalized in this field and have less resources than those who attended journalism school. I think that aspect of it is exciting to me — knowing that everything is functioning and fully funded through my work.
I also just love writing. Everything I've done has always had a foundation of writing and storytelling, whether it's grant writing or writing research papers, copy or articles. Wherever I go, I will always write.
How did you learn about City Bureau?
I've known about City Bureau for a while now. I was interested in being a Civic Reporting Fellow, and a professor of mine told me about Documenters. When I looked into the whole organization, I was like, “wait. This is really cool what they're doing.” Participatory media really stuck out to me as someone who had struggled trying to become a journalist and not having the "proper" education for it or resources to pursue it.
Learning more about City Bureau also opened my mind to how broad journalism could be, whether it's going to public meetings and taking notes as a Documenter, or producing in-depth reporting coming out of deep community partnerships through the fellowship program, or just talking with other community members about issues in your neighborhood in spaces like the Public Newsroom. There's so many different ways to practice journalism and create stronger community information systems. That’s what really attracted me to City Bureau. I enjoy being surrounded by people who saw the same problems with the industry and wanted to solve them.
Can you share more about your relationship to Chicago and the communities you’re part of? What keeps you rooted here?
I moved to the Chicagoland area from the Philippines when I was nine years old, and I’ve been here ever since. It's somewhere I want to stay. A lot of people will venture to other places, but I have never had the urge to say I'm gonna leave Chicago. I grew up in the Northwest suburbs, went to school at UIC, and now I live in Logan Square. Through meeting my neighbors and doing community work in and around Chicago, my relationship with the city has deepened.
I do a lot of work with Filipino communities within Chicago as well. I primarily organize with an organization called Anakbayan, a youth organization fighting for Filipino rights and liberation. There are also other organizations that I've worked with, like Dissenters, which is an anti-war, anti-imperialist youth and student organization. I want to continue grassroots community organizing alongside my work at City Bureau, hoping both roles can inform and strengthen each other. I want to venture further into Chicago and hope to be as integrated as I can be with the communities that sustain and nourish me.
Through all of this work, I've really built a foundation here in the city, and it's only deepening as I work with City Bureau. I love to see new parts of the city and meet new people, and I’m invested in taking care of community wherever I land.
To connect with Louise, feel free to reach out at louise@citybureau.org.
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