City Bureau started as a series of experimental journalism projects among four collaborators. Andrea Hart and Darryl Holliday first met when Andrea invited Darryl to speak about local reporting to her class at Free Spirit Media, a youth-media program in North Lawndale on Chicago’s West Side
City Bureau’s first project was a reporting fellowship designed “to restore civic media coverage of the south and west sides of Chicago by training a new generation of young reporters in the practice of urban journalism.”
City Bureau’s early work was shaped by a rich network of collaborators. The Invisible Institute incubated much of City Bureau’s early work, and the
The first fellowship had no budget. The co-founders served as volunteer staff/mentors and fellows volunteered their time and then divided up the proceeds from any payments for stories that were published with local partners2015-01-25 14:00:00
Network of Collaborators
2015-01-25 14:00:00
Chicago’s Young Journalists
City Bureau hosted its first public workshops around the release of the Invisible Institute’s Citizens Police Data Project. These workshops helped residents understand the patterns in a huge release of police misconduct records and
City Bureau convened one of its earliest major public forums in North Lawndale at the Firehouse Comms Center, bringing residents, journalists, and community leaders together for dialogue about neighborhood issues and local news needs2015-11-04 00:00:00
North Lawndale Town Hall
The first fellowship focused on police accountability reporting in a pivotal moment for police reform in Chicago following the release of video footage showing the fatal police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.
After a year of grassroots programming, City Bureau incorporated as an organization on January 7, 2016 in order to receive donations and grants and pay stipends to fellows2016-01-01 00:00:00
City Bureau Officially Becomes an Organization
City Bureau reporters Yana Kunichoff and Sam Stecklow and Co-Founder Darryl Holliday, alongside collaborators at the Chicago Reader, investigated how police union messaging distorted public understanding of police violence. The team built their own database comparing
City Bureau launched the Task Force Tracker, an annotated, crowdsourced public tool built with the Invisible Institute and Smart Chicago Collaborative to make Chicago’s 2016 Police Accountability Task Force report accessible and actionable2016-06-01 00:00:00
Task Force Tracker
Building on the success of the crowdsourced Task Force Tracker, City Bureau launched
Building on the launch of the Task Force Tracker, City Bureau expanded its
City Bureau opened its first-ever Public Newsroom at Build Coffee within the Experimental Station on Chicago’s South Side2016-10-01 00:00:00
Chicago Tracker Project
2016-11-01 00:00:00
First Ever Public Newsroom with Eve L. Ewing
Produced in partnership with South Side Weekly, Living With Lead was a landmark investigation and community reporting project examining Chicago’s lead exposure crisis
In collaboration with the Chicago Reader, City Bureau reporter Yana Kunichoff investigated the
City Bureau received a $100,000 grant from the Voqal Foundation and a $75,000 grant from the McCormick Foundation, building on smaller early project grants from McCormick and Illinois Humanities2017-04-01 00:00:00
Early Grants: Voqal, McCormick, Democracy Fund, Knight
In an early articulation of City Bureau’s philosophy, Co-Founder
Building on the growth of the Documenters program, City Bureau launched City Scrapers–an open-source civic technology initiative designed to collect and standardize public meeting data sources in Chicago2017-08-01 00:00:00
City Scrapers
City Bureau hosted its first-ever Soap Box Ball, bringing more than 250 supporters, journalists, artists, and community members together at Co-Prosperity Sphere to celebrate and invest in people-powered journalism
As a Fall 2017 City Bureau Photojournalism Fellow, Tonika Lewis Johnson developed the early vision for what would become her
City Bureau partnered with the Center for Media Engagement at The University of Texas at Austin to publish
City Bureau published
City Bureau convened its first-ever
Produced during City Bureau’s Spring 2018 Fellowship, After the Trial is a 32-page illustrated zine designed to help incarcerated people and their loved ones navigate Illinois’ complex legal system after conviction.2018-01-01 00:00:00
Chicago News Landscape Survey
2018-02-01 00:00:00
After Unthinkable Loss
2018-03-01 00:00:00
First Documenters Network Summit
2018-04-01 00:00:00
After the Trial
Co-Founder Bettina Chang introduced Editor Office Hours, a public-facing initiative that invited anyone to receive free editorial guidance and feedback from City Bureau staff
City Bureau expanded its award-winning coverage of Chicago’s Restorative Justice Community Court, combining reporting, public events, and community dialogue to document one of the city’s most ambitious justice reform experiments.
City Bureau received a transformational $1 million grant from the John D. and Catherine T.
City Bureau launched its first expansion of the Documenters model outside Chicago to
Samantha Smylie entered City Bureau’s Civic Reporting Fellowship without formal journalism training and used it as a springboard into a reporting career. Today, as a reporter at
In partnership with Injustice Watch, City Bureau co-published a major investigative report examining systemic failures in Cook County’s HOPE Court program.2018-07-01 00:00:00
The Documenters Network is Born: Expansion to Detroit
2018-07-04 00:00:00
Civic Leader Spotlight: Samantha Smylie Launches Journalism Career
2018-10-01 00:00:00
HOPE Court Investigation with Injustice Watch
City Bureau launched Documenters.org, a first-of-its-kind public platform and searchable database that made it easy for residents to find, attend, and get paid to document local government meetings.
City Bureau partnered with Austin Weekly News to produce a people-powered voter guide grounded in interviews with Austin residents about their real concerns, from schools and jobs to neighborhood safety.
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press honored City Bureau’s Co-Founders with its 2019
City Bureau launched The Cord, a Black maternal health reporting and service journalism initiative that combined community-centered storytelling with a free text-message resource for expectant mothers2019-04-01 00:00:00
The Cord: Black Maternal Health Project
Delivering the closing keynote at the Collaborative Journalism Summit, Co-Founder Darryl Holliday introduced one of City Bureau’s most influential frameworks: “Don’t just inform, don’t just engage—equip people to generate power
Harry Backlund proposed an
Using data gathered through Documenters, City Bureau launched the Open Gov Report Card, evaluating more than 150 Chicago area public agencies on transparency and accessibility.2019-09-01 00:00:00
Open Gov Report Card
Online Journalism Awards honored Documenters.org with the Gather Award in Community-Centered Journalism. In 2023, The Society of Professional Journalists also honored Documenters
City Bureau received its largest investment to date–$1.18 million over three years–from the American Journalism Project to strengthen revenue, staffing, and long-term sustainability.
When the COVID-19 pandemic upended public life, it also presented a significant challenge to the core of City Bureau’s work, which has always relied on gathering people together in shared physical space. Rather than scale back, the organization quickly adapted its programs and reporting to meet urgent community needs.
City Bureau and WBEZ published a landmark investigation revealing stark racial disparities in Chicago mortgage lending, showing how contemporary banking practices continued to reinforce historic segregation
City Bureau successfully moved its Civic Reporting Fellowship online, training fellows through more than 30 virtual workshops while rethinking how participatory journalism could work remotely.
City Bureau launched “How a Community Heals,” a collaborative reporting series documenting the work of Chicagoans practicing mutual aid, healing, and community care in the wake of overlapping crises
In an
As public meetings moved online, Documenters adapted and grew, covering more than 600 meetings, publishing over 1,100 reports, and paying residents $75K for their civic reporting. Documenters2020-12-01 00:00:00
Documenters Network Growth in a Year of Crisis
City Bureau launched Inside Chicago’s Silent Housing Crisis, a landmark reporting series documenting how Chicago renters were pushed to the bring during the COVID-19 pandemic
City Bureau launched its
Writing in the Columbia Journalism Review, Darryl Holliday challenged conventional assumptions about who gets to produce journalism and argued for a more participatory, community-owned information ecosystem2021-12-01 00:00:00
Journalism Is a Public Good
City Bureau partnered with Pillsbury United Communities to launch the
City Bureau published a bilingual (English/Spanish) civic resource guide and zine to help Chicago residents understand and influence local development decisions2022-02-01 00:00:00
People’s Guide to Community Benefits Agreements & Alternatives