Hello! I'm Darryl.
I run Commoner Company, a civic design studio I cofounded in 2024 with Anika Anand that tries its hardest to make civic life more accessible, and civic renewal more inspired. Since 2019 I've also served as Lead Steward of News Futures, a "do"-ocratic community of practice built around civic media values that I started with Sarah Alvarez. When I'm not doing that work, I'm watching my daughter grow up.
The throughline of my work started with a comic book.
I got my start as a reporter for my college newspaper where I met Erik Rodriguez and cofounded the Illustrated Press, a comics journalism collective that pushed me to think about reporting as something you could draw, not just write. (I've kept experimenting with form since, including through music and occasional audio arts projects.) Soon after, I learned the ropes at the Chicago Sun-Times, and later joined the launch team at DNAinfo Chicago, filing daily stories from neighborhoods most papers only visited when something went wrong.
I burned out. I got radicalized in community service. I was befriended by Jamie Kalven and mentored by the Invisible Institute where I worked as a producer. That work sharpened my sense that journalism is a public good, not just a product — something owed to a place and the people who live there, not just sold to them.
That belief became a founding premise of City Bureau, the Pulitzer Prize-winning civic media lab I cofounded in 2015 with my friends and life partners Andrea Hart, Harry Backlund, and Bettina Chang, in ✶✶Chicago✶✶, our home. As Co-Executive Director, I helped grow it from a volunteer passion project into an organization with a multimillion-dollar annual budget and more than two dozen employees. I led development of programs like the Civic Reporting Fellowship and the Public Newsroom, which together trained hundreds of journalists and brought thousands of people into rooms to talk through the issues shaping their neighborhoods.
In 2019, that work led to the Documenters network and expansion to its first 11 cities — training thousands of residents to attend and document their local government meetings, and paying out more than a million dollars directly to them for doing it. That effort helped reinvigorate public, participatory media at a moment when it was needed, and was recognized in 2022 with the $10 million Stronger Democracy Award.
That same year, I co-authored the "Roadmap for Local News" with Elizabeth Green and Mike Rispoli, a field-led report on a new practice emerging from the local news crisis — one built on the idea that journalism can restore, not just report on, the civic health of a place. That report joined the list of published works and speeches I occasionally update below. It's the report that pointed most directly to the work I do now.
Which brings me back to Commoner and News Futures, where I get to carry that thread forward with some of the best people working in local news and information today. Along the way I've picked up an Ashoka fellowship, the Leaders for a New Chicago award, the Studs Terkel Award, the Sidney Award, and the Alfred P. Weisman Award — recognition I'm glad for, mostly because of what it says about the people I've gotten to work alongside. I've also traveled to talk through the role local journalism plays in civic life, and I like testing new ideas through writing and speaking.
I'm always glad to meet fellow travelers and world-builders. Reach out.
Published Writing & Public Speeches
2025
This is Local News Now: Rethinking Who Creates, Shares and Sustains It
For at least the past decade, there has been a growing disconnect between the framing and language used by many journalism advocates – focused on news deserts, newsroom closures, and reporter layoffs – and the average American’s experience of access to information. More often, members of the public frame their relationship to news as digital overwhelm, chaos, and disengagement.
By identifying three distinct types of local information sources that are vital to modern civic life – and describing with clarity their unique roles, potential, and interconnectedness – Commoner and Press Forward illustrate a wider path forward toward abundance, revitalization and community cohesion.
2025
It’s Time for Civic Media
(The Objective / News Futures)
56 pages. 14 voices. One urgent question: How do we build local media that actually serves communities over the next decade? I developed and organized the civic media magazine, a collaboration between News Futures and The Objective. The magazine brought together diverse practitioner perspectives on one of our country’s most pressing challenges: creating local information systems that inform, engage and equip our communities over the next 10 years. Essential reading for anyone committed to civic health and democratic information systems.
2023
The Roadmap for Local News: An Emergent Approach to Meeting Civic Information Needs
(Civic News Company)
I helped lead a team committed to the development of a set of recommendations – a “roadmap” – to revitalize and reimagine the local news ecosystems in this country so communities get the news and information they need to thrive.
2023
Journalism’s Civic Media Moment Could Be a Movement
(Kettering Foundation / National Civic League)
— the final chapter from the book “Reinventing Journalism to Strengthen Democracy: Insights from innovators”
We live in a time of deep distrust―of each other, the media, and institutions of all kinds. In this volume of essays, innovative journalists from newspapers, public radio, civic media groups, and new media collectives examine how we've reached this point. These essays highlight opportunities that are emerging as old practices give way to the new demands of an engaged, diverse, and restive public. They call on us to create a more inclusive democratic narrative that better captures the rich diversity of our nation and its complicated history | Buy the book here.
2021
Journalism is a public good. Let the public make it.
(Columbia Journalism Review)
Ivory-tower journalism has failed. It’s time we focus on building public infrastructure where everyone can find, factcheck, and produce civic information. I lay out a plan for how to do that in a special report for the Columbia Journalism Review
2020
What Journalism Can Learn from Mutual Aid
(Columbia Journalism Review)
Mutual aid efforts suggest a way forward, a new type of newsroom that serves as the nerve center for local information hubs. In this Columbia Journalism Review special report, I outline why journalists should see their work as part of an ecosystem of social services.
2020
Metrics to Match Our Mission
(City Bureau)
City Bureau’s first Impact Report begins with a story—a historical guiding star from our home on Chicago’s South Side—the story of the Pullman Porters. More than 65 years later, as we worked to measure City Bureau’s impact, we looked to the Pullman Porters as a model for how relationships and information can create new forms of civic engagement.
2019
Don’t Just Engage, Equip
(citybureau.org)
To reimagine and repair local news, democratize the journalistic process. In this speech, delivered as the closing keynote of the 2019 Collaborative Journalism Summit in Philadelphia, I apply City Bureau’s “inform, engage, equip” framework to engaged reporting.
2011-2016
The Illustrated Press
(theillpress.wordpress.com)
From 2011-2016 my longtime friend and collaborator, Erik Rodriguez, and I led the Illustrated Press, a pioneering comics journalism collective based in Chicago. In that time we self-published a book, partnered with media outlets like the Chicago Reader, Chicago Magazine, the South Side Weekly and many others to bring graphic journalism to the page. Our collected speaking events, publications and awards can be found on our site.
Interviewed in
2025
News Futures: A Solidarity Movement for Local News Innovation
(Editor & Publisher Magazine)
I spoke with reporter Diane Sylvester about my role as News Futures’ Lead Steward—and how, after six years of operating behind the scenes, we opened our doors to the public — inviting others to join our mission.
2024
From Local Journalism to Civic Media: A Conversation with Darryl Holliday
(The Art of Association)
“Darryl Holliday is a journalist and social entrepreneur who has innovated in the realms of local journalism and civic media throughout his professional life.”
2023
Democracy’s Immune System
(Obama Foundation Democracy Forum)
I sat down with John Palfrey (MacArthur Foundation), Nancy Gibbs (Shorenstein Center), Sonal Shah (Texas Tribune) in a panel moderated by Judy Woodruff.
2022
Developing a New Journalism that Builds Community
(Nonprofit Quarterly)
[VIDEO] I joined Nonprofit Quarterly for their “Remaking the Economy: Information, the Media, and Economic Justice” webinar.
2022
Inviting the Community to Make the News
(Popula)
I joined Mediaquake columnist Kate Harloe in her ongoing interview series about journalism, capitalism, and the future of both.
2022
How Strengthening Democracy Begins With Better Local News
(Forbes / Ashoka)
I sat down with Keith Hammonds of the Solutions Journalism Network to talk about why a truly public local news ecosystem matters.
2019
How Chicago’s ‘J-school of the Streets’ Is Reinventing Local News
(Politico)
City Bureau is training young reporters to improve coverage of underserved communities.
2019
Me, My Shelf and I
(Chicago Tribune)
In this week's Me, My Shelf and I, reporter Darryl Holliday, founder of Chicago's Illustrated Press, shares his book collection and DIY approach to comics