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.
2023
The Roadmap for Local News: An Emergent Approach to Meeting Civic Information Needs
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.
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.
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