Who We Are

The story of Chicago is often seen as the Tale of Two Cities. Unfortunately only one of these stories usually gets told in all its detail; the glorious downtown, the skyline, the glitz and glamour, the restaurants, the opera, the tourist Chicago, the chic Chicago, where problems are forgotten and escapist fantasy reigns.

Then there's the other Chicago,where most residents live, where schools and little else work as well as they should, where the infrastructure and housing crumbles, where too many children die either of boredom or neglect or too much violent excitement, the neighborhoody Chicago, the gritty real Chicago, where problems linger, and solutions are created by citizens noisily exercising their democratic rights.

The Community Media Workshop, founded by a journalist, Hank De Zutter, and a community activist, Thom Clark, is a small institution trying to link the two Chicagos by encouraging the media to tell the stories of the other Chicago, the oft-neglected neighborhoods and back streets of Chicago, where the problems are felt most deeply and where solutions are most likely to be born.

The Workshop trains people working on these problems to tell their stories to the media, tips sensitive journalists to the importance of these stories, and tries to create better relationships between the media and the diverse communities which make up Chicago and the Midwest.

Since our start in a Malcolm X College classroom in 1989, thousands of nonprofit organizations have received hands-on training and coaching for their newsworthy efforts. Over 3000 groups have subscribed to Getting On The Air & Into Print, the comprehensive Chicago media guide. Another Workshop publication, Newstips, is now distributed twice-monthly to over 1200 reporters, editors and producers around Chicago.

Now at Columbia College, we tap the talent and experience Columbia's communications-oriented student body and faculty can offer to the city's nonprofit community.

Community Media Workshop also continues its mission and reach by providing a range of online blogs and communications platforms for nonprofit communicators and journalists. Journalists looking for more inside resources and story ideas can now subscribe to the Newstips blog as well as from our traditional Newstips. Nonprofit communicators and grassroots groups can follow the inside trends in the field, find tools and resources for their work by subscribing to our NP Communicator blog from the Workshop's very own Vice President, Gordon Mayer. Visit our online broadcast shows including our podcast and web audio archive of Thom Clark's radio show "City Voices" as well as our cablecast of "Community, Media & You" a partnership with CANTV 21. Ethnic news journalists and outlets can also get tips and resources from our Chicago is the World blog by Steve Franklin.