Barb Iverson | Chicago, IL | (312) 369-8909 | E-mail | Twitter | Website
This robust news site, a project of Columbia College Chicago, used students and neighborhood journalists to cover five ZIP codes in central Chicago with a focus local police district, school council, neighborhood groups, church events and businesses. A sibling site, AustinTalks.org, has since been launched.
Project Updates
- ChicagoTalks Reporting Published in New York Times (March, 2011) - ChicagoTalks received national recognition in the New York Times for its investigation into tax breaks that benefited already-profitable companies in downtown Chicago and largely ignored blighted, outlying neighborhoods. The story was published on Feb. 27, 2011. Columbia College students Caitlin Bukowski, K. Herron, Becca James, Meghan Keyes, Tony Merevick, Taryn S. Smith and Mika Tatich […]
- Investigative Citizen Journalism on ChicagoTalks (May, 2009) - The results of a three-month investigation on Chicago Transportation Authority was recently published by 2006 New Voices Grantee ChicagoTalks.org.
- Congratulations! (October, 2008) - Kudos to two 2006 New Voices grantees who have won prestigious journalism awards!
- Community News for Chicago, City of Neighborhoods (October, 2008) - There’s much to report in this final update. We’ve changed our name (and our URL) to the more catchy ChicagoTalks; we’ve won our first national award for an investigative series that ran just two months after last year’s launch; and we’re averaging more than 3,500 unique visitors a month without any marketing or promotion of […]
- Successful Soft Launch (November, 2007) - Creating Community Connections is now in the process of re-branding itself as Chicago Talks. Both CreatingCommunityConnections.org and ChicagoTalks.net will now take you to their site. As of November 2007, CreatingCommunityConnections published 358 original stories on a range of topics: From stories about residents upset with street musicians banging drums in the middle of the night, […]
- Politics, Immigration Issues Fuel Connections Site (April, 2007) - Creating Community Connections launched in April 2007 after weeks of reporting by 13 undergraduate and graduate students at Columbia College Chicago on the city’s aldermanic elections. Some of the student coverage outpaced the city’s major media. Now the site is populated by news from a growing group of city neighborhoods and on such topics as […]
- Students Gear Up for Feb. 27 City Elections (November, 2006) - Site construction continues at creatingcommunityconnections.org. Project directors signed a contract with Civicspaces to design the web pages, and in early January, a prototype was nearly complete. Barbara K. Iverson and Suzanne McBride at Chicago’s Columbia College say they began talks with the company after consulting with other New Voices grantees and various experts. In the […]
- Chicago Neighborhood Journalism Project Seeks Out Community Input (August, 2006) - While it’s not accepting conent just yet, Creating Community Connections’ website is already up and getting the word out on what the site will do, what citizen journalism is all about, and what tools residents can use to write, film and record their stories. Run by Suzanne McBride and Barbara K. Iverson at Columbia College […]
