I’m infinitely lucky to have been a founder of City Bureau. And I’m proud to be handing off the reins this summer.
By Darryl Holliday
Darryl Holliday (far left) with early City Bureau staff in 2018 at the organization’s office at the Experimental Station.
Recently, I had the honor of informing City Bureau’s board and staff that I’d be stepping down from my position as City Bureau’s Executive Director of National Impact this summer. It was an honor because I consider the last eight years to be, personally speaking, nothing short of transformational. Helping this organization grow from a promising idea to a proven local news model has been a dream job.
As is often the case, this ending is also a new beginning. I’m going to continue to devote myself to the local news revival from a new vantage point. City Bureau, for its part, will continue to flourish. I couldn’t be more confident in the team my co-founders and I have built, and the spirit of innovation and collaboration that is woven throughout our culture. That culture ensures that City Bureau will keep breaking new ground as a model for participatory local media, and an unapologetic force for inclusive, multiracial democracy.
Working together, our team has developed programs that will deliver an enduring impact locally and have contributed to the expanding nonprofit media field nationwide, including the Documenters Network, which trains local residents to cover public meetings. This exercise in participatory media attracted a $10 million “Stronger Democracy Award” that has powered our civic media expansion to 11 cities and counting. City Bureau’s core local programs—the Civic Reporting Fellowship, the Public Newsroom and Chicago Documenters—have meanwhile engaged hundreds of people in news gathering, while informing tens of thousands of readers and event attendees. Other collaborative projects include the Future of Local News Camp, a community of practice formed from a place of hope—not for “journalism” as a profession or industry, but for thriving communities.
Being involved in this work has also led to opportunities for me to share keynote speeches, published writings and public conversations about the field, including the The Roadmap for Local News, a collective design for revitalizing and reimagining the nation’s local news ecosystems so communities get the news and information they need to thrive.
Alongside the work we've done together, the growth of CB has meant the world to me personally. During the early days of City Bureau, we had a running joke that went something like, “a journalist, an editor, an educator and a publisher walk into a bar…” The essence of that story is that City Bureau was founded around dinner tables, over drinks, on long walks and, above all, on the first floor of the Experimental Station on Chicago’s South Side. That running joke also encapsulates our founding question: How do we operate at the intersection of community organizing, local publishing and public education to create high-quality news and information that is rooted in the needs and aspirations of local communities?
City Bureau began in 2015 as a team of volunteers, and we dubbed ourselves “a civic journalism lab.” We were not a safe bet; we were an ongoing experiment, “a kind of j-school of the streets,” according to our local alt weekly, the Chicago Reader. We were “reinventing local news,” according to Politico. We were “putting community stories at the forefront,” according to MSNBC—as part of what the Columbia Journalism Review called “America’s news lab.”
Our first action wasn’t an investigation, it was an in-person “town hall” we hosted on Chicago’s West Side. Our purpose wasn’t solely to produce journalism, we were learning how to make journalism better. Over time, new supporters joined us in believing in City Bureau, not just foundation heads and program leaders but $5 members and people who devoted their time, energy and word-of-mouth networks. Each person was a gift to our work.
We use different words to describe our deep-rooted commitment to community service through journalism—civic media, community media, public service news, public media, public access, nonprofit news. Regardless, I see a local news field that has, in less than a decade, embraced community engagement that shapes local reporting, challenged entrenched and harmful journalistic notions to ask deeper questions about the role of local news in a just society, developed alternative business models that preserve what we’ve built while shifting power to our most marginalized communities, looked to new coalitions for equitable journalism policy and redoubled efforts to improve the material conditions of peoples’ lives.
Going forward my focus will be on building and amplifying the local news networks, coalitions and communities of practice that help this work thrive. I want to prioritize what I do best, while ensuring that City Bureau has the best possible leadership for its next chapter. Making this transition is healthy, beautiful, a little bittersweet, tremendously exciting, and the right move for all of us at this moment.
Since we penned our core values back in 2016, my personal favorite has always been, “We want to build this movement together.” The second part is just as crucial: “We know we are standing on the shoulders of those who came before us, just as we will hoist others to stand on ours.” That said, I’m not done hoisting or standing. Witnessing City Bureau led by a new generation of leadership is a joy of a different order. As a founder, supporter and advocate for the mission, I'll be standing by them, working with them, and cheering for them.
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