Our Mission

Hannah Carroll

Our goals

  1. Increase capacity and lower costs for journalism operators in Chicago.
  2. Create opportunities for a greater number and wider range of media makers in Chicago’s journalism space.
  3. Lower barriers of entry so more innovation can occur with less operational friction.
  4. Enable journalism organizations to focus on and excel at their specialties and differentiators.
  5. Strengthen the network of sharing among Chicago journalism operators so that meaningful work reaches a broader Chicago audience.
Hannah Carroll

How we want to support Chicagoans

  • An increase in civic knowledge and engagement of Chicagoland residents
  • A higher reported increase in trust toward local media
  • Improve reporting outcomes for more Chicagoans
  • Improve accessibility of information to all Chicagoans
Hannah Carroll

Eligibility and access

News organizations committed to the production of original local reporting and serve the diverse audiences of Chicagoland are eligible to receive services from the Medill Local News Initiative.

Medill is committed to providing fair access to these shared resources.

The Medill Local News Initiative complies with Northwestern University's non-discrimination policy in all our activities.

Hannah Carroll

Partnerships

Medill recognizes that actors other than itself and the McCormick Foundation are keen to make investments in the Chicago-area journalism infrastructure.

We have been and will continue to coordinate and collaborate to get the maximum good out of our ecosystem resources.