Chi-Town Daily News wins $340,000 Knight Foundation Grant

ChiTownDailyNews.org on Wednesday was awarded a two-year, $340,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to create one of the nation’s most extensive citizen journalism programs.

The Daily News will use grant funds to recruit and train 75 volunteer journalists -- one in each Chicago neighborhood. The Daily News will also hire editors to coordinate the work of citizen journalists and ensure that their articles meet professional journalism standards for fairness and accuracy.

“With this network, we believe we can offer local news coverage that is more comprehensive, nuanced and diverse than the report found in Chicago's large daily newspapers,” said Daily News editor Geoff Dougherty. “We expect our approach will substantially increase the volume of news coverage emanating from Chicago's most disadvantaged neighborhoods, and create a large number of trained journalists in those communities.”

The grant project is noteworthy because it delineates a new horizon for citizen journalism. While some news organizations (the BBC, OhMyNews) have launched ambitious citizen journalism efforts, nobody has attempted to create an organized, cohesive system that enables coverage of a large city.

Relying on citizen journalists to write articles on whatever topic interests them -- the approach taken by most sites -- yields a patchwork of coverage that, while interesting, contains large gaps. The Daily News will structure its citizen journalism network along the lines of a traditional newsroom, assigning editors to consult with writers on each neighborhood beat to ensure that key events and issues are covered.

The Daily News is an 18-month-old nonprofit news website serving Chicago residents with a mixture of local reportage, arts and entertainment coverage and cutting-edge multimedia features.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promotes journalism excellence worldwide and invests in the vitality of the communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers.