BECOME A CITIZEN JOURNALIST

The Daily News is committed to making local news coverage in Chicago a participatory sport.

Who can play? Anyone who's willing to write a news story or take a photograph. There's no experience necessary, and we'll help you every step of the way.

First steps

Use our neigborhood events finder to see what's going on near you, and pick an event to cover. Your local CAPS meeting and alderman's monthly meetings are a great place to start. You can also write about new business openings, zoning issues, or anything else that interests you.

You'll also want to visit our contributors page and create a user account for yourself so that you can post content on the Daily News website.

Getting the story

If you've never written a news story before, the MIT New Media Lab has some great tips on reporting and writing technique.

Our editors are available anytime you need some extra help. Call us at 773.362.5002, or e-mail us, and we'll talk you through your first article.

We also have a monthly writer's meeting where we talk about basic journalism skills and work with new journalists. Those meetings take place on the fourth Tuesday of each month at 7:30 p.m. They're usually at our office in Andersonville.

Publish it

Once you've finished reporting and writing, your article, posting it so that your friends and neighbors can read it is as easy as filling out a web form. You can do that here.

You can submit photos on the same page. And if you want your your article or photo to receive special attention from us -- it needs a little editing, or more reporting, or deals with something controversial -- just call or e-mail us. Once you do that, one of our journalists will talk over your concerns and make sure your submission is the best it can be.