Creating Community Connections went online in February of 2007. We have been busy reporting and editing stories since then. Featuring a mix of "hyperlocal" stories produced by journalism students at Columbia College Chicago and stories people submit to our site, we want to support an informed, involved civic citizenry.

Young reporters, the journalism students, bring a level of professionalism to the coverage of a variety of stories about local government, issues like crime, housing, health and transportation that our editors polish before we publish. 

Citizen contributors are not journalists and they don't want to be. They are involved in their communities and want to share the news about what is happening, good and bad, in their neighborhoods. We want to provide an outlet for their voices and stories.

Reporting on local events that is accurate and transparent with a  local focus provides the people who live in a community with the information they need to participate, build, change, and be part of the civic life of their neighborhood. Neighbors can reach out across boundaries to work together on problems that affect them all.

In the Harold Washington years in Chicago, city government moved out of City Hall and took to the neighborhoods. Washington brought the heads of the major city agencies -- Police, Fire, Budget, Streets & Sanitation -- into each ward for town-hall meetings between the top bureaucrats and leaders in each community.

The Loop may not have new landscaping every season, but hundreds of miles of alleys were paved. Curbs that had been promised since before the Depression were put in. Garbage cans, stop signs, street lights, police patrols of parks, and a stepped up effort to locate and remove abandoned cars from residential streets flourished.  

Sometimes a problem goes beyond a block or one neighborhood. When we are alone, we think, "Who cares?" But when folks across the city come together with the click of a mouse, we have community action.

Barbara Iverson and Suzanne McBride with help from J-Lab (thanks to the Knight Foundation, too ) and the Journalism Department at Columbia College Chicago are looking to connect people in this City of Neighborhoods with Creating Community Connections, its reporting and its outreach.