Chicago Public Media readies chicago.com, a citywide community hub

Chicago Public Media is creating a website that it hopes will serve as a go-to space where Chicagoans can find reliable local information, connect with each other and discover more about their city. 

The station plans to launch the site in September at chicago.com, a domain it received as a gift from the Chicago Community Trust, a local foundation focused on equity across the Chicago region. 

Speaking at the Public Media Growth Conference in Chicago July 9, CPM CEO Melissa Bell said the organization recognizes that audiences need “new ways to interact with us and interact with our journalism.” 

“We have been stewards of broadcast signals in public media for years,” she said. “Now we are the stewards of a great paper in Chicago. We need to think about how we are also stewards of digital infrastructure as well. And that’s what chicago.com is for us.” 

In an interview, CPM COO Drew Brody said the organization believes chicago.com “can be a space where we can combine connection with trusted information and build our audience.” 

‘A little bit different’

Over the past year, CPM’s team had been discussing serving audiences in a way that was “a little bit different,” Brody said. Taking into account how people are increasingly getting information, such as through social media and AI overviews, the organization “wanted to see if we could adjust our approach for a new generation of public media,” he said. 

The idea that emerged was a community-centered digital hub that would connect CPM with its audience and Chicagoans with each other. An opportunity arose in late 2025 when CPM began discussing the plan with the Chicago Community Trust, Brody said. Intrigued, the foundation agreed to gift CPM the chicago.com domain. 

The site had been dormant, though the foundation had always envisioned the domain being used for a public purpose, according to a CCT spokesperson. CPM’s “mission, audience reach, and public-service role” made it the perfect entity to realize the site’s potential, the spokesperson said.

As it develops the site, CPM is drawing on findings from the Civic Information News Census, a survey conducted by Civic News Co. to assess how people value local news and their satisfaction with local information. In addition to Chicago, the survey has been fielded nationally and in New York City; Tampa, Fla.; and Marin County, Calif.

CPM collaborated with CNC and Embold Research to survey more than 1,000 Chicago residents from late May to early June. The study found that 37% of Chicagoans say they have trouble finding information about their neighborhoods. Meanwhile, only 27% of residents said they have difficulty accessing national news. 

Additionally, the study found that most respondents under 35 cited social media content creators as sources of trusted news, followed closely by local digital news outlets and online search. These new information consumption habits, along with people’s difficulty accessing local news, are what CPM looks to address in “one digital home,” Brody said. 

CNC Senior Advisor Andrew Golis, who helped conduct the Chicago survey, said CPM’s effort to bridge the gap between where people get information and their satisfaction with what they find is a step in the right direction. 

“I think every publisher is confronting this kind of devil’s bargain challenge of … audiences are increasingly flooding to [social media] platforms and spending their time there,” he said. “Trying to build civic-minded, really high-quality community spaces for local information and engagement that is a little bit more like a social network, but less like a traditional platform, is super exciting.”

Inspiration from Vermont and Canada

CPM is still working out details of what chicago.com will offer. The site will feature original reporting that will differ from the in-depth and investigative reporting found in the Chicago Sun-Times and on WBEZ, Brody said. The reporting will instead focus more on getting people “to discover and explore Chicago,” he said. The site will still feature reporting from WBEZ, the Sun-Times and other Chicago news outlets.

While chicago.com’s primary focus won’t be news, the site will aim to “get people important information about the city,” Brody said. “The type of news that you would expect to find on the Sun-Times, you’re going to continue to find that there … as part of a larger feed of different news sources.”

For its role as an online community hub, CPM is taking inspiration from community-building services across the country and beyond. Brody said websites like Front Porch Forum in Vermont and Village Media in Canada serve as models with their commitments to connecting and informing communities in positive ways. Front Porch Forum’s emphasis on fostering healthy dialogue and high civic trust and Village Media’s “highly localized, utility-driven content” are helping shape chicago.com, Brody said. 

The website will also connect residents, though CPM is not looking to social media as a model, Brody said. As a nonprofit, CPM is prioritizing “the well-being of the community,” emphasizing connection and conversation and allowing users to share local information and “special places in their neighborhoods or across the city,” he said. The website won’t be algorithmically driven as is common among social media platforms, and moderation will remove clickbait and rage-bait, he said. 

“We’re trying to create a space that celebrates Chicago, that brings people together, and that is a change from the divisiveness that you see on … traditional social media platforms,” Brody said. 

Nevertheless, CPM is looking to tap into audiences that turn to social media platforms for news and connection, he said. 

“Obviously, the amount of people who, on a daily basis, are using social media, going to forums and getting information from friends and their network, is larger than the folks that are just checking out news sites,” Brody said. “This is how we expect to expand the audience for news as well.”

Building ‘a model’

CPM will seek community feedback in coming months through events, focus groups, beta testing and its community advisory board, Brody said. The temporary chicago.com website invites users to help build the site, prompting them to enter contact information and a ZIP code. Over 1,100 people signed up on the first day of the site’s launch, which Brody calls “a really heartening signal.”

CPM plans to introduce a membership system and hopes the website provides enough value to users that they’ll support it by becoming members. Regardless, CPM is committed to keeping the website free and without paywalls as part of its public media mission, Brody said. 

CPM will share insights about chicago.com’s rollout as it aims to “build a model for public media organizations,” Brody said. It hopes other public broadcasters can learn from its findings and consider implementing similar products to stay relevant in a competitive information economy, he said. 

“Public media needs to figure out how to reach new audiences so that we don’t cede the distribution of information to for-profit companies,” Brody said. “This is our attempt to reach new audiences and help make sure that the information space remains trusted.”

Current Reporter Tyler Falk contributed reporting to this article.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Andrew Golis as COO at Civic News Company. He is a senior advisor.