Alliance Matters is an editorial collaboration between Chicago Independent Media Alliance (CIMA) members, focused on their audiences in Chicago’s diverse communities. This collaboration builds on Chicago’s rich tradition of collaborative, community-driven storytelling.
Photo Credit: Tafari Melisizwe
With support from the Field Foundation and insight from CIMA newsrooms and organizations, Alliance Matters is designed to elevate the role of independent media in informing, engaging, and empowering our city’s diverse communities while growing our pool of trained freelancers.
Its robust programming schedule includes print, podcasts, partnerships, news, arts, research, video, photography and more. Additional funding comes from the Leaders for a New Chicago Award to offer a maximum of fourteen $4,000 micro-grants, including $600 for a freelancer to work with the outlet, as well as marketing and engagement.
This first pilot's theme is “Temperature Check” on the health of your community, and participants have the flexibility to determine the activities, events, and content, and how they align with the theme.
Please join us in congratulating this year’s awardees and follow their program and content contributions.
Programming for Alliance Matters will run July - September 2025.
The reporting and views expressed are those of the media outlet, and they retain all rights to the content in accordance with the Alliance Matters MOU.
Temperature Check through Field Canvassing
Meet the Chicago Women on the Frontlines Helping Immigrants Access Health Care on the Southwest Side
Cornered: Black Chicago, the Crossroads of Jobs, Housing and Survival
Cornered: Black Chicago at the Crossroads of Jobs, Housing and Survival
Podcast Link, Article Link, E-Edition
Move Out Fear And Change the Narrative, Together
Dziennik Zwiazkowy - Daily News
White and Undocumented
E3 Radio and Reparations Media
The Narrative Power of Black Storytelling
Enchúfate, LLC and
La Villita - In Community Through Chaos
SEPTEMBER 7, Zine Release Now Available in Print at the Little Village Library
SEPTEMBER 26, Radio Release: Little Village: In Community Through Chaos
Little Village: In Community Through Chaos: Friday, September 26, at 4:00 p.m. CST on 105.5 FM (WLPN-LP, Chicago).
Homeless on Chicago’s North Side: Warm Welcome or Cold Shoulder?
AUGUST 27, Skyline, Inside-Booster, and News-Star Release. Alliance Matters stories on page 8.
Lumpen Radio, an initiative of Public Media Institute and South Side Weekly (NFP)
The Memory Project (Collaboration)
AUGUST 11 and Week of SEPTEMBER 15, Radio Release
SEPTEMBER 26, Release of Audio Episodes
Taking the Pulse of Chicago’s West Side
Taking the Pulse of Chicago’s Black Visual Artists in a Shifting America
Public Narrative/Alliance Matters has collaborated with Reparations Media to develop and conduct surveys that will provide answers and insights into both groups and their needs. Once collected, the data will be presented to all CIMA members and used to create a pipeline for content creation and establish a CIMA-wide network connecting CIMA orgs with Chicagoland's rich and varied freelancing community.
Quantum Entanglements: Communities Fight for Health and Power in the Residue of the Steel Mills
Staging Survival: Theater, Sounds of Survival: Music, The Art of Survival: Art/Museums, Words of Survival: Lit/Books
JULY 10, The Art of Survival preview
SEPTEMBER 6, Staging Survival: How Chicago Theaters Are Responding to the Pressures of COVID and Authoritarianism
September 30 – Words of Survival: Chicago Bookstores Respond to COVID and Book Bans