More than a year ago, Chicago Public Media, which includes WBEZ Chicago and the Chicago Sun-Times, committed to helping parents and city residents vote with confidence in the city’s first-ever school board elections. These were arguably the most important local races in Chicago and Cook County last fall. But heading into the campaign most voters didn’t know the school board races were on the ballot or anything about the candidates.
Our goal was simple: Give voters essential information on all 31 candidates and explain the issues to our audiences in an engaging and accessible way. But the process of how we did this was as important to us as the journalism we ended up making. We wanted to build a body of coverage with and for the communities we most wanted to serve – specifically, Chicago Public Schools parents.
Our centerpiece product was a School Board Voter Guide, created in partnership with Chalkbeat Chicago. To build it, we did exhaustive outreach and listening to CPS parents and parent groups about what information they wanted in a voter guide, and how they wanted it presented. With that information, we surveyed every candidate, asking 25 biographical questions and 18 policy questions sourced from CPS parents. We tracked down every candidate and devoted considerable reporting time to fact-checking the biographical information provided by candidates.
There was nothing else like this in Chicago. And voters loved it. We also created a Spanish version — a top priority considering nearly half the Chicago Public Schools’ student population is Latino.
But this was not simply a digital tool. In addition to creating a modified print edition of the guide for subscribers, we printed 11,000 free paper copies of the guide in English and Spanish. Dozens of WBEZ and Sun-Times staffers hand-distributed them at more than 100 locations across the city — at candidate forums, libraries, street festivals, with community organizations. The focus: getting the guide into neighborhoods that are traditionally underserved by Chicago media and where most children attend public school.
Inspired by input from CPS parents, the team also set itself apart from all other Chicago news outlets with our campaign contribution tracker. The tracker allowed voters to watch, in real time, as candidate donations grew. It also generated leads for our reporters that bloomed into agenda-setting stories. Our team also helped Chicagoans cast a smart vote by offering race profiles in each of the 10 voting districts and by data reporting that provided critical context that couldn’t be found anywhere else.
Chicago’s first elected board of education is already charting a different course than the previous board, which was appointed by the mayor. Chicago Public Media wanted to make sure Chicago parents and voters had a say in how we covered these critical races, so that they could also have a say in that new direction.
