The Workshop offices will be closed from December 20 through January 3

We on the Community Media Workshop’s team are so grateful for YOUR engagement with our community of communicators. As we move into the year-end holiday season (our Columbia office follows the college’s building schedule, so we’re closed from December 20 through January 3), we look forward to a dynamic New Year of helping you tell your story.

Despite the budget challenges most nonprofits continue to face as we recover from the Great Recession, the Workshop continues to provide a multi-faceted approach to helping organizations get their stories out to the shifting media landscape, and beyond. We continue to provide affordable basic communications planning trainings alongside a heavy mix of social media tool building. Through scheduled trainings, custom workshops and our Making Media Connections annual conference, almost 900 organizations and some 1800 individuals engaged the Workshop for your communications needs over the past year.

We also strive to serve journalists as news gathering and publishing shifts increasingly to online platforms: through our ongoing Newstips project, Chicago Is the World engagement with ethnic media, We Are Not Alone/No Estamos Solo anti-violence reporting, ChicagoStories.org for visiting journalists around the NATO Summit, The NEWnews2012 examination of the online ecosystem, and the well-received Local Reporting Initiative which produced some 30 independent journalism projects focused on issues facing under-covered West & South Side communities.

Again, we thank you for your support.

Wishing you a safe and happy holiday season, the Workshop looks forward to our communication encounters in the coming new year!