Covered by outlets including NPR’s Marketplace, Reuters and Journal Métro, the Chicago Corruption Walking Tour was an experiment in live journalism, taking the willing through two centuries of dirty deals.

In addition to the sites of kickbacks, stings and even murders, stops on the 2.25-mile tour included a street corner where four gerrymandered districts worm together, a luxury department store that received millions from an anti-poverty program and spots connected to Chicago’s history of segregation and voter disenfranchisement.

The tour ran for the summers of 2016 through 2019. Half each year’s gratuities went to a different Chicago-area journalism nonprofit, including City Bureau, ProPublica Illinois and The TRiiBE.

Based on Ben Hecht’s 1920s Chicago Daily News column 1001 Afternoons in Chicago, this six-and-a-half year, 1,001-story project brought the notion of “journalism that invaded the realm of literature” into the 21st century.

In addition to profiles and interviews with Chicagoans from across the city (sometimes paired with illustrations from local artists), the project experimented with story form, delving into personal essay, satire, interactive maps, text-based RPGs and probably one of the very few breakdowns of campaign finance disclosure in the style of the Mandé people’s “Oral Epic of Son-Jara”.

The project won a Peter Lisagor Award for Exemplary Journalism and was featured on WBEZ, in the Chicago Tribune and as part of the Chicago History Museum’s “Chicago Authored” exhibit, which ran from 2015 to 2020.

1,001 Chicago Afternoons ended in 2018 with the publication of story #1,001.

This storytelling series was, in the words of the Chicago Tribune, “a living graphic novel,” pairing Chicagoans from across the city with local artists to tell what life’s like in Chicago’s 77 distinct, divided community areas.

Bringing together both professional and amateur storytellers, Welcome to the Neighborhood hosted events at the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Printers Row Lit Fest, the Chicago Book Expo and “Let’s Get Working,” a three-day University of Chicago festival celebrating the life of Studs Terkel.

A 20-episode podcast expanding the walking tour of the same name, featuring interviews, music, original research, videos, maps and other civics insanity.

The podcast went on hiatus in 2021 due to the COVID-19 crisis. Past episodes are available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and TuneIn.