This experienced journalist joins our team to oversee City Bureau’s editorial work and mentor the next generation of reporters.
By Tyra Bosnic
Portrait taken by Caroline Olsen
We are excited to welcome Ariel Cheung to the team as City Bureau’s Editorial Director.
Ariel is a proud Midwesterner with an extensive collection of bylines as a journalist who’s covered a wide range of beats. Originally from Maumee, Ohio, she has built deep roots in Chicago throughout her career as a staff reporter, editor and freelance writer.
Ariel was the Chicago Tribune’s food and travel editor before joining City Bureau; a neighborhood reporter for DNAinfo Chicago; and has reported on everything from Chicago’s real estate industry and dining scene to court proceedings in Midwest cities. She is bringing her passion for community-based journalism and extensive knowledge of Chicago to manage City Bureau’s editorial team, ensuring work by Civic Reporting Fellows, Documenters and our Newswire newsletter succeed in sharing the stories that need to be told.
We asked Ariel to share a little bit about her experiences, background and what she’s bringing to the role. Here are some of the highlights, edited for length and clarity.
You have a wide-ranging background in journalism work, from city politics to food writing. Can you tell us more about that journey and what ultimately led you to City Bureau?
If you want to go way back, many centuries ago when I was in middle school, I actually was on my hometown newspaper’s KidZone team, which was about a dozen middle schoolers who wrote a weekly back page on the lifestyle section of the Toledo Blade. I got to be in the newsroom and we would have editorial meetings once a month and we’d each get our assignment. I reviewed “Stuart Little 2.” They were cute little kids’ news assignments.
When I started thinking about college, I was like, ‘Well, I like to talk and I like to write—what intersection is that?’ And journalism sounded right. I wrote for my college paper right off the bat freshman year. The University of Cincinnati is a very hands-on, real-life training sort of college. It actually invented the co-op program, where you cycle between semesters doing full-time work or classes during your upperclassmen years. That wasn’t what we had in the journalism program, but we did have to complete at least two internships by the time we graduated. During that time, I interned at the Sun-Times, and that was my first dip into Chicago, through the Asian American Journalism Association.
By the end of it I thought, ‘Gosh, I hope I come back here someday.’
How do you approach your work of doing community-based journalism?
I think part of it started with my first full-time job being in such a small town of Galesburg, Illinois. The people you covered were the people you saw on the street. You knew everybody. The police officers I saw every day at the station knew me by name.
You see the people who you cover are just people. And you see that they have lives. That was also something very clear when I was covering people accused of crimes. You saw their humanity. That’s really important, and I think that’s something, especially in the digital age, we lose so easily. You really start to see that everyone deserves to have that humanity preserved in our work, because I get to make a living covering other people.
That is a huge responsibility because, again especially now in this digital age, what I write can have an extreme impact on somebody. It can destroy someone’s life. It can uplift them. It can save a business and it can ruin it. Yeah, I can get in trouble for writing a bad story, but I’m not going to have people knocking down my door. [But for a source,] that’s a possibility. Someone can dox you and you can get harassed on the internet to the point of having to leave your home.
I don’t think a good journalist can shy away from that responsibility. That was also very clear at [Block Club predecessor] DNAinfo, where I’m the only reporter at a CAPS meeting, [or] the only reporter at an East Lakeview neighbors meeting. To be the only reporter there means I’m the one shaping this coverage. I’m the one getting the word out. I think having that up-close is really what makes you remember the respect you owe the people you write about.
Why is mentoring journalists important?
Getting more diversity in newsrooms is extremely important. I think a lot of journalists of color have felt what it’s like to be the only person of color in the room. I’ve heard plenty of stories of someone saying, ‘I was the token Black reporter who was assigned to cover Black issues. And even when I would speak up about something, since it was just me, it was overlooked.’ I think especially after George Floyd’s murder, a lot of people were being heard for the first time. And that’s what it took: a national reckoning. It wasn’t the first time people had said we shouldn’t run mugshot galleries. It wasn’t the first time people had said we should capitalize the ‘B’ in ‘Black.’ People had been saying this for years and were unheard.
I have seen what it’s like to have an editor of color leading a team and the difference that makes in who is heard. I think that’s really important when it comes to how we shape our journalism coverage. I think the allyship of asking yourself probing questions—and not just taking the easy way out—is something we’re becoming more competent about, but not quickly.
I think having more journalists of color in a room directly impacts how a newsroom covers something. I can point to that and say that’s one more person who has considered their worldview differently than what has been the majority, for the majority of history.
What would you say to someone who’s considering pursuing journalism?
I think the general view of journalists is that we are some kind of elite league of people. I don’t think that could be further from the truth. Anyone can be a journalist. It does take wanting to talk to people and wanting to write—those are two pretty important qualities. But if it’s something you want, and you feel like there are a lot of barriers, City Bureau is for you. That’s the whole mission, and that’s part of why I was so attracted to it, because that’s why it exists: to give anybody the tools of journalism to better their community, better their own lives, better the world. That’s what it’s here for. There’s no magic formula to being a journalist, and if you feel like there is, we’re here to decode it for you.
What are you looking forward to in your role at City Bureau?
I think there’s a lot of room for more synergy between our programs. There’s just so much potential between Documenters, Public Newsroom, Newswire [newsletter], and the fellowship program. I’d love to see all those things work together to amplify the people we’re working with. That’s a really exciting aspect to me. And then getting the word out about City Bureau.
I’m just really excited to have the space to do this kind of coverage where it’s so intentional and so thoughtful. The reporters I work with as full-time reporters on staff are just extremely thoughtful and good journalists and are covering stories the way I have always wanted to cover them. Having that opportunity to work with them, and work with fellows and Documenters, and just keep building on what’s happening here is a really big thrill.
To connect with Ariel, feel free to reach out at ariel@citybureau.org.
Interview by Sarah Conway
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