About the CU-Citizen Access Project

CU-CitizenAccess project focuses on poverty and related issues in Champaign County.

This Web site offers a place for citizens, journalists and university students to share news, raise and discuss issues, find assistance and suggest solutions.

The site is backed with funding from the Marajen Stevick Foundation and the University of Illinois, with a matching grant from the John S. Knight and James L. Knight Foundation.

The News-Gazette is a project collaborator, along with contributions from the faculty and students from the Journalism Department in the College of Media at the University of Illinois.

Journalism Department faculty members Brant Houston and Rich Martin oversee the site. Mike Howie, city editor and online editor of the News-Gazette  coordinates the newspaper's participation in stories and reporting, while Journalism Department instructors and project reporters Pam Dempsey and Shelley Smithson develop stories and content for the project.

Acton Gorton, a Journalism Department graduate, is the Web administrator, and the local firm, OJC Technologies, helped create the site.

Like all Web sites, this is - and will be - a work in progress. It is intended to bring together all parts of the community to disclose and deal with the issues associated with citizens living in poverty or on low wages. The project also is intended to create as many avenues as possible for citizens to address these issues, whether through this Web site, in-person or through email, social networks like Twitter, cell phones, photos and news stories.