Our collaborative work with Hoy Chicago in last year’s Midwest Chronicles gained high honors recently.

The project took a look at the deep demographic shift in Central Illinois communities. It was a bilingual publication printed in both Spanish and English and distributed in The News-Gazette and throughout Chicago through Hoy Chicago as well as online.

Hoy Chicago is a daily Spanish newspaper based in Chicago. Reporters and editors from Hoy Chicago, CU-CitizenAccess.org as well as WILL Public Radio and journalism students from the University of Illinois spent more than six months analyzing data and interviewing residents in communities across a 16-county area.

The infographic “Seeds of Change” in the print edition (a version can be seen here) netted an Award of Excellence from the Society of News Design this year.  This dot-density demographic map, created by Jeff Kelly Lowenstein, Alex Bordens and Kyle Bentle from the Chicago Tribune and Hoy Chicago visually shows the diversity downstate.

The project has also been named a finalist in the Chicago Headline Club’s Peter Lisagor Awards in the multimedia category as reporters from Hoy Chicago produced video stories of our collaborative work during the reporting process.

Thanks to our readers for feedback and input as we pursued this successful collaboration. Look for more stories and projects as we continue to follow this issue.