Communities will build trust and loyalty for local public media. Chicago Public Media is taking a big leap forward.

Link: Chicago Public Media launching community website, by Amy Yee at the Chicago Sun-TimesIn an increasingly AI-dominated information landscape, real trusted communities and relationships will be the way to build trust and loyalty — I’m convinced of it, and organizations like New_ Public agree. So it was exciting to see Chicago Public Media take a huge step towards building a community platform.The site will include Chicago-area information, civic and cultural resources, community-sourced knowledge and opportunities for audience participation, the nonprofit said Wednesday. It will also curate headlines from the Sun-Times, WBEZ and other news sources.This will be a familiar argument to regular readers:For independent journalism to “truly service the public … we should have digital infrastructure that is also steered by public media companies,” Chicago Public Media CEO Melissa Bell said. The news industry “has ceded a lot of distribution to places like Facebook and X, formerly known as…