GARFIELD PARK — A media outlet aimed at reshaping the narrative of Black Chicago has moved to the West Side, where it is opening a production studio this summer.
The TRiiBE, an award-winning digital media outlet, last week opened its newsroom and headquarters in East Garfield Park. It will be accessible to TRiiBE members and creative professionals during invite-only programs and events.
The facility will also include a studio space intended for filmmaking, photography and other creative projects to tell more stories about Black Chicagoans — and particularly West Siders — its founders said.
“Now that we have found our editorial voice, and our newsroom has a strong foundation to build on, we are ready for the next phase,” the TRiiBE founder Morgan Elise Johnson said in an announcement for the studio.
The TRiiBE’s production studio plans to have in-studio photography, community events with Chicago creatives, workshops with local filmmakers and educational fellowships. It will also be a space where the TRiiBE can produce more video projects, Johnson said.
A filmmaker-turned-publisher, Johnson said that expanding the TRiiBE to include a production studio was always part of the media outlet’s original vision. Johnson will lead the production studio.
When the TRiiBE was launched in 2017 as a digital news outlet by Johnson, Editor-In-Chief Tiffany Walden and founding partner David Elutilo, the outlet also premiered a grassroots documentary series called “Another Life.” The series, directed by Johnson and produced by Walden, profiles people navigating grief following the loss of a loved one to gun violence. Additional similar projects were planned, but Johnson said the editorial demands of local news plus national developments and the logistics of launching a business led to filmmaking taking a backseat.
“With me growing into being the publisher and needing to run the business side, it became more and more difficult for me to also be a creator,” Johnson said.
The launch of the TRiiBE’s production studio is a milestone in the outlet’s editorial growth and community support. Following the newsroom’s first eight years working to “hone our editorial voice and build a team that we feel is best fit,” Johnson said the new creative project will be a separate department from its newsroom and primarily focus on collaborating with local filmmakers, storytellers and creatives.
The decision to move the TRiiBE to the West Side was intentional, Johnson and Walden said. It will allow the outlet to focus on “a part of the city that is forgotten about” in critical Chicago conversations.
The West Side office is the TRiiBE’s first dedicated space of its own. It most recently shared office space with another group in the West Loop.
“It’s a dream. It’s something I never imagined for myself as a kid growing up on the West Side,” said Walden, a North Lawndale native. “It’s not a well-resourced area, so I didn’t grow up thinking that I could own something or even have something on the West Side in this way.”
Walden’s family has deep roots on the West Side, where her grandmother settled after migrating from Mississippi. This story was detailed in The TRiiBE’s 2018 series “Out West,” which follows Walden reconnecting with her Southern roots. The TRiiBE is looking to release another installment in the story as the newsroom looks to further invest in the West Side community.
“The West Side being our home base means that we’re going to be outside in the community,” Johnson added. “I want to personally get to know people and be outside in the community, that’s what we were doing when we started the TRiiBE. It started with Tiffany [Walden] and I going outside in West Side neighborhoods.”
The new studio is in early development on a short documentary project and the space expects to have an opening event in July for subscribers of The TRiiBE’s Reshape newsletter, Johnson said.
The studio space is meant to be collaborative, Johnson said. Studios such as Kartemquin Films and Sisters in Cinema both inspired Johnson, and she said she hopes the TRiiBE can collaborate with them on future projects.
For more information, visit thetriibe.com.
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