Maia McDonald
INDEPENDENT JOURNALIST AND FUNKY FASHION ENTHUSIAST⋆·˚ ༘ *
Thank you for being here! Have a lovely day! ꕀ✎
Thank you for being here! Have a lovely day! ꕀ✎
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Welcome!
Maia McDonald (she/her) is an award-winning Chicago-based independent journalist with an intense love of fashion and the color pink.
She is currently a Civic Information Fellow for City Bureau, a non-profit civic media organization on the South Side of Chicago, and serves as vice president of the Chicago Journalists Association.
Previously, Maia did investigative reporting, visual journalism, and audience engagement for The Investigative Project on Race and Equity. Her work has also appeared in Block Club Chicago, Capital B News, The Chicago Reader, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Guardian, The Progressive, In These Times, The TRiiBE, Teen Vogue, and other local and national news outlets.
Her work has also been republished by Cicero Independienté, Chalkbeat Chicago, The Chicago Sun-Times, Capital B News, Grist, Wisconsin Watch, among other publications. She’d love to work with you too!
A prolific local reporter, Maia’s experience has included reporting on flooding in the Calumet region, Chicago aldermanic elections, protests against ICE, Chicago Fashion Week festivities, community opposition to data centers, and much more.
Links for these and other stories penned by Maia can be found on her Muck Rack page, the reporting page of this site, or below.
To learn even more about Maia and her journalistic experience, please explore more of maiamcdonald.me! You can also stop by the maiazine! newsletter on Substack, where Maia writes about fashion and pop culture.
Thanks for stopping by!
Recent Work (Updated Oct. 30, 2026):
Pulitzer Prize-winning works, and the stories behind them, can be found at the Harold Washington Library — Organizers hope the “Pulitzer on the Road” exhibit allows “Chicagoans to better understand the world and one another.”Chicago Tribune, 10/16/26. Read a preview.✦View as PDF.
Obama Center’s Barbara Bates Retrospective Celebrates A Chicago Fashion Legend— For 40 years, designer Barbara Bates has been outfitting customers in luxurious garments both locally and beyond, becoming one of the Chicago fashion scene’s biggest fixtures in the process. From her Near South Side studio, Bates crafts opulent, striking designs — using leathers, suedes, furs, brocades, snake skin, and other decadent fabrics — that have made her one the city’s most notable Black women in fashion. Block Club Chicago, 09/29/26. Read a preview.✦View as PDF.
Mayor’s Support For Quantum Campus Irks Some South Siders: ‘Shut It Down, Mayor Johnson’— Mayor Brandon Johnson and some Southeast Side neighbors remain at odds over a proposed quantum computing campus, with the mayor facing jeers from the crowd at a town hall on the project Saturday. Community advocacy organization Southside Together held the “Community over Quantum” town hall in South Chicago Saturday, which Johnson attended to discuss the $9 billion Quantum Shore megadevelopment set for the former U.S. Steel South Works site. Block Club Chicago, 08/17/26. Read a preview.✦View as PDF.