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Martin Wolske, senior research scientist, and Adam Kehoe and Colin Rhinesmith, doctoral students, from the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at the University of Illinois, have received the Best Paper Award at Community Informatics Research Network Conference in Prato, Italy. The paper, "Measuring the Impact of Citizen Journalism: A Study of Community Newsrooms in North Champaign and East St. Louis, Illinois," presents a methodology for investigating the impact of community media newsrooms located at public computing centers in East St. Louis and North Champaign, Illinois, USA. The study is part of a participatory action research project informed by community organizations in both locations and supported by students, faculty, and staff at GSLIS and the Journalism Department in the College of Media at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "Community Informatics Studio: The Community Media Newsroom," an intensive eight-week summer session course, is designed to introduce students to, and to have them apply, theoretical and methodological frameworks available across the fields of journalism, community informatics, and community media studies to their work, creating a more vibrant local information ecosystem. The course builds on previous collaborative projects in both cities as a way to sustain the university's engagement with the communities. While much has been written on citizen journalism, less has been written on methodologies used to measure the impact of participatory news initiatives. This paper attempts to address this gap, and to contribute to the field of community informatics, by providing a framework for evaluating community news and information projects. Other papers presented by GSLIS faculty and students include: "Disentangling Measurement in Community Informatics"-Wolske, Rhinesmith and Kehoe "Developing a Quantitative Measure of Information Inequality: A Work In Progress"-Rhinesmith and Kehoe The Community Informatics Research Network annually holds a conference in Prato, Italy at the Monash University campus located there. More on the conference can be found at: http://cirn.wikispaces.com/prato2011 Maeve Reilly Research Services Coordinator Graduate School of Library and Information Science University of Illinois Rm 219 LIS 501 E. Daniel Champaign, IL 61820 [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> (217) 244-7316