These two storytellers — one a documentary filmmaker, the other a journalist — came into their own in 2020 when they secured a $175,000 grant from the nonprofit Borealis Philanthropy for their website, which focuses on the stories of Black Chicagoans. That helped them hire reporters and other staffers — and just in time. As the pandemic bore down, the Triibe found itself morphing into a breaking news organization, live-tweeting coronavirus press briefings and, last summer, dispatches from the protests. In May, the website made waves when it interviewed an attendee of a TMZ-publicized house party that defied COVID restrictions, shedding light on shortcomings in public health messaging in Black communities — and countering a narrative that had uniformly cast Black partygoers as heedless lawbreakers. Read more: How I Stood Up to Power