Features
What has shipped on ccnn.news, in the order it shipped. Every entry is dated from the site's own record.
November 5, 2026
October coverage backfill: the stories.
Eleven October meeting stories publish on the site with their videos embedded; one County Board video is still waiting on YouTube's daily upload limit, and its story follows when it clears.
Projects records refreshed.
Six tracked projects are updated from the official record, including new contractors, new funding, and a $500,000 budget figure for the Chicago Bay Road resurfacing.
Shorter banner ads.
Sponsor banners shrink to one third of their former height in a side by side layout, and the smaller size becomes the standard for sponsors.
Budget chart hover descriptions.
Budget pie charts gain white lines between slices, and hovering a slice names the category with its amount and its share.
Levy and income history chart.
Budget pages for the County Board and the Cook County EDA gain a chart of the annual levy, its percent change, and median household income on one chart, with a step toggle, pan buttons, a switch between the two Census income estimates, and an info button explaining them.
Employment page.
A new page lists jobs in Cook County gathered from employers' own websites, refreshed every four hours, with filters for education and for full time or part time work, the pay each posting states, and a Submit a Job form whose listings are reviewed before they appear.
Jobs in the main navigation.
The Employment page joins the top navigation as Jobs, after Bids and RFPs.
Ordinance chip.
A story that turns on an ordinance carries a chip naming it, and clicking the chip opens the official page carrying the ordinance in a new tab. It appears first on the two stories about Ordinance 2026-04.
Promotion carousel controls.
The promotions card at the bottom of the Feed gains previous and next arrows and a dot for each promotion, so readers can step through the promoted pages by hand as well as watch them rotate.
November 4, 2026
Board Videos pages.
Boards with video playlists get their own Videos page collecting that board's meeting videos in one place.
Board Videos chips.
A Videos chip joins each of those boards' chip rows, linking straight to its Videos page.
Vote chips in color.
Vote chips turn green for aye and red for nay everywhere, lined up in a straight column on person and story pages.
One page per person.
People who served on more than one board are merged into a single page holding all of their boards and decisions.
Source links point one level up.
Every source link on the site now points to the official page that holds the document, instead of the document itself, including board decisions, person pages, and budget pages.
Advertising arrives.
Sponsored slots open in the Feed and on story pages, starting with CCNN's own house ad inviting local businesses to advertise.
Advertise with CCNN page.
A new page sets out the sponsorship packages, what a sponsor image should look like, and CCNN's independence terms.
Corrections mail delivers.
The corrections address is wired to forward into CCNN's inbox, so a reader's correction email actually arrives.
Projects snapshot date.
The Projects page stamps the date its records were last checked, and that date now updates daily as sources are rechecked.
Promo cards on every Feed page.
The rotating promo cards at the bottom of the Feed now also appear on page 2 and every later Feed page.
Story page video layout.
On a story page the video player sits at the left of the story text at a readable width, with captions off until a viewer turns them on.
Privacy policy.
CCNN publishes a privacy policy in plain language.
October coverage backfill: the videos.
Ten more meeting videos from October meetings publish on the channel in one batch.
November 3, 2026
YouTube channel and the first Shorts.
CCNN opens its YouTube channel and publishes its first five meeting videos as Shorts.
Video chips.
Stories with a video carry a Video chip, with the YouTube play mark, on their Feed card and story page.
Watch on the story page.
The video plays right on the story page in a vertical player, so readers do not have to leave the record to watch it.
Video end card.
Every video ends with a six second card pointing viewers back to the story on ccnn.news for the full video, the source documents, and continued coverage.
Feed promo cards.
The bottom of the Feed rotates cards promoting the Calendar, Boards and Commissions, Budgets, Projects, and Bids and RFPs, each a small version of the page it points to, and the rotation pauses when a reader hovers over it.
Calendar meeting cards with people.
Upcoming meeting cards show the board members and staff lead as photo circles that grow on hover and click through to each person's page.
Calendar board filter.
Readers can narrow the Calendar to one board's meetings.
People circles on board listings.
Every board entry on Boards and Commissions shows its members and staff lead as a strip of photo circles above its chips.
Budget cards with people.
Budget cards add photo circles for the board's members and staff lead.
November 2, 2026
Boards grouped by community.
Boards and Commissions groups the county boards and the city boards together, with the school board, the EDA, and North Shore Health standing on their own.
Boards name search.
Readers can search a person's name, and the board that person sits on opens in the listing.
Coverage grows to 18 boards.
The town boards of Lutsen, Tofte, and Schroeder and the Grand Marais Library Board join Boards and Commissions.
Levy chips.
Each board's listing and page carries a chip with its total levy and the levy's percent change.
Per resident levy chips.
Listings carry a chip dividing the levy by the people in the area actually taxed, so readers see the levy per resident.
Per resident hover explanations.
Hovering a per resident chip shows the math: the levy, the resident count, and where the population figure comes from.
Voted to spend chips.
Member rows carry a chip with the total spending each member has voted to approve on record.
EDA grants and loans chips.
The EDA's page carries chips totaling its grants and its loans for the year.
EDA grants and loans tracker.
A tracker page lists the EDA's grants and loans year by year back to 2022, with notes where the record itself disagrees.
Bids and RFPs.
A new top level page lists open bids and requests for proposals, and says plainly which sources CCNN can watch and which it cannot.
Openings chips.
A board with seats open carries a chip saying how many, linking to the application page.
Chip colors.
Every kind of chip gets its own color, and chips get a smaller, tighter size across the site.
Local tax funded organizations.
Visit Cook County and the Grand Marais Area Tourism Association join Boards and Commissions, marked as not government boards.
November 1, 2026
CCNN launches.
The site opens with the Feed, Boards and Commissions, Budgets, Calendar, and Projects in the navigation.
The Feed.
Every covered meeting decision becomes a story in one running Feed, opening with 274 stories.
How they voted.
Story pages list each member's recorded vote under the story, so readers can see exactly who voted which way.
Story chips.
Story cards carry plain chips for the outcome of a decision and for any money attached to it.
Source line on every story.
Each story ends with a Source line linking to the official record it came from, and Feed cards carry the same source line.
Boards and Commissions.
A page for every covered board shows who sits on it, who leads its staff, the laws it works under, and what it decided.
Spending approved chips.
Board listings carry a chip with each board's spending approved on record for the year.
People pages.
Every official gets a page collecting the boards they serve on, their recorded votes, and the spending decisions they took part in.
Budgets.
Budget pages for seven bodies chart where the money goes and where it comes from, in the categories the budget itself uses.
Calendar.
The Calendar lists upcoming meetings for November and December 2026, including meetings that run on a regular schedule and bodies with no date set.
Projects.
The Projects page tracks local projects by category, with a filter by category and each project's scope, status, and funding as published.
Projects map.
The Projects page gains a live map and grows to 41 tracked projects, each with a map thumbnail.
Road notices.
The Projects page carries a road notices panel fed by county, state, and weather sources, checked hourly.
Subscribe.
A Subscribe button in the masthead opens a signup that collects email addresses for CCNN updates.
Corrections address.
The footer invites readers to suggest a correction at corrections@ccnn.news.
October 28, 2026
The first pilot video.
CCNN began with a pilot video built from the County Board's September 22, 2026 levy debate, using the meeting recording itself as the evidence.
Dates not yet confirmed
These features are live, but the record checked for this list does not pin the exact day they first shipped, so they are held here rather than given a date that cannot be backed up.
Source links on board decisions and person pages.
The record shows person pages carried per item source links before a November 2, 2026 update replaced them, and that all of these links were remapped on November 4, 2026, but it does not pin the first day they appeared.
Budget pages naming their sources.
The budget figures carried a named source document for every body from the November 1, 2026 build, and budget Source lines are verified live by November 4, 2026, but the record checked does not pin the first day they appeared on the pages.