Block Club Chicago

Overview

Block Club Chicago is a nonprofit, subscription-supported online news organization delivering neighborhood-focused coverage across Chicago, with reporters assigned to specific community beats.

History

Block Club Chicago was founded by former DNAinfo Chicago editors Shamus Toomey, Stephanie Lulay and Jen Sabella following the November 2017 shutdown of DNAinfo and its sister site Gothamist by owner Joe Ricketts. A Kickstarter campaign, at the time the most successful of its kind for a local news initiative, along with funding from the Civil publishing platform, allowed the founders to launch Block Club Chicago on June 12, 2018, adopting DNAinfo's neighborhood-beat model under reader-supported nonprofit ownership.

Notable works

Block Club Chicago's investigative team, The Watch, examines accountability issues across the city; the outlet's coronavirus hotline won the Community Champion Award for a large newsroom in the Institute for Nonprofit News' 2021 Nonprofit News Awards. By 2023, the outlet had grown to 20,000 paid subscribers covering 45 of Chicago's 77 community areas.

Key personnel

Editor-in-Chief: Shamus Toomey
Co-founder: Stephanie Lulay
Co-founder: Jen Sabella

Audience

Block Club Chicago serves readers across Chicago's neighborhoods through a paid-subscription model supplemented by donor and grant support, with a newsletter circulation that reached 140,000 by 2021.

Location and contact info

Address
Chicago, Illinois
Website
https://blockclubchicago.org