No other newsroom covers Chicago like Block Club: Our beats are the neighborhoods. Our work is rooted in the communities and focused on everyday Chicagoans.
It was through this lens that Block Club covered the federal government’s Operation Midway Blitz this year: prioritizing the perspectives of the people most affected by the operation, such as undocumented immigrants and neighbors whose streets were tear-gassed — not politicians.
Our small, scrappy staff made this coverage their priority: Neighborhood reporters shifted from shop openings to documenting raids. Investigative reporters dug into the money driving the blitz. Editors covered court hearings.
Our reporters were present for protests and courtroom hearings when advocates challenged the Trump administration. They sat in the living rooms of families whose loved ones were abruptly taken away. They reported from the streets as agents tear-gassed neighbors.
We had a constant presence on the streets, publishing hundreds of stories chronicling daily life. We were the first to report when federal agents used tear gas as a family with a 2-year-old strolled by. That same day, when agents put a Chicago alderwoman in handcuffs, we were first to the scene again, obtaining video of the incident that has been viewed 40 million times across social media platforms.
Block Club also created a WhatsApp channel where any person could sign up for our daily updates about Midway Blitz: the latest headlines, including confirmed detentions, as well as resource guides that answered their questions. More than 3,000 people signed up within a matter of weeks. These updates were free.
Block Club was the go-to source of daily news for Chicagoans during Operation Midway Blitz — and we continued to pursue local news, our bread and butter, with our usual zeal.
An August story, “Some Call It ‘Death Hospital,'” highlighted how a for-profit hospital received $75 million from the federal government — even as it failed inspections where officials linked the hospital’s failures to patient and staff deaths.
We revealed how two local businessmen accused of stealing millions from a safety-net hospital — and one of them accused of defrauding the federal government of $300 million — had been living lives of luxury as fugitives in Dubai.
On Chicago’s South Side, neighbors spent a decade asking officials to clean up an illegal junkyard in a vacant lot — but nothing changed until Block Club ran a story about the junkyard. Within hours of the story going live, the city finally took action, filing suit against the absentee owner and eventually clearing the lots. Neighbors were ecstatic, and the city has now fined the property’s owner for more than $1 million.
And Block Club’s reporters wrote thousands of stories about community organizations, local businesses and events where neighbors could engage with each other, helping inform and unite residents.
