CHICAGO — Block Club Chicago is proud to introduce its new investigative team, The Watch, to the city.
Block Club, a reader-funded, nonprofit newsroom dedicated to serving Chicago’s neighborhoods, is launching the investigative team to root out corruption, wrongdoing and inequality on the South and West sides. The team is made possible by a three-year, $1.6 million grant from the McCormick Foundation, additional funding from the Driehaus Foundation and the unwavering support of our subscribers.
The new investigative team will work closely with our neighborhood reporters and be positioned to act on tips and pursue high-impact stories to improve government transparency and accountability.
The Watch reporters, Mina Bloom, Rachel Hinton and Manny Ramos, have an impressive track record of serving the South and West sides through their investigative work and have a deep understanding of Block Club’s mission.
They join Senior Editor of Investigations Curtis Lawrence and Investigative Editor Mick Dumke, who joined our staff earlier this year.
“We’re looking forward to reshaping how investigative reporting is done in Chicago,” Lawrence said. “We’ll be using data and documents to unearth inequities with a targeted focus on the South and West sides. But we’ll do it in a way that’s straightforward and clear in how it connects directly to the lives of everyday Chicagoans on the block.”
Bloom is a founding Block Club reporter who has worked on the West Side for more than a decade, most recently covering Logan Square, Humboldt Park and Avondale. Before that, she tirelessly covered these neighborhoods for DNAinfo and also served as a breaking news reporter, working across the South and West Sides. In her work, Bloom revealed how a West Side alderman was profiting off of the 606 development boom as he blocked others from doing the same; showed how a high-profile Humboldt Park veterans home was failing its residents; and uncovered the lasting effects and human toll of Chicago’s most dangerous bike lane.
Hinton was most recently an Enterprise reporter at the Illinois Answers Project, formerly known as the Better Government Association, and is a 2023 Maynard Institute fellow. Before that, she spent five years at the Sun-Times, where she had an impressive rise from metro intern to the paper’s chief political reporter. Hinton uncovered how Lightfoot’s lofty Invest South/West program failed to include the residents it aimed to help; revealed the state’s top Medicaid contractor was failing Chicago kids in foster care; and showed how the city has only spent a fraction of the federal dollars it got to address homelessness with Ramos.
Ramos, a West Side native, was most recently a Solutions and Accountability reporter at the Illinois Answers Project. Before that, he spent four years at the Sun-Times, covering the South and West Sides and transportation. He’s also a former City Bureau fellow. Ramos revealed Englewood was relentlessly targeted for demolitions a decade after the foreclosure crisis, dismantling the neighborhood’s fabric; investigated the failures of Lightfoot’s Grounds For Peace program; and blew the lid off of Chicago’s secretive street racing culture.
Lawrence, a former associate professor of journalism at Columbia College and a veteran editor and reporter, is a South Side native and a Studs Terkel Award winner for his excellence in reporting on diverse communities while at the Chicago Sun-Times. He has more than three decades of experience covering Chicago’s underserved neighborhoods and editing related stories. At the Sun-Times, he notably wrote about the demolition of the Chicago Housing Authority high-rises and efforts to ensure displaced residents would be able to return to replacement housing.
Dumke, a veteran journalist, has spent more than 20 years investigating Chicago and its neighborhoods at ProPublica, the Sun-Times, Chicago Reader and Chicago Reporter. He’s known for his investigations on the dismantling of public housing, law enforcement’s role in the underground gun trade, the long-unsolved murder of a West Side alderman and his masterful explanation of Chicago power and politics in “The Making Of An Alderman.”
Have a tip for our investigative team? We want to hear it. Email them at investigations@blockclubchi.org.
Building On Our Work
The Watch will build on Block Club’s already impactful and award-winning investigative coverage, which in recent years uncovered:
- The Loretto Hospital vaccination scandal, which showed how the hospital funneled vaccines meant for Chicago’s most vulnerable to some of the wealthiest parts of the city, including Trump Tower.
- Sweeping racial inequities in traffic stops and ticketing across Chicago.
- Massive flaws in the COVID-19 testing industry, showing how at least four testing companies took advantage of the pandemic and people in need, billing the federal government hundreds of millions of dollars for testing that often gave inaccurate — or completely fake — results.
- Wrongdoing in Chicago’s aldermanic offices, acting as a much-needed watchdog.
Block Club’s investigative reporting has changed laws and led to criminal FBI and state investigations, the closing of hundreds of questionable COVID-19 testing sites and the ousting of top officials.
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Block Club Chicago launched in 2018, just months after the abrupt closure of DNAinfo. Editors Shamus Toomey, Jen Sabella and Stephanie Lulay teamed with former reporters from the award-winning news site to create a newsroom with the same local focus, but with a membership-based funding model. The site launched as a nonprofit, joining a growing network of 501(c)(3) news sites around the country.
We started with three editors and five reporters. Thanks to the support of nearly 20,000 paid subscribers and philanthropic organizations, it now boasts a full-time staff of 31. Block Club also relies on a network of freelance reporters — and hundreds of tipsters around the city.
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In five years, Block Club has transformed from scrappy startup to one of the most-read news organizations in Chicago by being responsive to the city’s neighborhoods, publishing more than a dozen stories daily from every corner of the city and informing Chicagoans through our free newsletter, “It’s All Good” podcast, “On The Block” TV show and COVID-19 hotline.
Block Club was named Best Online-Only News Site by Editor & Publisher, Publisher of the Year by LION (Local Independent Online News) Publishers, and Community Champion of the Year by the Institute for Nonprofit News’ Nonprofit News Awards.
We’re also proudly home to 2021 Chicago Journalist of the Year Kelly Bauer, who won for her Loretto Hospital investigative coverage, and was twice nominated for the Chicago Headline Club’s Watchdog Award.
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