Block Club Chicago, a nonprofit news organization focused on Chicago’s diverse neighborhoods, is looking for a full-time reporter to cover the Garfield Park, North Lawndale and Austin neighborhoods on Chicago’s West Side.
As a beat reporter for this group of neighborhoods, you’ll be expected to cover everything from local school council meetings and breaking news to restaurant openings and real estate developments. Night meetings are common. This is not a 9–5 job (though it is typically Monday-Friday).
Block Club reporters are expected to build sources and contacts in the communities they cover. Plan on getting texts and emails from neighbors and becoming a well-known fixture in your neighborhood. This is a remote position (we want you to be embedded in the community), but we’ll have staff meetings in our Downtown office and you’ll check in with your editor several times a day.
This is not a job for someone who wants to write one story a week. You’ll be expected to have one or two fresh stories daily. There will be opportunities to work on longer-form investigative pieces, but the majority of the job is keeping your readers up to date on daily news from the neighborhood.
The Skills
Familiarity with the West Side of Chicago and the ability to regularly work in the beat and get yourself to and from interviews, press conferences, meetings, etc.
At least two years of daily news reporting experience
Ability to shoot your own photos in the field
Experience promoting your stories on social media
Ability to generate story ideas and willingness to hear from neighbors and readers
Experience covering community meetings or a neighborhood beat a plus
Willingness and ability to cover breaking news and turn around stories quickly
The Perks
Salary: Commensurate with experience; range starts at $60,000
Full benefits (medical, dental, vision), 401K match
Generous vacation policy, plus paid holidays, paid sick and parental leave
Supportive, scrappy, tight-knit editorial team
Requirements
This position is based in Chicago and requires the person to live in the Chicago area.
This is a work-from-home role, but the reporter should expect to work from the West Side several days a week and sometimes work from our Downtown office.
A commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion is required. Block Club believes the diversity of our community is a fundamental strength of our region. Our mission is best fulfilled when we embrace diversity as a value and a practice. We maintain that achieving diversity requires an enduring commitment to inclusion that must find full expression in our organizational culture, values, norms and behaviors. Throughout our work, we will support diversity in all of its forms, encompassing but not limited to age, disability status, economic circumstance, ethnicity, gender, race, religion and sexual orientation.
How To Apply
Send us an email telling us why you’d be a good fit for the job along with your resume and 3 or 4 of your best stories to jobs (at) blockclubchi (dot) org along with two references. Put “West Side Reporter” in the subject line, please!
Please include news clips and not marketing or copywriting samples. If your clips are behind a paywall, please send a PDF version.
Deadline to apply: May 24, 2024
About Us
Block Club Chicago is a nonprofit, reader-funded newsroom dedicated to delivering reliable, nonpartisan and essential coverage of Chicago’s diverse neighborhoods.
Our newsroom was founded in 2018 by former DNAinfo Chicago editors and reporters after the award-winning site abruptly shuttered. We decided to call ourselves Block Club because we felt it reflected our mission: to build community through truly ground-level reporting of the city’s neighborhoods.
In just 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. Our team of 31 full-time journalists publish more than a dozen stories daily from every corner of the city and inform Chicagoans through our neighborhood newsletters, “It’s All Good” podcast, “On The Block” TV show and free, bilingual COVID-19 hotline.
Block Club has been named Editor & Publisher’s Best News Site, LION’s Publisher of the Year, INN’s Community Champion of the Year and we are proudly home to Chicago’s 2021 Journalist of the Year.