We’re looking for an experienced, results-driven, passionate investigative editor to lead Block Club’s new investigative team. Applications are due by Nov. 22.
Block Club Chicago, a nonprofit newsroom focused on Chicago’s diverse neighborhoods, is building an investigative team to expand our award-winning journalism with a focus on transparency and accountability reporting. Block Club’s first Senior Editor of Investigations will lead that team in identifying stories and data that warrant further investigation, overseeing all stages of editorial production for these projects. This team will cover all of Chicago, with extra attention directed to coverage of the South and West sides.
The new investigative team will concentrate on journalistic work that roots out corruption, wrongdoing and inequality, building on Block Club’s already impactful and award-winning investigative coverage, which in recent years revealed the Loretto Hospital vaccination scandal, sweeping racial inequities in traffic stops and massive flaws in the COVID-19 testing industry.
This enterprising editor knows how to find stories that matter to our neighbors, how to get answers and how to get results.
The Skills
You’re right for the job if:
You are passionate about local news and the impact it can have on a community.
You have a proven track record of conceiving, assigning and editing high-impact investigative stories.
You can manage long- and short-term investigations while leading and mentoring a team, and collaborating with neighborhood reporters, editors and external partners.
You have expertise in acquiring public records, analyzing datasets and verifying sources to deliver accurate, timely and impactful investigations in a competitive market.
You can deliver clear, engrossing and powerful stories that grab a reader’s attention.
You know Chicago’s South and West sides or are open to serving them. This team will focus on identifying and reporting on corruption and inequity on the city’s South and West sides.
You believe in the power of Block Club’s mission, as the investigative team will work closely with neighborhood reporters to identify and pursue investigations that affect our neighbors’ lives.
You can enthusiastically mentor early- and mid-career reporters in a collaborative work environment and proactively keep a team engaged with their colleagues across the newsroom. This will not be a siloed investigative team.
You can work seamlessly with sources, editors, reporters and legal counsel to produce stories that meet all of the expectations of Block Club’s leadership and readership.
You can promote your team’s work to a wide range of audiences.
The Perks
Salary: Commensurate on experience, range $100,000-$125,000
Full benefits (medical, dental, vision), 401K
4 weeks paid vacation, paid holidays, paid sick and maternity leave
Opportunity to build your own team
Supportive, scrappy, tight-knit editorial staff
Requirements
This position is based in Chicago and requires the person to live in the Chicago area.
This is a work-from-home/office hybrid role, but the editor should expect several days of in-person work at our Downtown office to work alongside and collaborate with colleagues.
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’re best positioned for this job along with your resume, examples of investigative projects you’ve led, a synopsis of the role you played in the projects and two references to newsroom (at) blockclubchi (dot) org. Put “Senior Editor of Investigations Position” in the subject line, please.
Deadline To Apply: Nov. 22, 2022.
About Block Club
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 four 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 24 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.
In the last year alone, 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 Journalist of the Year.