Block Club Finalist For 3 LION Local News Awards

CHICAGO — Block Club Chicago, a nonprofit, reader-funded newsroom focused on Chicago’s neighborhoods, is a finalist for three Local Independent Online News Publishers Sustainability Awards.

LION Publishers’ Sustainability Awards honor excellence in journalistic impact, financial health and operational resilience of independent newsrooms across the country.

Block Club’s project “Chicago Under Siege: How Operation Midway Blitz Changed Our City” — which combined investigative, archival and analysis techniques to create a permanent record of what happened in Chicago during Operation Midway Blitz — is nominated in the awards’ Public Service and Community Engagement categories.

Block Club’s successful reader revenue approach is nominated in the awards’ Financial Health category.

Building on Block Club’s on-the-ground reporting during the operation, “Chicago Under Siege” investigated 16 key events from the fall’s unprecedented federal immigration enforcement action, documenting the fear people lived in, the ways they sought to organize and resist and the heartbreak they experienced.

Block Club reporters, led by Francia Garcia Hernandez and Madison Savedra, spoke to more than 60 people, reviewed hundreds of pages of records and court documents and watched and analyzed hours of video to bring the project to light. What emerged was that the federal government’s version of events, in ways big and small, did not match Chicagoans’ experiences.

Judges lauded Block Club’s investigative reporting and lawsuit against Border Patrol over First Amendment violations to hold the federal government accountable.

“During the federal government’s Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago, Block Club Chicago published over 230 stories focusing on the community members most affected,” the LION award summary reads. “They combatted rampant misinformation, fear and confusion through on-the-ground reporting, vital ‘know-your-rights’ guides, a dedicated WhatsApp channel with over 3,000 subscribers, and TikTok videos that generated over 80 million views.”

“Chicago Under Siege” and Block Club’s related coverage of Operation Midway Blitz has also been recognized as a finalist for the Scripps Distinguished Service to the First Amendment Award, as well as a winner of the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Investigative Reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Awards for Investigative Reporting and three Peter Lisagor Awards from the Chicago Headline Club.

Garcia Hernandez, who covers Southwest Side immigrant neighborhoods for Block Club, was honored with the Uplifting Voices Award from Public Narrative and the Nonprofit Newcomer of the Year Award from the Institute for Nonprofit News for her Midway Blitz reporting. Director of Photography Colin Boyle won the LoSAH Center for Hope Community Champion Award for his work documenting the operation.

Financial Health Nomination

After seven years of unchanged pricing, Block Club conducted a comprehensive analysis of its subscription offerings. Through a reader research project, to switching tech stacks, to devising a new tiered subscription model, the newsroom’s efforts, spearheaded by Director of Membership Taylor Nazon, led to a 37 percent increase in subscription revenue, an average monthly retention rate of 99 percent and a 96 percent increase in new subscription acquisition.

“As the organization has matured, they’ve been proactive in refining their reader revenue approach: By refining their tech, pricing and data infrastructure, and by responding to the moments of crisis facing their city that demanded authentic, reliable journalism, they’ve proven that a mission-driven approach to editorial and revenue strategies can be a formula for long-term sustainability,” the LION award summary reads.

The award winners will be announced at a ceremony at the LION’s Independent News Sustainability Summit in San Diego in September.

Block Club launched in 2018 with eight reporters and editors and has grown sustainably to a staff of 42, publishing more than 32,000 stories and growing to cover dozens of new neighborhoods in that time. The newsroom has been named the Local Independent Online News Publishers’ Business of the Year and Publisher of the Year, Editor & Publisher’s Best News Site, the Institute for Nonprofit News’ Community Champion of the Year and the city’s Best Newsletter six years in a row by the Chicago Reader.