Even in a city like Chicago that’s saturated with news outlets, there was a void. Jen Sabella remembers readers devastated when DNAinfo abruptly shut down, their neighborhoods erased from the headlines overnight. Block Club Chicago was her answer: “A journalist-run, independent nonprofit newsroom” built to embed reporters in communities too often reduced to crime scenes. The choice to cover Austin, Englewood, or Chatham every day — not just when tragedy struck — has turned reporters into neighborhood fixtures and residents into collaborators. Trust isn’t abstract here; it’s someone you can text when the streetlights go out.
That trust is what Edwin Eisendrath pressed on when the conversation turned national. What would it take for a legacy paper like the Washington Post to restore what it’s lost? Jen didn’t hesitate: Fewer reporters duplicating White House pool coverage, more reporters “on the ground in America” in places long abandoned by corporate media. The model isn’t mysterious; it’s the same one that let Block Club grow from eight journalists to forty in just a few years. Readers know when a reporter lives down the block, and they respond in kind.
Collaboration sharpened that trust when ICE raids and disinformation collided with Chicago’s daily life. Jen described how Block Club, the Invisible Institute, South Side Weekly, and others created a shared verification system so rumors didn’t become panic. “We are only going to pursue stories once they are verified by our sources,” she explained, because communities already living in fear deserve facts, not speculation. When a viral video of salt trucks downtown was framed as resistance to federal agents, Block Club dispatched a reporter to confirm the truth. That fact-check didn’t go as viral, but it kept fear from hardening into myth.
The challenge, is that lies are cheap and the truth is costly. Edwin, the former CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times, recalled the old newsroom maxim: If your mother says she loves you, check it out. Jen still trains her staff by that standard, telling them, “You need receipts.” That means photos, documents, evidence — enough to withstand the pushback when politicians call facts partisan. In her eyes, there’s no shortcut; democracy depends on reporters willing to “counter every argument” with proof. That commitment is what keeps communities connected to reality.
Tune in for this conversation between Edwin Eisendrath and Jen Sabella on why journalism that starts local is the only journalism strong enough to hold.
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