CHICAGO — Block Club Chicago, a nonprofit, reader-funded newsroom focused on Chicago’s neighborhoods, won Best Newsletter and Best Independent Website/Blog in Chicago Reader’s 2024 Best Of Chicago Awards.
The annual awards celebrate the best of Chicago’s arts, culture, local business scenes and more. The Best of Chicago winners are chosen by locals who vote.
It’s the fifth time Block Club has won the Best Newsletter Award. The nonprofit newsroom also won top honors in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023.
The Chicago Reader was runner-up in the Best Newsletter contest, and Charlie Meyerson’s Chicago Public Square newsletter, CityCast’s Hey Chicago! newsletter and food writer Dennis Lee’s The Party Cut newsletter were finalists.
Block Club also won Best Independent Website/Blog in the Reader’s 2023 awards.
Block Club produces more than a dozen newsletters focused on Chicago’s neighborhoods, and they are read by 130,000 people. The newsletters highlight Block Club stories and other neighborhood-focused media. They are written by Block Club’s reporters and editors and shepherded by Newsletter Editor Hannah Boufford.
Sign up for Block Club’s free newsletters here and subscribe to get access to all of its neighborhood and specialized newsletters.
Block Club Chicago launched in 2018 with eight reporters and editors and has grown sustainably to a staff of 38, publishing more than 27,000 stories that matter to Chicago’s neighborhoods over nearly seven years. The newsroom has been named the Local Independent Online News (LION) Publishers’ Business of the Year and Publisher of the Year, Editor & Publisher’s Best News Site and the Institute for Nonprofit News’ Community Champion of the Year.
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