How Block Club Chicago reached 20,000 paying subscribers
A $183,000 Kickstarter campaign provided the seed capital to get it off the ground.
Layoffs in the local news sector are, sadly, a regular occurrence, but three Chicago journalists decided they weren’t going down without a fight.
In November 2017, the news startup DNA Info laid off its entire staff, and it was only a few months later that three of its editors launched a Kickstarter that raised over $183,000; they used that capital to launch Block Club Chicago, a nonprofit that seeks to put a journalist in each of the city’s neighborhoods.
Flash forward six years, and Block Club has a robust news gathering operation that’s funded by 20,000 paying subscribers, foundation support, and a growing advertising business. In a recent interview, co-founder Stephanie Lulay walked me through the site’s launch strategy, its unique approach to neighborhood-based reporting, and why she thinks Block Club’s model can be replicated all across the US.
Check out the interview below:
Transcript
Hey, Stephanie. Thanks for joining us.
Hi, Simon. How are you?
I'm doing great. So you co-founded a really successful local news outlet. It's called Block Club Chicago. What was your background in local news prior to that?
Yeah, Simon, my background is I was a local reporter and then became an editor. I was laid off like many journalists. The newsroom that I worked for, DNA Info at the time, here in Chicago.
Was that the first local newsroom you worked for?
No. Yeah, we can back up all the way. Sorry. Yeah, I always knew that I wanted to be a journalist. For me, it kind of started at age three. I would ask why about everything. Why? Why? Why? Why? And my grandfather would always remark, does she ever shut up?
And I'm not sure that I have ever shut up and stopped wondering why. And that's really driven my passion for journalism. It's such a gift to be able to learn about the world and what's going on in politics and our communities and all of that. After graduating from the University of Illinois, I did my undergrad and my master's there. My first job in local news was working for the Aurora Beacon News. Here in Illinois, that's our second largest city. I did a little bit of everything there from covering schools and small towns to eventually covering politics in the city.
Then I left to join DNA Info, which at the time was a startup looking to cover Chicago by neighborhood. It kind of flipped the beat system on its head. Instead of having a daily newsroom where you're focused on cops and courts and education, traditional beats, the reporters at DNA Info were focused on covering communities, like covering these neighborhood stories from the ground up. So I was very inspired by that mission and eager to join them. And I joined first as a reporter and a neighborhood reporter, and I eventually became a senior editor.
And DNA Info, it wasn't just in Chicago. There was also one in New York, correct?