Alden Loury
Alden joined WBEZ in July 2018 and served as senior editor of the race, class and communities desk, which provides enterprise reporting on those topics as well as daily reporting on housing, immigration and employment. He switched over to the data team in October 2022.
Previously, Alden served as the director of research and evaluation for the Metropolitan Planning Council for two years where he examined and wrote about population loss, demographic shifts, job trends and racial segregation.
Prior to joining MPC, Alden served as an investigator and later as a policy analyst for the Better Government Association. In more than four years at the BGA, Alden documented abuses with legislative scholarships, campaign finance expenditures and ward remapping and later analyzed data and lobbied for reforms to increase government transparency, efficiency and accountability.
Prior to joining the BGA, Alden spent 12 years at The Chicago Reporter, initially as a reporter, then senior editor and finally as publisher. He authored, edited or provided research for more than 50 investigative projects examining the impact of race and class in drug sentencing, jury verdicts, jury selection, lottery ticket sales, fatal police shootings and subprime mortgage lending, among other topics.
Alden has discussed his work on ABC7, CBS2, CNN, FOX32, NBC5, WBEZ, WGN-TV, and WTTW Chicago Tonight. His research has appeared in The Chicago Defender, The Chicago Reporter, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, Crain’s Chicago Business, Forbes, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Alden is a Chicago native who grew up in the LeClaire Courts public housing development and later the Auburn Gresham community on the city’s South Side.
Stories by Alden Loury
Nearly half of Chicago renters spend too much for rent and utilities
Chicago mirrors a nationwide trend where more renters are spending at least 30% of their income on rent and utilities.
Column: Black Chicago is still waiting for investment
There’s a market waiting for the investment that will keep Black residents in place and draw others back to the communities they’ve called home.
Household income and education levels are on the rise in most parts of the Chicago area
Despite overall gains, Cook County still has more areas with extreme unemployment than any other U.S. county.
Chicago receives thousands of calls about ‘dibs’ after snowstorms — in some neighborhoods more than others
Residents are split on this Chicago winter tradition that some believe was first popularized after the great blizzard of 1967.
Column: Black employment in Cook County is sandwiched between hope and reality
Jobs can be a source of inspiration, but opportunities are diminishing for young Black people in the Chicago area, Alden Loury writes.
Chicago’s armed robberies surge, in five charts
In the five-month period since July, the city has seen the sharpest spike in robberies in 20 years, driven by crimes committed with a weapon.
Chicago seeing largest spike in robberies in over 20 years, analysis shows
There were nearly 4,900 robberies between July 1 and Nov. 26, an increase of more than 55% compared to the total for the previous five months.
Column: Racial profiling isn’t just a traffic thing. For Black people, it’s everywhere.
Black motorists far more likely to be stopped than whites, but traffic stops are not the only evidence of racial suspicion and profiling experienced by Black people.
Halloween decoration fires are among nearly 400 arson incidents so far in 2023
A WBEZ data analysis shows that since 2015 Chicago arson fires have killed nearly two dozen people.
Boosting the wages of Chicago’s tipped workers could lift thousands out of poverty
Among some tipped workers in the Chicago area, those earning at least $15 an hour were half as likely to live in poverty, an analysis shows.