Alden Loury
Data Projects Editor
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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Is the worst behind us? What unemployment data for metro Chicago indicate.
For the first time since before the pandemic, metro Chicago posted unemployment rates below 4% across three consecutive months.
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Exodus of major grocers paints a bleak picture of food access for some in Chicago
The number of Chicagoans living more than a mile away from a major grocer has jumped by 63% since 2013, a WBEZ and Sun-Times analysis found.
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While things have improved, Chicago remains the most segregated city in America
Chicago has the highest segregation between white and Black residents of any city in America, according to data from Brown University.
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A dad’s job is never done. No matter how grown, my daughters will always need me
A proud father of three girls — ages 25, 19 and 14 — I’d fooled myself into thinking that my job would be pretty much done once they left home and gained their footing.
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Chicago areas with steep Black population decline see more violence and job loss
Since 2010, nearly two-thirds of the people killed or wounded by gunfire in Chicago were in areas with the largest Black population loss.
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CPS help was short-lived for Chicago schools that absorbed students from schools closed in 2013
The Sun-Times and WBEZ found that school officials failed to protect these welcoming schools and the $155 million invested in them over time.
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Chicago promised students would do better after closing 50 schools. That didn’t happen.
Chicago closed 50 schools in 2013, saying this would help students. But our analysis shows little changed academically for the affected kids.
