Dan is an investigative reporter on WBEZ’s Government & Politics Team. Since joining the station in 2018, Dan has won three National Edward R. Murrow Awards, including the 2022 investigative reporting prize, for a series of stories on sexual abuse of lifeguards at Chicago’s beaches and pools. The “Buried Secrets” series prompted criminal charges, reforms and the resignations of the Park District’s chief executive and board president. Those stories also won first prize in the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Awards for Investigative Reporting.
Dan is a three-time winner of the Chicago Headline Club’s Watchdog Award for Excellence in Public Interest Reporting and was awarded the Headline Club’s 2018 Anne Keegan Award for his feature stories about immigrants. His work also earned first prize for investigative reporting in the Education Writers Association’s national awards in 2014.
Dan joined WBEZ from the Chicago Sun-Times. His investigations for the newspaper’s “Watchdogs” team led to the resignation of a Chicago Public Schools CEO and a federal fraud case against the leader of the state’s largest charter-school network. Dan previously was a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Chicago News Cooperative (Chicago section of the New York Times) and the Chicago Tribune, where he covered the City Hall beat, the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.
Dan was born in Chicago and graduated from Maine West High School in Des Plaines and the University of Missouri School of Journalism. His first language was Greek and he is fluent in Spanish.
Dan Mihalopoulos
Stories by Dan Mihalopoulos
Longtime Cook County tax appeal commissioner faces a big-money push to replace him
Larry Rogers, Jr. has been on the Board of Review for 20 years, but Assessor Fritz Kaegi is spending heavily to help Rogers’s primary challenger.
U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García faces a Democratic primary challenge from the right
But being famous on Fox News has not yet translated into much campaign cash for Chicago Ald. Raymond Lopez’s congressional bid.
The UIC campus cop with extremist ties is banned from testifying in Cook County court cases
The officer continued to work for the state university, despite acknowledging he signed up for the anti-government Oath Keepers years ago.
New Illinois law should help survivors of gender violence who sue their employers
The law, which takes effect Jan. 1, is intended to hold employers accountable for failing to act on complaints of workplace violence.
Two former lifeguards sue the Chicago Park District, saying they suffered sexual abuse when they were minors
Two women allege “childhood sexual abuse” by male supervisors in the years before a scandal at the city’s beaches and pools.
Chicago police Sgt. John Poulos, whose fatal shootings of 2 men led to about $2 million in City Hall payouts, now running for judge
“I find it offensive he’s actually running for judge,” a lawyer for the mother of one of the men killed said.
Opponents sue the city of Evanston for approving Northwestern’s stadium plans
A community group and homeowners in Evanston and Wilmette are suing to stop the “commercialization” of the university’s rebuilt Ryan Field.
Chicago cops tied to Oath Keepers barred from testifying in court, Kim Foxx decides
The move by the Cook County state’s attorney’s office comes weeks after WBEZ and the Sun-Times identified officers who appeared on leaked membership rolls for the anti-government group.
A new policy would ban Chicago police from participating in hate, extremist groups
The policy was approved by a civilian-led oversight panel after CPD investigated but took little action against cops with connections to extremist groups.
Daughter of disgraced Alderman Danny Solis resigns from Chicago Park District post
Earlier this year, the Park District’s inspector general found Maya Solis failed to report a sexual harassment complaint from an employee.