Stories by Nick Blumberg

For more than a year, documentary filmmaker Steve James and his collaborators fanned out across Chicago at a pivotal moment. James tells us about the resulting five-part series that premieres this week on NatGeo and Hulu.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s decision to eliminate library fines in order to coax patrons back to the Chicago Public Library has paid off in spades, aldermen heard Wednesday.

A pandemic rollback battle plays out between Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot as Election Day draws near. Our politics team takes on those stories and more in this week’s roundtable. 

With next week’s election looming, the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google received a hectoring from Republicans at a Senate hearing Wednesday for alleged anti-conservative bias in the companies’ social media platforms.

A second Wall Street ratings agency sounded the alarm over Chicago’s budget on Wednesday as aldermen continued weighing Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s $12.76 billion spending plan for 2021.

Opponents of the Obama Presidential Center care more about trees and traffic than they do about people impacted by decades of systemic disinvestment, proponents of the project said in an open letter.

A jury found the defendant guilty in March on each of the six charges he faced: two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of first-degree murder of a peace officer and two counts of armed violence.

By the end of the week, Chicago and the surrounding suburbs will be operating under tightened rules designed to stop the spread of the coronavirus, including a suspension of indoor services at bars and restaurants.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot says she spoke with Gov. J.B. Pritzker for about an hour on Wednesday, a day after the serious split between the officials leading the effort to stem the pandemic spilled into public view.

Doulas are trained to provide support to pregnant women during labor and delivery. But the arrival of COVID-19 has changed that hands-on relationship to one that relies on virtual connections.

Sade Owens faces a single felony charge for falsely reporting the kidnapping of her son Jaylen Mojica, which sparked an extensive manhunt Monday that involved Chicago officers from across the city, police helicopters and K-9 units.

Watch the Oct. 28, 2020 full episode of “Chicago Tonight.”

Lawyers for two Black people who were shot by suburban Chicago police said Wednesday that video shared by authorities showed a bullet-riddled car but not the entire incident.

Leaves don’t belong in the streets, or in dumpsters. Call 311 for a yard waste pickup after you’ve raked and bagged your leaves.

A woman who was shot by police last week in suburban Chicago said Tuesday that officers did nothing more than cover her boyfriend with a blanket after he was shot and left him on the ground to die.

As President Trump enters a frenzied final week of campaigning, he continues to hold mass rallies that often defy local public health rules. The campaign says supporters are merely exercising their First Amendment rights. 

Mayor Lori Lightfoot pushed back late Tuesday on Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s order to suspend indoor dining and drinking in Chicago, the latest sign of a serious split between the officials leading the effort to stem the pandemic.

A tucked-away street on the city's South Side is a time capsule from the days before the neighborhood was even part of Chicago. Geoffrey Baer explains.

A high-turnout election in the middle of a pandemic that is surging across the country presents a host of challenges. How state and local election authorities are working to fill the void.

When the pandemic hit, city officials found there was a significant information gap when trying to collect race and ethnicity data. What researchers at DePaul University is doing to help narrow that gap.

Wall Street’s losses mounted for the second straight day Tuesday as momentum slows on worries about rising virus counts and Washington’s inability to deliver more aid to the economy. 

New restrictions for Chicago begin Friday. “For a time in late summer, Chicago seemed to have this more under control than other regions in Illinois, but that’s no longer the case,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker said.

The coronavirus pandemic has given rise to a cycling boom in Chicago, but many riders face on-street bike lanes that are blocked or in disrepair. An advocacy organization wants to combat the problem with its new mobile app.

According to a new report, Chicago police officers who fired their weapons have been returning to regular field duties before completing necessary training requirements aimed at helping them process trauma.

City officials added Florida to Chicago’s COVID-19 quarantine order as confirmed cases of the coronavirus continue to surge in Chicago, Illinois and throughout the nation.

After refusing requests to wear face masks or use hand sanitizer inside a North Lawndale neighborhood store, two sisters allegedly attacked a male employee, stabbing him more than two dozen times Sunday evening.