Alden Loury, Data Projects Editor

Alden serves as the data projects editor for WBEZ and leads a team of data journalists collaborating with the newsrooms of both WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times for enterprise stories and longer-term projects. In that role, he leads projects, analyzes data, creates visualizations, and edits stories. Alden also writes a monthly column for the Chicago Sun-Times.

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.

(Previous Bio) Alden Loury is a senior policy analyst with the Better Government Association — a nonpartisan, nonprofit government watchdog — providing research, data analysis, lobbying and writing on government efficiency and public corruption. Loury joined the BGA in October 2011 as a senior investigator and documented how Illinois lawmakers awarded scholarship perks to campaign donors and political workers; revealed that Chicago aldermen drew ward boundaries to exclude their political challengers and the people who supported them; and documented more than a million dollars of public money was spent in one year to provide free parking for government workers among other stories.

Prior to joining the BGA, Loury spent 12 years at The Chicago Reporter–an investigative magazine and website focusing on communities of color in the Chicago region–where he served as a reporter, editor and publisher. During his time there, Loury won national and local awards, including the Studs Terkel Award. As a reporter he examined the effectiveness of community policing and documented racial disparities in drug sentencing, jury selection and jury verdicts. As an editor, he led more than 50 investigative projects examining the impact of race and poverty in lottery ticket sales, fatal police shootings of civilians, retail leakage in black neighborhoods, residential development surrounding demolished public housing and subprime home mortgage lending, among others.

Loury has discussed his work on CNN, NBC5, WTTW Chicago Tonight and Chicago Public Radio. His research has appeared in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times,Crain’s Chicago Business, Los Angeles Times, Forbes, The Chicago Defender, and on the local NBC, ABC, FOX, WGN affiliates and various radio stations.

Loury began his journalism career in Champaign, Illinois, where he worked as a radio anchor/reporter and newspaper reporter covering government and social services. Loury is a 1997 graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A Chicago native, Loury grew up in the LeClaire Courts public housing development and the South Side’s Auburn Gresham neighborhood, where he lives today. Loury is married with three daughters.