Desk editor critique
The lede is buried, the sourcing is mostly there, the voice holds.
Honest read on your story, the way a senior editor would deliver it before the meeting.
3.4
Overall score
2.4
Lede
3.6
Nut graf
3.8
Sourcing
3.5
Framing
4.6
Voice
3.2
Headline
4.1
Structure
Beat average
3.7
Last 30 days
L
Lede strength — 2.4/5
The actual news is in paragraph 3.
Your lede leads with the developer's framing, not the news.
Paragraph 1 quotes Rivera Holdings calling evictions "necessary business decisions." This frames the story around the developer's perspective before establishing what happened. Senior editors call this "letting the source write the lede." Move the news up.
Three rewrites pulled from your body text:
Forty-seven Pilsen families received 30-day eviction notices over a 72-hour stretch last week — the largest single-week displacement in the neighborhood since 2019.
Maria Aguilar found her eviction notice taped to her door on a Tuesday afternoon. She had thirty days. She wasn't alone — 46 other Pilsen families got the same notice within 72 hours.
A single building owner issued 47 eviction notices in Pilsen over three days last week, a wave of displacement housing court records show is the largest in the neighborhood since 2019.
S
Sourcing audit — 3.8/5
12 named tenant sources is strong. One claim remains single-sourced.
12
Named on-record
0
Anonymous
4
Documents
1
Single-sourced claim
"Without precedent in the neighborhood" — single source.
Attributed only to Sandra Ortega (tenant rights lawyer). She's credible, but a "biggest since X" claim like this typically needs corroboration. Suggested second sources: Pilsen Tenants Union staff, Cook County housing court records analyst, or your own records review.
F
Framing & voice proportion — 3.5/5
Tenant voices outweigh developer voices 4:1. This is a reasonable editorial choice — flagged for awareness.
The story heavily centers tenant voices. Rivera Holdings appears only in a statement quote.
This is an editorial judgment, not necessarily a problem. Tenant-heavy framing is consistent with Block Club's housing coverage. If you want to defend against "did you ask the developer for comment" pushback, document the outreach attempts in a sidebar or comment thread.
H
Headline check — 3.2/5
Your current headline is poetic but vague. Three sharper options below.
"Forty-seven families, seventy-two hours" is evocative but doesn't tell readers what the story is about.
A test: would a reader scrolling past this headline in a newsletter know the story is about Pilsen evictions? Probably not. Consider tightening or adding a deck.
Alternative headlines:
A single landlord evicted 47 Pilsen families in 72 hours. The city looked away.
Pilsen's largest single-week eviction since 2019 hit one zip code, one developer, one weekend.
"You couldn't believe what was happening": 47 Pilsen evictions in a single 72-hour window
A
Archive continuity — informational
Three prior Block Club stories overlap. One is a natural follow-up reference.
In November 2024, you reported on Rivera Holdings' acquisition of 1240 W 18th St. That building is one of the 47 evictions in this story.
Worth linking explicitly. It strengthens the "pattern" framing in your nut graf and gives readers context.