Pressure of Truth
Exposing the spin on all sides of the news.
Outlet profile

CWB Chicago

U.S. right-center, law-and-order focus

Owned byPrivately held LLC; Tim Hecke is the managing partner. The outlet was founded in 2013 by five Wrigleyville and Boystown residents but does not publicly disclose full ownership details.
FundingPrimarily reader subscriptions (tiered at roughly $49, $99, and $219 per year) and advertising. The outlet states it does not accept grants or payments from political organizations.
On the administrationbroadly supportive

Background

CWB Chicago launched in April 2013 — the initials originally stood for 'Crime in Wrigleyville and Boystown' — after a small group of North Side Chicago residents grew frustrated with what they saw as misleading crime statistics presented at community policing (CAPS) meetings. It began as a hyperlocal crime blog and gradually expanded to cover criminal courts and public-safety news across a broader swath of Chicago's North Side and downtown. The outlet operates as an LLC with Tim Hecke as managing partner; the full roster of owners has never been publicly disclosed. It sustains itself through reader subscriptions and advertising rather than foundation grants or political funding, a point it emphasizes in its own about pages. The Chicago Justice Project, a criminal-justice research nonprofit, has criticized CWB Chicago for employing loaded law-and-order language without sufficient social context, and Media Bias/Fact Check assigns it a right-center bias rating with mixed marks on factual accuracy. Journalist Eric Zorn examined the outlet's editorial posture and questioned its lack of transparency about ownership and sourcing practices. Despite these critiques, it has gained a substantial local readership for its detailed, often scanner-sourced crime coverage and its reporting from Cook County courtrooms. Its coverage of the Trump administration's second term — including favorable treatment of the rollback of federal police consent decrees and supportive framing of immigration enforcement actions against Illinois sanctuary policies — reflects its longstanding law-and-order editorial orientation.

Sources

  1. CWBChicago – Bias and Credibility
  2. CWB Chicago, who and what is that, exactly? – Eric Zorn Substack
  3. Analysis of CWBChicago, Citywire, and the Chicago Contrarian – Chicago Justice Project
  4. Contact Us / About Us – CWB Chicago
  5. Subscribe – CWB Chicago
  6. As feds scale back 'costly' federal consent decrees, retired suburban chief applauds – CWB Chicago
  7. Illinois 'sanctuary' policies put dangerous aliens back on the streets, feds claim – CWB Chicago

Profile compiled 2026-08-31; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

← Back to track record