In 2007, it received $340,000 in funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to build a network of trained citizen journalists to cover their Chicago neighborhoods.
[2] The news organization won national attention for its business model and journalism, including coverage in The Washington Post.
[6] In 2010, Dougherty and a group of former Chi-Town Daily News reporters launched Chicago Current, an insider political paper modeled after Politico.
[7] Before launching the two online newspapers, Dougherty was the computer-assisted reporting editor at the Chicago Tribune, where he undertook investigations on coal mining[8] and food safety.
[9] Earlier, he served as computer-assisted reporting editor at the Miami Herald, where he played a key role in the paper's investigation into the flawed presidential election of 2000, and the subsequent effort to examine and analyze all of the discarded ballots in Florida.