Chicago Reader
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Type | Alternative weekly |
|---|---|
| Format | Tabloid |
| Owner | Creative Loafing Inc. |
| Publisher | Michael Crystal |
| Editor | Alison True |
| Founded | 1971 |
| Headquarters | 11 E. Illinois St. Chicago, IL 60611 United States |
| Circulation | 120,204[1] |
| Website | chicagoreader.com |
The Chicago Reader is an alternative newsweekly publication in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was a pioneer of the urban free-weekly movement, founded in 1971 [2] by a group of friends who attended Carleton College. In July 2007, the Reader was sold to Creative Loafing,[3] and in mid-September 2007, it was announced that printing of the paper had been outsourced to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Milwaukee printing facilities [4].
Issues are dated every Thursday and distributed free to more than 1,400 locations in the Chicago metropolitan area on Wednesday and Thursday. As of June 2006, the average weekly circulation, audited by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, was 120,204,[1] down from more than 138,000 just five years before.[5]
The Reader has served two significant roles in Chicago. First, it offers local news and commentary. Its reporting on police torture in the 1990s and the rise of former mayor Harold Washington in the 1980s, for example, has led to fundamental changes in city government. Second, it provides an extensive guide to Chicago, primarily its culture and real-estate. Its criticism nurtured the birth of off-Loop theater, a scene that now boasts more than 200 companies, including the Steppenwolf Theatre.
Because it is funded largely through extensive classified advertising and by small businesses, the Reader's journalism can be hard-hitting. Though the paper is famous for long, exhaustive cover stories, a la The New Yorker, it has always offered a variety of stories in a variety of lengths and voices, plus extensive arts coverage. In recent years, most of its cover stories have been of a fairly typical magazine-feature length, but now some believe the paper's overall quality has declined.[3]
A 2008 article in the Columbia Journalism Review [6] tried to provide an explanation for this decline. By 2005, the Reader was quickly losing its audience, though it was still a "fat, four-section paper . . . under the arm of every L rider." The paper had grown "complacent because it was still raking in the dough." But with the skid in quality, the editors tried hard to seem "hip" once again, even hiring "a tattooed, twenty-seven-year-old stripper to write a late-night party column." A former contributor called the paper's subsequent shift a tragic mistake that exacerbated its business troubles, explaining, "The feeling was the Reader had to be reinvented . . . and change its character." [7]
[edit] Format
The work of acclaimed comic book artist and cartoonist Chris Ware used to run regularly in the Reader. Its main film critic is J.R. Jones; the Reader's publisher, Creative Loafing, hosts the Web site holding the past and current writings of the paper's former chief film critic, Jonathan Rosenbaum. The Reader often runs the weekly comic DIRTFARM by Ben Claassen III.
The Reader’s Guide to Arts & Entertainment, a spin-off launched in 1996, was a free weekly repackaging of the Reader's entertainment listings and arts writing for the suburbs north, northwest and west of Chicago. Publication was suspended in August 2007 and suburban circulation of the city paper was expanded.
The Reader was slow to offer its content on the Internet, but now posts all of its content and archives online for free website.
[edit] References
- ^ a b "Chicago Reader". Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. http://aan.org/alternative/Aan/ViewCompany?oid=oid%3A9. Retrieved on 2007-01-15.
- ^ "About the Chicago Reader, Inc. Publications". Chicago Reader, Inc.. http://www.chicagoreader.com/readerinc/aboutR.htm. Retrieved on 2007-01-15.
- ^ a b "Reader has new owners". Michael Miner. http://blogs.chicagoreader.com/news-bites/2007/07/24/reader-has-new-owners/. Retrieved on 2007-07-26.
- ^ Lank, Avrum. "Journal Sentinel to print Chicago Reader". JSOnline DayWatch Blog. http://www.jsonline.com/watch/?watch=1&date=9/14/2007&id=29161. Retrieved on 2007-09-14.
- ^ "Reader? Less so, as circulation dips". Crain's. http://chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/article.pl?article_id=23282&seenIt=1. Retrieved on 2005.
- ^ Edward McClelland. "Hope I Die...". http://www.cjr.org/essay/hope_i_die.php.
- ^ McClelland, Edward (September/October 2008). "Hope I die ... Will the Chicago Reader finally grow up? Should it?". https://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/print/185487641.html.
[edit] External links
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