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| Type | Alternative weekly |
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| Format | Tabloid |
| Owner(s) | Reader Institute for Community Journalism (a non-profit corporation) |
| Publisher | Solomon Lieberman |
| Editor | Salem Collo-Julin |
| Founded | October 1, 1971 |
| Headquarters | 2930 S. Michigan Ave. Suite 102 Chicago, Illinois 60616 United States |
| Circulation | 60,000 (as of June 2020) |
| ISSN | 1096-6919 |
| Website | chicagoreader |
The Chicago Reader, or Reader (stylized as ЯEADER), is an American alternative newspaper in Chicago, Illinois, noted for its literary style of journalism and coverage of the arts, particularly film and theater. The Reader has been recognized as a pioneer among alternative weeklies for both its creative nonfiction and its commercial scheme. Richard Karpel, then-executive director of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, wrote:
[T]he most significant historical event in the creation of the modern alt-weekly occurred in Chicago in 1971, when the Chicago Reader pioneered the practice of free circulation, a cornerstone of today's alternative papers. The Reader also developed a new kind of journalism, ignoring the news and focusing on everyday life and ordinary people.[1]
The Reader was founded by a group of friends from Carleton College,[2] and four of them remained its primary owners for 36 years. While annual revenue reached an all-time high of $22.6 million in 2002,[3] double what it had been a decade earlier, profits and readership then went into steep decline, and ownership changed several times between 2007 and 2018. In 2022, the owners transferred the Reader to a new non-profit organization, the Reader Institute for Community Journalism.
On June 22, 2020, the Reader, citing a 90% drop in advertising revenue due to COVID-19 shutdowns, announced that it was pivoting from a weekly to a biweekly print schedule, with a renewed focus on digital content and storytelling and a refreshed special issues calendar.[4] The Reader returned to weekly publishing in June 2024. The Reader is dated every Thursday and distributed free on Wednesday and Thursday via street boxes and cooperating retail outlets. As of June 2020,[update] the paper claimed to have nearly 1,200 locations in the Chicago metropolitan area and circulation of 60,000,[4] a fraction of what circulation had been in the mid-2000s. The Reader remains among the largest and most successful alternative newspapers in the country. Weekly readership had once been put at 450,000.[5]
- ^ Sisson, Richard; Zacher, Christian; Cayton, Andrew, eds. (2006). The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
- ^ Valeo, Tom (November 4, 1979). "The Chicago Reader: A '70s Success Story" (PDF). Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL). Retrieved January 21, 2010.
- ^ "The Reader at 50". Chicago Reader. 13 October 2021. Retrieved 2024-03-03.
- ^ a b "Chicago Reader pivots to biweekly print schedule". Chicago Reader. 22 June 2020. Retrieved 2020-09-06.
- ^ "Chicago Reader". Duotrope. Retrieved 2024-03-03.