now read this: the Chicago Reader's legacy of (Police) brutality finally gets its day in the sun ... after firing the writer

A wonderful, if too brief, profile of ex-Chicago Reader author John Conroy, who doggedly pursued stories of police brutality in the city (over 100,000 words worth), until being laid off in December.

Although he would tell you he's only a "bit player," Conroy was probably as responsible as anyone for keeping the police torture issue in Chicago's consciousness during that time. He wrote about it and wrote about it, to the point that it probably wasn't good for his career

Slipping Backwards: The loss of two journalists of color at the Chicago Sun-Times reflects the growing whitewashing of the news

Teresa Puente's bad day started when she learned that Deborah Douglas, her colleague on the Chicago Sun-Times' editorial board, and the last African-American voice on the board, had been laid off. Her day got worse when she found out that Douglas wasn't the only one to get the boot: Puente herself was out too.

With that, the five-person board was down to three, all of them white, purporting to speak for a city of almost three million, 60 percent of them people of color.

Why the cuts? Because the Sun-Times has found itself caught in the slow and painful drip-drip-drip of a newspaper on life support. It laid off 20% of its newsroom in January. It got kicked off the New York Stock Exchange in June because its stock value had fallen below a dollar (that value is now less than a dime). In the name of "innovation" it has redesigned itself so many times it's hard to recognize one month to the next. Lately, the largest item on the cover has been for a promotional sweepstakes. It's become one of those papers.

It's also been, historically, the exact kind of paper that spoke to and for the marginalized communities in the city (excluding its brief dalliance as a NewsCorp property). All the gumshoe reporter, "sticking up for the little guy" newspaper cliches apply: That was the Sun-Times. And as that little guy became not so little anymore--as the minority population in the city became the majority--the Sun-Times labored (though some would say "lumbered") to keep up.

In July 2007, editor Cheryl Reed proudly announced that the paper was "returning to our liberal, working-class roots, a position that pits us squarely opposite the Chicago Tribune--that Republican, George Bush-touting paper over on moneyed Michigan Avenue." Perhaps it's overwrought sentiment (after all, until it sold the land to Donald Trump, the Sun-Times was across the street), but it was worth saying.

But it didn't last long. The layoffs this year cut two positions from the board. Reed herself quit the Sun-Times shortly afterward, and the eight-person board had been slashed to five. And now five becomes three.

The carving up of newsrooms is not a new story--it's become so commonplace that it was written into the storyline of the last season of The Wire--but it is a big story. The blog Paper Cuts carefully tracks and maps the layoffs, buyouts, and firings that have been eating away at traditional journalism. The latest count? 11,719 jobs lost this year alone. When it happens to the auto industry, it's big news. But when it happens to the news itself, who reports it?

"I believe newspapers should be reflections of the communities we live in and write about," Puente told me earlier today. "But that's being lost in all the layoffs--there's no thought to preserving diversity."

Rick Attig, who won a Pulitzer for his editorials at the Portland Oregonian, echoes Puente's concerns: "The cutbacks in this industry are likely to follow those in most every other business, based on seniority. And you know who generally has the seniority on newspaper editorial boards."

If you don't, just look at the new makeup of the Sun-Times.

And of course, you can read that and say, "Well thank god for the internet," and you wouldn't be wrong. Online, opinions are like assholes: everyone's got one. But, says Attig, "I'd argue that there still is a place, an important place, for editorial boards that provide well-reported, well-considered local opinion writing. There are precious few institutions left that speak with a clear, strong and independent voice about the issues of the day."

In Chicago, a city that's 36% African American and 26% Latino, those issues are a reflection of the people who live there. Who's going to voice their issues now? Put a mirror up the Sun-Times, and it no longer reflects back the diversity of the city it took its name from.

For Puente, it's not about her job. She teaches journalism at a college in Chicago and the Sun-Times gig was part-time (full disclosure: I teach in the same department). But it is about "ensuring that diverse viewpoints are at the table." There's no time more important than right now to make sure that newspapers reflect the changing world around them, she says. "Look at where our nation is now--about to elect the first African-American President of the United States--and what that means for how far we've come as a society. But newspapers? They're slipping backwards."

Cross-posted with the Huffington Post

An (ugh) Creative Loafing insider's perspective

This is a pretty honest assessment of Creative Loafing's chances of survival and strategies moving forward after their announcement of going into bankruptcy protection on Monday. The short? It ain't good.

Chicago Reader deathwatch part 1000

Fitting perhaps that on the day that the Chicago Tribune redesign went live, the year-old owners of the Reader, Chicago's long-running alternative weekly paper, announced they were filing for bankruptcy protection.

Now the sale of the Reader is a topic I've covered extensively here, so there's a lot of backstory to catch up on. The short of it (for those not willing to follow those half-dozen links) is that the once-profitable paper was at the center of a converging media landscape that had the Tribune's Red Eye commuter paper on one track, Time Out Chicago on another, and Craigslist on a third. There was no real expectation of survival--the paper's prime had long passed it by--and the owners sold the paper to the Tampa, Florida based publishers Creative Loafing who still, just over a year since I first learned their name, causes a cringe in me every time I hear it.

Now bankruptcy protection is different than bankruptcy itself (yes, by all of one word) as Creative Loafing (ugh) owner Ben Eason is quick to point out to the Chicago Reader's own Michael Miner. "This isn't a failing company," he says, spinning in the manner most media CEOs have become quite accustomed to. If you don't believe him, he's got a few more for you: "This is a profitable business." No? How about "The company has a good cash flow. It has a good market position. Online revenues more than doubled in the last year." In other words, filing for bankruptcy protection is, like, the bestest, most awesomest thing ever!

So why, in the face of all this good news, is it happening? That one's easy! Let's take the Internet for 1000, Alex: Creative Loafing (ugh) finds themselves "caught squarely by this challenging economy between old media and new media." If that sounds familiar, that's because a little over a year ago Eason was touting (ugh) Creative Loafing's actions in "pioneering the opportunities offered by convergent print, web, and new media applications." Seems like that didn't work out quite the way he planned, huh?

But the future is bright! Just ask Eason! On an internal memo leaked on Miner's blog, he explains "Bottom line is that once this Company becomes a digital company. The money will follow our transformation." As proof, he touts that last year alone "our online business grew from roughly $200,000 in revenue to a run rate of $1,200,000 currently." That the declining print side of the Chicago Reader alone makes many times that seems to be omitted from the memo, though he does admit that the Reader and the Washington City Pages (originally a Reader property) make up half the profits of the company. Which is all well and good except that it's going to be a hell of a lot easier to become the defacto "going out" website in Sarasota than it is going to be in an oversaturated local web market like Chicago which hosts any number of homegrown alternatives to the Reader's tired website. The Reader stopped being the only game in town decades ago; online it's barely even an also-ran.

But dispite the tough times, Eason is promising no liquidation and no layoffs, and really why not believe the guy? It's not like credit isn't easy to come by right now--the banks are just giving money away, aren't they? Oh wait... What's that? Biggest stock market crash ever? Oops.

Update: As pointed out in the comments, I apparently had Craigslist on the brain when I called (ugh) Creative Loafing's Ben Eason "Craig" accidentally. I've made the change.

Holy Balls! Chicago Tribune prototype floated

I'm speechless.

“It’s a strategy, basically, of gradually closing down"

The New York Times has an article about the changes at Tribune Co., that might be most notable for how adeptly the they're able to cover the implosion of the newspaper industry without actually putting themselves in too. It takes a fair amount of gymnastics, but the result is a story about newspapers in a newspaper that never actually acknowledges that that it too is in trouble. What other industry would present information that way? None I can think of.

Anyway, what's going to be cut? How about an order of the usual?

Mr. Zell and Mr. Michaels did not address what content would be cut, but Mr. Zell has said before that he disagrees with the heavy allocation of resources to national and international news. Many newspapers have concluded that when a mouse click can collect news of Washington or Baghdad or Beijing from a multitude of sources, local news is their only real hold on readers.

Yes, you read that right: Bring the old "hyperlocal" dog back onto the track for one last race. I'm sure it's still a good idea, right? Oh wait...

P.S. Sorry for the absence, I've been transitioning from one thing to the next. I expect regularly-scheduled updates to continue from here on out.

And with the Zell counter-argument

Editorial cartoonist David Horsey offers a pretty sobering counter-argument about Sam Zell, Tribune Co-owner and renowned profanitor.

"those that keep operating under the old thesis that 'Well, this is the way we always did it' aren't going to survive"

I'm still unconvinced about Sam Zell as owner of the Tribune company, but when he says stuff like this:

"I believe that newspapers, in fact, have a great future, and 25 or 30 years from now, the newspapers that adapt and take a position that create a future for them will survive, and those that keep operating under the old thesis that 'Well, this is the way we always did it' aren't going to survive."

He starts to win me over.

All through a life

Ex Sun-Times reporter Howard Wolinsky has a moving look back at his 6,001 days at the ailing Chicago paper. It's a wonderful look across the field of time at the changes that have moved the marker for journalism, from the corporate mergers of the 80s to the death-by-web of today.

I frankly thought I would finish my working days at the Sun-Times at age 65 or 66. I was a creature of habit, accustomed to getting up at 5:05am, exercising, walking the dog, gulping down my oatmeal, making that 7:35 train, waving to Ike the news vender at the Metra Electra, getting to the office by around 8:30 and putting in my workday. It was comfortable, easy, predictable. I liked it. I knew how to do the time.

But something clicked for me after that meeting. I could see a different future.

"This business has been eroding before your eyes and you're worried about my language?"

A very good point made by new Tribune Co. owner (and pottymouth) Sam Zell, via Romenesko.

"We don’t know if it will last forever"

Michael Miner's Hot Type column this week (the last good reason to still read the Chicago Reader) looks inside the Chicago Tribune through the eyes of the paper's rank-and-file. With its profiles of a guy who hands out the free commuter paper, of two men who drive paper routes, and of a foreign correspondent, it's well worth a read, if for no other reason than as an artifact of the end-of-days of the traditional newspaper business.

The Chicago Sun Times is a Canary in a Coal Mine. But which Coal Mine?

With the news announced last week that the Chicago Sun Times will be laying off 20% of its newsroom staff in order to cut costs (this in addition to reducing the physical size of the newspaper to pay less for paper), many are saying that the fate of the paper reflects the fate of the industry, hurt by shrinking ad dollars and declining readership. A story in competitor paper the Chicago Tribune even goes so far to (conveniently) end on the idea that Chicago may become a one-newspaper town.

It's a brutal story, to be sure. Nearly 40 jobs will be lost, a level of cutting that can not help but affect the quality of the paper significantly. And it's a story that's following the same narrative we hear everywhere--the Internet is killing newspapers--so then why is it that veteran Sun Times critic Roger Ebert blames not the Internet, but instead says this:

"I hope everyone who is a victim of this triage receives handwritten apologies from Conrad Black and David Radler"

Remember, the Sun Times was part off the massive scandal surrounding Hollinger International, where Black was reported to have embezzled 97% of the media chain's profits. (A scandal, by the way, that prompted Ebert to write a series of incredible letters to Black at the time)

How much of the Sun Times current fiscal crisis is linked to the destruction that Black leveled on the paper? How much of many newspapers' current state of affairs is linked not to the changes brought about by the Internet, but instead by the hole dug by deep mismanagement from their media conglomerate owners?

"Please keep this note within the family"

Looks like someone didn't heed the request in the first line, when a private memo from the CEO of alt-weekly chain Creative Loafing (ugh) got sent to journalism columnist Jim Romenesko. Whoops.

The memo addresses the New York Times story about the Reader layoffs (would he have written it had the firings not gotten national play?), but is also a good look into the mindset of a media-mogul wannabe in 2007, the worst possible year to try and become a player:

It also has the single worst and most confusing definition of "the long tail" theory I've ever read:

The online game is tied to the theory of the long tail where large internet based media companies (Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL) form the head of the tail and the end of the tail is the lonely blogger sitting in his or her underwear.

Exactly what is this the tail of?

And this is the guy that's going to save alternative weeklies, thanks to his understanding of the Internet?

"There is a chance that historians will examine this period in American history and wonder if journalism left the field."

The New York Times this week published a captivating essay that manages to hit on:

1) The layoffs at the Chicago Reader and how...

2) They have grave implications for the future of investigative reporting and how...

3) That's a bad thing for us as a democracy but how...

4) All is not lost.

Your milage may vary on that last point, especially when he trots out Rupert Murdoch as his proof, but the rest of it is pretty awesome and includes a nice hook into the continuing Chicago police torture cases and how the Reader's the only paper that truly cared--that is until they laid off the lead reporter on the story last week. A truly haunting line:

Google and Digg never made a phone call, never asked hard questions of public officials, never got an innocent man out of jail

Chicago Reader Deathwatch

Two weeks before Christmas, the Chicago Reader lays off four of its best reporters. By this time next year, there won't be anyone left to lay off.

looking forward to death

I thought I should follow-up on the Chicago Reader saga I documented a couple months back. The new tabloid-sized Reader (made in Atlanta!) came out last week to decidedly mixed reviews from readers. Many complained that the diminished size lead to a diminished paper (though editors were quick to point out that there was the same amount of text in this issue, a slight-of-hand that didn't really address the issue at hand). One thing that didn't come up is how ugly the post-Chicago era started, Case in point:

I'm not sure what's going on with that masthead, but it couldn't be less generic if it tried. And the whole cover lacks the elegance of earlier issues of the Reader (even the ones after a panicked Time Out-induced redesign, which created an awkward false-front to the paper held together better than this). They say not to judge a book by its cover, but as consumers that's all we do. This cover won't sell (good thing it's free).
Saddled with a bad cover, what's inside needs all the help it can get. Unfortunately for the Reader, the editors in charge (all good people, let's note) have decided that the best thing to do is to leave the content undisturbed. As one editor explains in the comments:

I can tell you that so far every effort has been made to make sure the new format can accommodate the contents of the old Reader.

This same effort was made during the last Reader redesign, which clearly didn't save the already diminishing returns of the paper. Why a smart staff would not look at that last lesson learned and say, "Hey, maybe it's not HOW the information is presented, but the information itself" is beyond me. Instead, the editorial decision-makers at the reader continue to insist that their way is the best way, while corporate magazines like Time Out continue to chip away at their readership with truly innovative ways of presenting local content.
What the Reader needs isn't another redesign, or another cost-reducing change in format, but a low-level rethink of what it is and what service it provides to its readers. Unfortunately, that chance has most likely passed the Reader by (these new owners aren't going to do anything but what they already know), and as a result there's little to look forward to but the death of a once-great paper.

More on the Reader and the myth of "hyperlocalism"

So the new owners of the Chicago Reader, Creative Loafing (ugh), have announced that the entire production of the paper is moving to Atlanta. The entire Reader production staff, along with its award-winning art director, will be out on the streets within six weeks. Additional rumors have the paper's printing being outsourced from long-time printer Newsweb in Chicago all the way out to North Carolina, where it will be trucked 14 hours cross-country. Once they're through, it's a safe bet that a good amount of the editorial will be produced out-of-town as well--after all, you don't have to live in a place to review a movie, right?

These moves away from Chicago by a company that claims to be "pioneering the opportunities offered by convergent print, web, and new media applications" (ugh) underscores why my bullshit detector goes up every time I hear someone talking about "hyperlocalism" as the savior of newspapers.

Hyperlocalism--for the three of you that don't already know--is the latest buzzword for locally-focused content that's combined with community-driven content. When you hear the investment brokers and money handlers talk about it, they always dredge up the example of junior-high school sports scores--traditional newspapers can't dedicate the space to print them, they say, even though plenty of parents want to know them. That junior-high sports scores have no real bearing on anyone's life (junior-high schoolers notwithstanding), and that real local news doesn't ever seem to register in analysis hasn't stopped the hyperlocalism bandwagon from picking up steam.

But there's always the question of production: Who's driving that wagon? In typical "convergence" fashion, it's big media companies, silicon valley startups, and cheerleaders from among the technoscenti. There's often not a damn local (let alone a hyper one) among them. And so hyperlocalism is bound to fail the same way the Creative Loafing (ugh) run Reader is bound to fail: "Local" is a word that still means something--you can't replicate it from 1,500 miles away, no matter how much money you spend.

Chicago Reader, RIP

So the venerable Chicago alt-weekly announced today that it's been sold to a Tampa-based alt-weekly publisher with the unfortunate name of Creative Loafing. That the new owners have entered a market much larger than their largest holdings (Tampa? Sarasota? Jesus...) seems like a bit of a kick in the sack for the Reader, which has been kicked quite a few times already.

Once the end-all be-all for what was young and happening in Chicago, as well as one of the flag bearers for high-quality (if, let's face it, sometimes quite boring) alt-journalism in the country, the Reader has been on a slow, painful slide from the top for years now. It was a slide started by the introduction of "The Red Papers," competing commuter rags introduced by the Chicago Tribune and the Sun Times (who started their Red Streak for no reason other than to toss something in front of the oncoming onslaught of the Trib's Red Eye). The Red Papers undercut the Reader's ad rates and promised a much larger circulation (and, good god, much worse writing). The entrance of Time Out Chicago further stretched the ad market as well as took the legs out of the Reader's editorial coverage, offering a more readable look at the goings-on in the city (the Reader's attempt to freshen up before TOC's arrival, an odd and confusing redesign, didn't help matters from the start).

But the biggest nail in the Reader's coffin--and the nail being driven into all the other alt-weeklies in the country--was Craigslist. Back when I worked at the Reader (in the production department, which I think it's now safe to say I tried to unionize during my two years of employment) the classifieds commanded the largest and most labor-intensive section of the entire paper. It had an entire floor of sales reps and production on the section would have its own night. It brought in millions of dollars a year--dollars that were then able to be spent on "real" journalism elsewhere in the paper. It was the lifeblood of the paper, as it is for many alternative weeklies around the country.

The Reader even adapted to the Internet quickly--their online classifieds were the go-to page for apartments and jobs in the city for years. But they charged for those listings, and they found it impossible to compete with the Craigslist juggernaut (and frankly, how could they?). The classifieds slowly shrank, the final insult being the awkward incorporation of the entire classifieds section into two different parts of the paper. What was once a four-section paper suddenly became three--I'm sure the new owners will fold it all down to one soon enough.

And so it is that the once-mighty Reader is absorbed by a C-list alt-weekly chain, not even good enough for a New Times buyout, let alone a purchase by the Tribune. The owners I'm sure were well compensated, but those that work the long, thankless hours at the paper now face very uncertain futures. It's hard being an object lesson, as every other underpaid employee at a weekly is watching to see what happens to them, and I'm sure they will weather this storm just as poorly as you can imagine (my thoughts go out to each and every one of them).