The Chicago Sun-Times is pulling the plug on its 17-year-old Weekend section and will replace it with an insert filled with reviews and features pulled mostly from the Chicago Reader, reports Michael Miner:

What concerns me is the possibility that under the new conditions—Reader editors creating content every week that they know will wind up in the Sun-Times, and Sun-Times editors depending on it—eventually the Sun-Times will influence what the Reader publishes even if no one wants that to happen. At the very least, the Reader‘s roots are being given a yank. Anyone who still thinks of the Reader as an alternative to the dailies will have to strain hard to think it when some of the Reader shows up each week in one of them. About a quarter of the editorial content in Agenda will originate with the Sun-Times. These stories will be marked “Sun-Times” so no one will confuse them with Reader material.

The clear benefit to the Reader is that a large new audience is about to get a taste of the Reader‘s product, and if they like what they read they’ll know there’s much more to be found in the print Reader and on our website.

Wrapports LLC acquired the Sun-Times in 2011 and purchased the Reader from Atalaya Capital Management in May 2012.