Ads for apartments have skyrocketed in the past year, Chicago Reader Classifieds Manager Brett Murphy tells Crain's Chicago Business. The jump has fueled 25 percent growth in ad volume at a time when help-wanted ads are down, and landlords who once took out a single ad to find a tenant now run one for many weeks, he tells the business newspaper.
About 120 religious activists turned out last week to protest a "blasphemous" cartoon published in the Chicago Reader, reports The Illinois Leader, which bills itself "Illinois' Conservative News Source." The cartoon in question implied immoral behavior by the Virgin Mary, the pope and Jesus, the newspaper says.
“This book, I hope, is a book of encounters, none of them predictable,” novelist and music writer Jonathan Lethem writes in his introduction to “Da Capo Best Music Writing 2002.” Seven of the 28 articles in the collection were originally published in alternative newsweeklies, including The Village Voice, Chicago Reader and City Pages (Twin Cities).
Tim Keck, publisher of The Stranger in Seattle, has a cash infusion from the Chicago Reader to turn up the heat on his competition. The Reader is now a minority shareholder in Index Newspapers LLC, a company formed early yesterday that now owns and operates The Stranger and The Portland Mercury in Portland, Ore. Keck’s first goal: increase circulation in both markets. “We’ve been bootstrapping it for 10 years,” Keck tells AAN News. “Now we are going to be aggressively growing the business.”
Kiki Yablon, who plays guitar in a punk rock band, has been promoted to managing editor of the Chicago Reader. She has been on the Reader's staff since 1996, directing the alt-weekly's music coverage, the Chicago Sun Times reports. Editor Alison True says Yablon is "perfect" for the job and won the position over a host of outside applicants. True has also promoted three Reader associate editors to senior editor: Holly Greenhagen, Kitry Krause and Laura Molzahn.
While publicly traded media companies are laying off employees and warning Wall Street of sharply diminished returns, Chicago's free circulation papers are holding their own, Kathy Bergen of the Chicago Tribune reports. "There isn't the voracious need to satisfy shareholders and start making layoffs," Richard Karpel, executive director of AAN, tells the Trib. Chicago Reader Publisher Jane Levine tells Bergen: "Our total revenue in 2001 will be about even with 2000, and I feel blessed for that."
The path between journalism and politics is well worn, and now two pols with alt-press connections have taken over City Halls. R.T. Rybak, erstwhile publisher of the defunct Twin Cities Reader, was elected mayor of Minneapolis, and Charles Meeker, brother of Willamette Week publisher Richard Meeker and a former Independent Weekly shareholder, seized the reins in Raleigh, N.C. Not since former Pacific Sun reporter Barbara Boxer was elected to the U.S. Senate have AANies made such political hay.
Online Journalism Review looks at the success of some alt-weeklies’ online sites and asks why they are succeeding when others are folding. Dan Richardson, an OJR contributing writer, says the alt-weekly sites “are selling value-added classified services like e-mail notices. Their editorial content – the long, investigative articles and snappy reviews – are almost beside the point.” That may be bad news to writers and editors, but it is good news for the bottom line.
