8-3-07
After 36 Years, The Reader Changes Hands
In the 1970s, starting a newspaper was a radical idea. The dailies, owned mostly by dynasty families, held the market, with two editions a day. Why would a city need another newspaper—especially one run by a bunch of hippie guys in their 20s?
But the hippie guys knew that there was an entire generation of people like them who didn’t trust mainstream media, or at the very least thought it spoke to their parents, not them.
So four Chicago friends decided to give their city an alternative, and they started a weekly paper called The Reader, on the premise that literary young people wanted more depth. This was in 1971. In 1972, Debbie and Chick Eason started Creative Loafing in Atlanta. Over the course of the next decade, alternative weeklies sprang up in every major city in the country, anchored, of course, by The Village Voice on one side, and the national Rolling Stone on the other.
And the money rolled in. The Reader made it easier than the dailies for people to sell their car or rent their apartment or get a job. They were more flexible, lighter on their feet, and more topical.
Now, a new generation of young people see The Reader and its brethren as papers their parents read, while they turn to iPods and cell phones and the Internet. The same generational gap that led to the founding of The Reader is still there, except that The Reader is seen as the old man, and the men who started it are getting ready to retire.
This is where Ben Eason comes in. Eason, whose parents started Creative Loafing, has a foot both in the present and the past. He thinks he has a business model that works for alternative newspapers. That model includes a national presence that will give him more leverage on the Internet. And, to that end, he looked outward from the four southern papers Creative Loafing publishes in Atlanta, Tampa Bay, Charlotte and Sarasota, and made an offer on The Reader and its sister publication, the D.C. based Washington City Paper. Six months later, he is the proud owner of what he calls “a couple of institutions.”
The news sent shockwaves through The Reader staff, especially when it was announced that the production department would be centralized in Atlanta, leaving about a dozen Chicago graphic designers without jobs. But, as Reader media critic Mike Miner wrote in last week’s “Hot Type” column, the sale is “hardly unsurprising.”
The Reader has been hampered most of this decade by a slowness to change, and a Web site that never quite met the needs of the current generation of readers. Craigslist has had a huge impact, taking away quite a bit of The Reader’s classified revenue—the bread and butter of the paper. Publisher Mike Crystal said the paper lost money for the first time ever last year. Cuts have been made to editorial staff. Antiquated systems have not been updated. The atmosphere was one of belt-tightening, not of innovation and excitement.
That’s what Crystal hopes will come with new ownership, though he is currently shepherding his staff through the newness of the change and the concern over people being laid off.
“Although nobody in this company would say that they aren’t saddened by the fact that people will lose their jobs, there are people looking forward to exciting times,” Crystal said. “There will be new resources. This is a group that is well capitalized and can help us.” Those resources, Crystal said, include new computer systems and “more community involvement in terms of events and sponsorship opportunities.”
One of the things that won’t change, both Crystal and Eason promise, is local coverage by the same local staff. Allison True will remain editor. “She’s going to call the shots on what goes into that paper,” Eason said.
In fact, Eason stressed, he wants to see The Reader go back to its anti-establishment roots.
“I like tough stories. I don’t mind paying a libel lawyer so we can go out and exercise to our fullest our First Amendment rights. I’m a cheerleader. I’ll back em up.”
The Reader will look different, though when that change will happen no one can say. They will ditch the independent sections, and publish instead in a flat tab, with more color. This was a change that Crystal and his team were looking at making before Eason’s offer.
They may also print in a more centralized location, though Eason was noncommittal about that. (Ed. Note: Currently, The Reader is printed at Newsweb Corporaton, which also prints PerformInk.)
As to why Creative Loafing is not buffeted by the same financial storms as The Reader, Eason said, “There’s no magic to it, it just has to do with how you approach your resources and put your resources to work. What I like to do is streamline the expenses that don’t add a lot of value to The Reader or the audience or the advertiser.”
Most of the current Chicago Reader staff wonders how that streamlining might affect them, beyond the announced production layoffs. Miner wrote a couple of articles on his blog, and he is leery of what might be in store.
“It’s not fun being sold to people from out of town,” Miner said in a phone interview from his office at The Reader. “This is what the Tribune never understood about the L.A. Times, that inevitably the L.A. Times would be furious at being controlled by Chicagoans.”
“Journalism is a transaction between the paper and the community, and it’s very hard for me to believe that somebody who lives 1000 miles away can be party to that transaction.,” Miner added, though he admits that he doesn’t know much about Creative Loafing or their other four newspapers.
Eason promises that he will be a hands off boss. “All I need to do is support ‘em,” he said. “The Reader is the most amazing newspaper in our industry. It’s the been the epicenter of the alternative newspaper industry since it started.”
Eason also plans to attack Craigslist head on, with very practical arguments.
“When you put an ad in The Chicago Reader, your ads works—you get your apartment rented. If you want to go to Craigslist and post your ad five or six times a day to make sure it’s above the fold, you may get your apartment rented.”
Right now, though, Eason and his team from Atlanta are trying to figure out how The Reader works, whether deadlines need to change (he thinks they may have to be pulled back by 12 hours) and how his two new papers will integrate into his company.
Crystal is trying to keep morale up, noting that some Chicago production people might be offered jobs in Atlanta.
“This place has worked hard over a long period of time to be a good employer,” Crystal added. “The owners as a group didn’t set out to involve themselves in something that would cause staff members pain.”