The Chicago Reader is an alternative newsweekly in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded in 1971 by a group of friends who attended Carleton College. In July 2007, the Reader was sold to Creative Loafing,  and in mid-September 2007, it was announced that printing of the paper has been outsourced to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Milwaukee priniting facilities.

Issues are dated every Friday and distributed free to more than 1,400 locations in the Chicago metropolitan area on Thursday and Friday. As of June 2006, the average weekly circulation, audited by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, was 120,204, down from more than 138,000 just five years before.

The Reader has served two significant roles in Chicago. First, it offers exceptional local news and commentary. Because it is funded largely through extensive classified advertising and by small businesses, the Reader's journalism can be hard-hitting.

Though the paper is famous/infamous for long, exhaustive cover stories, a la The New Yorker, it has always offered a variety of stories in a variety of lengths and voices, plus extensive arts coverage. In recent years, most of its cover stories have been of a fairly typical magazine-feature length, but some now believe the paper's overall quality has declined. Second, it offers an extensive guide to Chicago, primarily its culture and real-estate.

Format: Each issue consists of three sections (until mid-2006, four sections was the longstanding norm). Section 1 contains the lead story and also features local news and human interest stories, a weekly fashion feature, essay-style reviews of film, music, theater, art, dance, and books, and columns such as Hot Type (about other Chicago media), The Works (Chicago politics) and The Straight Dope.

Sections 2 and 3 contain listings for restaurants, movies, plays, museum and gallery exhibits, and live music for that week. Classified ads, as well as several indie comics such as Life in Hell and News of the Weird, end Sections 1 and 2.

The work of acclaimed comic book artist and cartoonist Chris Ware is regularly featured in the newspaper. The Reader's main film critic is Jonathan Rosenbaum. The Reader runs the weekly comic DIRTFARM by Ben Claassen III.

The Reader’s Guide to Arts & Entertainment, a spin-off launched in 1996, is a free weekly repackaging of the Reader's entertainment listings and arts writing for the suburbs north, northwest and west of Chicago.

The Reader was slow to offer its content on the Internet, but now it has most of its articles, features, listings and advertisements available from its website.

(From wikipedia, the free encyclopeida)

Read Chicago Reader, August 14, 2008 Online

Cover Story: The Browning of the Greens

Despite conflict between environmentalists and the immigrants' rights ovement, congressional candidate Omar Lopez thinks the Greens could supplant the Democrats as Latinos' party of choice.
By Kari Lydersen

The most impressive thing about the Green Party’s national nominating convention, held at Symphony Center July 10-13, might’ve been how multiracial it was. In the crowd, black nationalists and young activists of all colors mingled with white hippies. Fiery former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who’s African-American, was named the Greens’ presidential candidate, and Rosa Clemente, a Latina hip-hop activist and journalist from New York, was slated for vice president.

But when keynote speaker Omar Lopez took the podium, it became clear that there’s more to the browning of the Green Party than just putting nonwhite candidates up for office. There’s a move, especially in Chicago, to incorporate immigration rights as a central issue for progressive Greens, whose focus on environmentalism has sometimes pitted them directly against immigrants. ...

Letters

If the "Hall" will honor bigotry and misinformation this year, then why not do so with the best in the game?

Columns

Station Identification Should WBEZ donors be told their money might be spent on Vocalo?
Hot Type by Michael Miner

An Artificial Battle The latest round in the soccer wars is about turf -- in more ways than one.
The Works by Ben Joravsky

Where's Ours? The Chicago theater community wants its own museum.
The Business by Deanna Isaacs

The Straight Dope
How quickly can sharks pick up on blood in the water?
By Cecil Adams

Savage Love
I proposed anal sex to my wife -- and now she wants to do it to me.
By Dan Savage

Food & Drink

Around the World in 80 Licks Ice creams and ices from Korea, India, the Philippines, Mexico, and more
By Anne Spiselman

Plus: 41 places for ice cream.

Arts & Entertainment

Movies

Bleak Thrills Frozen River manages to play economic hardship for suspense.
By J.R. Jones

The Men He Wants to Be Keith Dukavicius's latest movie started the same way as his first: with an obsession.
By Ed M. Koziarski

Music

Pagan Death Cult What could Greenwich Village folk and South Korean black metal possibly have in common?
By Noah Berlatsky

The Secret History of Chicago Music The Arbors
By Plastic Crimewave

This week’s crossword: Turn the Beat Around
By Ben Tausig

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