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 21, 2008 Online

Cover Story: Barely on the Radar

Why are we getting big news about a U.S.-Israel defense deal from a North Shore synagogue’s newsletter?
By Michael Miner

You wouldn’t expect to find a major international news story being broken by a house of worship. But when Michael Millenson arrived at his North Shore synagogue August 2 he came across the following item in the weekly bulletin:

“The U.S. will provide Israel with a new powerful radar system. Congressman [Mark] Kirk has been working with senior Israeli and American defense officials for more than a year to reach an agreement on the AN/TPY-2 radar system that will be 5 to 6 times more powerful than [the] present Israeli system. Israeli Ambassador Sallai Meridor thanked Congressman Kirk for his efforts.” ...

Letters:
"Here's a comparison: Why would a classical music listener want to see their money diverted to support a heavy metal format?"

Columns
Can You Copyright Stage Direction? Lawsuits over Urinetown haven't helped decide the matter.
The Business by Deanna Isaacs

The Straight Dope
If a man has a sex change can he compete in the Olympics as a woman?
By Cecil Adams

Savage Love
Don't be such a liberal pussy.
By Dan Savage

Food & Drink
Hummus, Baba . . . and Injera? Ethiopian meets Middle Eastern at Green Village.
By Kate Schmidt and Tasneem Paghdiwala

Plus: Eats from all over Africa

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