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 28, 2008 Online

Cover Story: How Sonny Defeated the Dragon
In his six-decade career, legendary saxophonist Sonny Rollins has claimed many a triumph. But his greatest may have come during a quiet period in Chicago.
By Neil Tesser

A decade ago, on September 9, 1998, the YMCA building at 3763 S. Wabash became an official Chicago landmark. Completed in 1913, it gained an annex in 1945, and today it remains a hub of neighborhood activity. Stately on its quiet and well-kept Bronzeville block, it bears a plaque describing it as “an important center of community life” that offered housing and job training for “new arrivals from the South during the ‘Great Migration’ of African-Americans in the first decades of the 20th century.” In a perfect world, there would be a second plaque below it: “Sonny Rollins slept here.” ...

Chicago Jazz Festival
Our complete critical guide to the 30th annual Chicago Jazz Festival, including afterfest jams around the city
By Peter Margasak, John Corbett, and Bill Meyer

Columns:
The Real Action in '68 You've heard plenty lately about the action outside the '68 Democratic National Convention. How much do you know about what was going on inside?
Hot Type by Michael Miner

It's the Mayor, Stupid The city's facing a $420 million deficit, but as usual it's somebody else's fault.
The Works by Ben Joravsky

Putting the Arts Back in Education Free Street Theater's artistic director aims to start a one-room school for the tots; a new arts high school opens next fall.
The Business by Deanna Isaacs

The Straight Dope
Never mind the war on terror -- what about the war on the undead?
By Cecil Adams

Savage Love
Be careful what you wish for (on Craigslist, anyway).
By Dan Savage

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