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, September 4, 2008 Online

Cover Story: Comedy on the Color Line
As America's first (and only) black-and-white stand-up team, Tim Reid and Tom Dreesen played to some tough crowds. Club Harlem in Atlantic City was one of the toughest . . .
By Tim Reid and Tom Dreesen with Ron Rapoport

Tim Reid and Tom Dreesen traveled the unlikeliest of paths to form the unlikeliest of acts—the first and only black and white comedy team in the history of show business.

As a child Reid was shuttled from the home of his heroin-addicted stepfather in Baltimore to his grandmother’s boardinghouse in Norfolk, Virginia, his aunt’s whorehouse, and finally his birth father’s home.

Dreesen was one of eight children who lived with their alcoholic parents in a cold-water flat near the railroad tracks south of Chicago in Harvey. “We were raggedy-ass poor,” Dreesen says. “To this day, some of my brothers and sisters can’t talk about it.” ...

Columns:
A Pioneering Flop Former Sun-Times sportswriter Ron Rapoport on Tim & Tom, his book about the mixed-race comedy duo that couldn't.
Hot Type by Michael Miner

Here's a Tip for the Defense: TIFs Mayor Daley's all for suing the state over the education spending gap -- but his pet program's partly to blame.
The Works by Ben Joravsky

From Department Store to Art Department The School of the Art Institute opens galleries in the former Carson Pirie Scott building.
The Business by Deanna Isaacs

The Straight Dope
Was buggery rampant in the heyday of the Royal Navy?
By Cecil Adams

Savage Love
Sherman Alexie on Native American fetishes and more
By Dan Savage

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