Wednesday, February 20, 2008
News / News Bites Chicago Sports Weekly goes under
Posted by Michael Miner on 02.20.08 at 09:51 PM
The city will see no more of Chicago Sports Weekly. Always interesting, free but good enough to spend money on, CSW was just shut down by the unlikely owners who launched it last June, Reklama Media Company. Reklama publishes a line of Russian- and Polish-language titles and CSW was its first excursion into English.
The soul of CSW was its young editor Chris Sprow, who'd edited the old Chicago Sports Review since its inception in 2003. CSR constantly teetered on the brink of financial disaster, and in 2006 Sprow approached Reklama as potential investors. Owners Igor Golubchik and Vlad Veren had the money and believed in the idea, but they wanted control. So they brushed off the Review's owner, Tom Alexander, and hired Sprow to start a whole new sports paper. They seemed to know next to nothing about the field they were entering--they thought Sports Illustrated and ESPN magazine were monthlies--but Golubchik told me, "We are providing more of a business backing rather than a sports strategy. We're pretty aggressive on our level, which is still a small-company level, but nevertheless we know how to make a successful product from the ground up."
There was talk of giving CSW three years to find its way. But these are hard times in the print publishing world, and Reklama decided to cut its losses. Even though CSW was claiming a weekly circulation of 30,000--three times the number of copies printed of the first issue--last week the owners told Sprow to halt the press run. This week they told him it was over. Wednesday Sprow told his freelance contributors.
CSW went out in style. The cover story of the last issue, dated February 6, was "Under the Microscope," a history of investigative journalism in sports. Says Sprow, "It was a good final issue. It was cool to do stuff like that, in a weekly, for so little."
Comments (4)
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Mr. Miner, I read "So Sayeth Santayana" and I came away disagreeing. By coincidence, I wrote an essay on Tuesday entitled "Why John McCain Will (Likely) Be the Next President" and I came to that conclusion with various reasons, all significant. And I can tell you that instead of seeing Obama as 1960 Jack Kennedy, or Carter, I see him as Adlai Stevenson, George McGovern or our old friend Michael Dukakis. A nice candidate who inspires intellectuals and youth voters but will have his lunch eaten by an above-the-fray moderate conservative, as perceived by the public. (You and I both know, I imagine, that McCain is a lunatic, but that's not his public perception.) Here's the essay: http://officeoftheindependentblogger.com/2008/02/19/why-john-mccain-will-likely-be-president/
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Mr. Gregory Pratt has certainly put an unexpected spin on this Chicago Sports Weekly story. Perhaps its lack of political coverage was CSW's blind-spot, especially in the nonsequitur department. Touche, Mr. Pratt.
it was a good idea, but i thought the execution was mostly lacking. the stories were rarely interesting, the layout jumbled, and the writers mediocre. the whole enterprise needed a professional editor to help out the guys at the top and at least one good writer who can deliver an incisive, well-researched piece. it was a valiant effort though from those involved, they just needed more funding and more bodies.
It seemed to me they were really just beginning to hit their stride. Boxes for CSW only recently appeared downtown and in Lincoln Square, and I was finally able to find copies to pick up and read. Plus, the web site finally got going (had just been pdfs, only recently became a NICE, full-featured site). I agree with swriter that the execution left something to be desired, but it did seem like CSW was improving; at the rate they were going, I think they could have turned out to be a really good paper. (As a soccer fan, I especially appreciated Thomas Dunmore's writing getting into print...)
