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Following is a restaurant review from the CL Tampa site: Yummy Yummy Yummy House … Yummy! July 18th, 2007 by Brian Ries in Tampa, Restaurants Here’s a report by our own Taylor Eason, who has gushed so much it sounds like an ad: Oh my… amazing Chinese food as been uncovered in Tampa Bay. Absolutely the best Chinese in the city, bar none: Yummy House, located in a drab strip mall on Waters Ave. in Tampa, just east of Armenia on the south side. Yummy House has been open about 8 months and they have developed a quiet following of all ethnicities. Isn’t it the best compliment to a Chinese restaurant that Chinese brethren are in the house? For appetizers, try the potstickers, filled with succulent steamed shrimp; the spicy, salt and pepper calamari chew like butter; or feast on a terrine of deliciously rich wonton soup. The roast duck is amazing, but we were less impressed with the short ribs- a bit fatty and tough. The pungent Shrimp and Scallops in XO Sauce is not for the uninitiated, but the most adventurous among us dove in like it was his last meal. Three of us ate like pigs (and carried plenty home) for $60, and you can bring in your own wine for no corkage fee. Go early or late to avoid the rush on weekends. Yummy House is located at 2202 West Waters Ave. (813) 915-2828. Lunch and dinner every day but Tuesday.

ah, the lyrical stylings of ben eason's sister, whose wine column will soon be appearing in your paper.

Yummy Yummy Yummy Blah Blah Yawn Blah Boo Waaah Sad Sad.

"Isn't it the best compliment to a Chinese restaurant that Chinese brethren are in the house?" I love it when I see Jews in delis and blacks in chicken shacks, too! Chew like butter, chew! Thus far I've noticed two grammatical errors and one gross violation of basic AP Style in this short Yummy Yummy blurb. Let's look on the bright side and hope the Reader content and its talented editors will sharpen CL. Or at least not allow for advertorials. signed, editorial is everything

can't say i am still a fan. but courage, mr. miner. keep the faith.

Would it be possible for readers to band together and buy the Reader from Eason?

if those readers have deep pockets. if private investors can buy sports teams, why not journalism's Mt. Rushmore??

The more I read about the new owners, the more annoyed I become at the old ones. While much of the Reader's current financial issues are a result of media changes in general, the owners have to take a lot of the blame. They were slow to adopt and adapt these changes and missed many opportunities to retain strength and independence. This is not only in the end product, but behind the scenes. The owners were slow to upgrade equipment and computer programs, approve new editorial, design and marketing policies and fostered a stingy complacency in the company in general which frustrated the Reader's vision and vitality. When they did allow - or were forced into - change good decisions were hindered by the rush to catch up. That insularity didn't start with the editorial staff. The Reader's image as being for white, middle class people in certain neighborhoods with much of the city was invisible except for certain news stories came from the top down. I wonder if the owners tried to push the staff to be more diverse in ethnic, economic and neighborhood background. Also the Reader had an image of being insular and cliquish, even before Liz Armstrong a good writer put in the uncomfortable position of having far too much of the paper's hipster cred rest on her. While Ben Javorsky is one of the best journalists to cover the whole city, I doesn't seem like anyone was concerned about cultivating the next Ben. This narrow vision of the audience and city narrowed the Reader's earning potential. The Reader was stunningly slow to dealing with the net. For years most articles weren't online, then they were only available as unweildly PDF files. The Reader is one of the few freeps to charge for all but their most recent articles, which diminishes its significance. The current Reader site is now rather elegant, BUT they stuck with the idiotic policy of posting only one week of listings each Friday after the print edition comes out. This makes even less sense now the listings are woefully incomplete in print. It frustrates potential users and drives to sites which provide info in advance. Only recently have the music listing been expanded to *gasp* two weeks. Now it seems the owners have taken the same slow then sudden approach to selling the paper. I really wonder if Creative Loafing was the best buyer ever to bid on the Reader, or if this was just a case of them putting off the decision until they got tired and took the next one to come along. The way the deal did nothing to protect the Reader Staff or ensure the paper is locally produced does not give me the impression of owners who appreciate the legacy and audience for what they created, it says, "Heck with it, I'm outta here."

The Reader has been sold to an out-of-town chain, which...whether anyone consciously intends it or not...will inevitably lead to a loss of editorial independence. This is just one more example of a larger and more disturbing trend in this country: the concentration of media ownership into the hands of fewer and fewer owners. And, as usual, a decision which will be to the detriment of many (the city of Chicago, thousands of readers, and the talented staffers of this paper) was propelled by the selfishness of a few (the fat tired clueless insular former owners, and the greedy corporate new ones). I've been to Atlanta and I've read Creative Loafing. It's better than nothing, but it sure ain't no Reader (even when you take into account the Reader's own recent decline in quality). At a time when this country's need for a truly independent media is more urgent than ever, this sale would seem to be a move in exactly the wrong direction. My heartfelt condolences to everyone concerned...with the exception of the fat, clueless former owners and the slick, corporate new ones. Now I'm going to go throw up.

I've worked for companies who've been bought out; I've been "downsized" out of a company; I've lost friends whose entire departments fell to the wayside. Please keep in mind that mergers and buyouts happen every day in this country, and if the Reader hadn't been bought by Eason and Co., it would have been bought by New Times. Independent media is a thing of the past; get used to it. Place your anger on the people responsible for bailing: the previous owners. It also bears mentioning that, regardless of our love for the Reader, its content and writers, we'd be stupid and unrealistic not to realize that the readers of Creative Loafing papers most likely *also* love them. By insulting their design or their content, you're insulting their readers, and you're insulting people (employees) you don't know -- very likely hard-working people who are doing the best they can to produce four papers on (again, likely) limited time and staff. This whole thing isn't going to be easy on Reader staff...but nor will it be easy on Creative Loafing staff, either.

hey, anybookinastorm, there is a difference between the reader and creative loafing. even the diminished reader is better than creative loafing. when new owners go into debt to acquire, they have to cut back and usually end up destroying what they had wanted to buy in the first place. A fact of life? So what.

. . . that the Reader owners were themselves the out-of-town chain owners of papers in DC and LA and continue to own shares in other papers in Seattle, Portland, and Amsterdam. The arrangement isn't by definition poison. But it can be.

Mick Dumke? Hello?

ugh...a one section tabloid? So, what's getting killed off? Certainly not advertising. CL is going to kill the reader far faster than the other CL (craigslist)ever would. Like with the dailies, ads will be expanded, editorial costs reduced (bye bye to a couple of the highest paid reporters), and locally oriented copy replaced with standardized, watered down, one size fits all, homogenized crap. The objective of these acquisitions is to turn the paper into a cash cow, milk it for all its worth, and then dump it when it stops generating cash.

All this discussion overlooks a central asset and reason for the deal: Real Estate. The Reader owns its headquarters free and clear and it's on a land parcel across from the AMA building which is being sold for hundreds of millions. I don't know if this sale is part of the business deal or merely coincides with it, but it would be interesting to know. If the owners are dumping the building seperately, this reveals a more mercenary mindset in selling the paper. It also means Creative Loafin is acquiring a homeless paper, giving them more incentive to cut costs. On the other hand, if Creative Loafing got the building or will share in profits from the sale, this reveals more about their mercanary motives, not just access to a bigger market, but acquiring assets which can be sold off. Either way, this deal is far more about cashing in and getting out than it is about keeping an institution alive. The Reader is not only being divested of local ownership, production and advertising staff, but its home. It can easily see it being reduced to a single office of editors managing submissions by part timers and freelancers working from home. Sort of how the Onion's sattelite offices function. It's current operation was already trending that way in terms of staff writers, but this will compress the process into one vaporizing event which makes the Reader little more than a print-associated brand object. "we'd be stupid and unrealistic not to realize that the readers of Creative Loafing papers most likely *also* love them." Actually, it would be unrealistic to assume Creative Loafing is beloved. The readers I've met think of it as better than nothing. As a big fan of alt-weekly websites, I've followed the online version for years and it's gotten less interesting, more cluttered and ad driven over time. The whole point of the alt press was not letting every decision be driven by the bottom line. There's a chance this deal will salvage some sort of independence, but as its being sealed with a mass firing I'm suspecting it's pretty much bottom line.

Who uses the word 'net' anymore? Been surfing on the "World Wide Web" lately? Hey softdog, I know who you are.

Dumke is no Joravsky. And who are you CleaveReeves?

It's easy to pick out one review, say Taylor Eason's take on a "real" Chinese restaurant in Tampa, Creative Loafing in Atlanta has one of the premier food critics in the country in Besha Rodell. She not only was a finalist for the James Beard award this year, she's also a finalist for two Food Writers of America awards. The Loaf in Atlanta has a long history of journalistic excellence that continues today. "anybookinastorm" has a very valid point. If it hadn't been CL, it would have been New Times. The Loaf was founded in Atlanta a year after the Reader was born. And it's safe to say that the reaction in Atlanta would be similar were the tables turned and the Reader had purchased the Loaf. The Loaf readers in Atlanta are just as loyal to their alt weekly as the Reader readers in Chicago are to their's. And Jerry, while I understand your fears -- I've been through a merger, and believe me I do -- why would CL buy a paper only to watch it die? Will it be different? Yes. But hopefully, it will retain the local character that makes you and many others in Chicago love it.

I wonder, just how is a newspaper supposed to retain local character when the entire paper is going to be redesigned and the entire production staff is being outsourced to an entirely different (culturally and geographically) city, with more layoffs to come. "And it's safe to say that the reaction in Atlanta would be similar were the tables turned and the Reader had purchased the Loaf." No, I think the reaction would only be similar if the Reader bought the Loaf and moved the entire production to Chicago, while at the same time the original owners sold off the building which housed the paper. By the way, the Reader didn't do this when it bought the City Paper. Plus some Reader owners are still investors in other alt papers, and they didn't gut the local connections there as well. Why would CL buy a paper to watch it die? Maybe because a profitable paper and an interesting local paper aren't the same thing. The recent history of CL chain makes me worry they have less interest in product and are most concerned with churning the books and increasing their markeet base. None of which has anything to do with local character.

I can't imagine one of the world's most highly regarded film scholars writing for fucking Creative Loafing, Inc.

Jonathan, please come teach at Bryn Mawr College if you lose your job.

Did anyone ever think that Eason/CL knows the quality of the Reader and might want to use the editorial content/gifted writers to bolster the ed sections of the rest of the empire?

I can't imagine how anyone would mistake Rosenbaum for a scholar. Must be the turgid prose and scattershot qualifiers. Or maybe it's a miracle! And if miracles are possible, maybe CL will settle for throwing out the best (or, from the look of their website, the only) designers in their realm and keep the gifted writers! O brave new world that has such fairydust in it!

I can't over the fact that like time Time/Warner - AOL deal (in which AOL bought T/W - and look how that deal turned out) Shouldn't the Reader have bought C/L?

I imagine that if the Reader had the kind of cash flow to buy a place that could offer eight figures for the Reader it wouldn't have been sold in the first place. Plus if you take them at their word the owners are just no longer interested in owning newspapers. That's certainly one thing the new guy has going for him.

The article about the medical equipment museum. I think it was Tori Marlan. The cover story about the artist struggling with mental illness who drank draino. The time Liz Armstrong pulled an Ali G and antagonized the male authors (two brothers I think?) of some sort of guide to women. The Rogue Wave show at the Empty Bottle I almost missed but read about in the Reader sitting in Clark's one Thanksgiving weekend. This is just a stream of C list of stories and memorable listings. Can you recall a story you read in Time Out two years ago? I'm going to go out on a revealing and (possibly job losing) limb here and say that I am a newbie at the Reader, hired before this all shook out. And I can truthfully say the people that hired me had no clue this was happening. And although I took a base pay cut just over 50 percent of what I made at my most recent job, I did it for a reason. I did it because I love the Reader, and I have loved it since I was 15 years old sneaking away from the burbs and into the city searching for the comforting yellow newspaper dispenser. I took the cut because I didn't want to be 34, 35, 36 years old sitting in a Fairfield Inn on a Thursday night somewhere in Ohio chilling with my Blackberry and CSPAN. I wanted out. I wanted to be somewhere like the office of the independent alt-weekly I wrote for throughout college. I wanted to be around people that keenly observed the world and cared about the people living in it, the people other than themselves with stories to tell. And I found that. Here at the Chicago Reader. The sad part is that even as I found it I find myself losing it. I'm not a true insider as I haven't sweat over the pages year after year, and I don't know the names of the little ones plastered all over the production area workstations, and I’m not privy to the hidden histories within this small, insular, yet intensely caring community of artists, writers, editors, sales people, drivers, receptionists, IT, and maintenance. Yet even so, the majority of people I've been fortunate to have met even during this period of immense change have welcomed me in a way that feels like I could have been here with them all along. And I was, as a Reader of the Reader. So there is a message on my cell phone from a former employer that will take me back. But because I spent my entire afternoon on a whirlwind tour of no less than five appointments with current and potential advertisers, all save for one resilient independent entrepreneurs, the sort of businesses that get serious “ROI” from the Reader’s informed readership, I’m reluctant to leave the Reader just yet. As a sales rep with a near obsessive love of long-form journalism I have the opportunity to make money to help support what I hope will be an honorable, content-rich organization moving forward. So I’m bright and sunny on the outside but full of fear and confusion on the inside… just busting my sales chops like the Reader design team that busted out a newspaper minutes after they were more or less told they would no longer be needed. If that’s not dedicated, please tell me what is. If the new owners are willing to take my ideas seriously, and show a commitment to preserving a newspaper that one of the most discerning critics referred to as having a “Mount Rushmore” impact on journalism, I have a plan that would keep on at least one local designer while not totally severing ties with local printing. And because I now have to play in their court I need to stop blogging. This will be my final work-related blog. Signed, Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose

There's a theme here that the Reader "had" to be sold to a media company of fairly large sized. That's false. Any business owner who thinks about the future of their organization realizes that you need a succession plan. People get old, and for that matter, people die in sudden accidents. When you're running an organization and realize that people depend on you, the responsible thing to do is to create a plan for moving yourself out, and new ownership in. So, there are really only three possibilities: (1) The past owners of the Reader thought Creative Loafing could do a better job than any independent, Chicago-based owner could; (2) A lack of a succession plan, exacerbated by an undisclosed emergency, led to a precipitous selloff to the first available people who knew how to run a newspaper; or (3) Creative Loafing put up a big wad of money that meant more to the past owners than independent media did. Among the alternatives passed up by current leadership was the opportunity to cultivate Chicago-based leadership, and gradually move them into place. This is not uncommon, with the exiting leadership taking a gradually lessened role, and the entering leadership taking an increasing degree of control. The exiting leaders create a buyout plan, financed on the paper's assets (because entering management normally doesn't have the cash). Since the owners spent their lives in independent media, option (1) looks unlikely. Option (2) is half right, but unless we learn of someone's cancer diagnosis, it's out also. That leaves (3).

"The Loaf in Atlanta has a long history of journalistic excellence that continues today." Like the James Beard Award Finalist? Ask Bourdain about the James Beard Awards. Interesting Eason talked about the loss of classified advertising instead of editorial. Atlanta CL is FULL of ads, so full that the "front-page story" often doesn't start until page 20.

thomas, are you some kind of lawyer?

look, the reader is no mt. everest of journalism (or was that "journalism's mt. rushmore"?). the reader hasn't been very good for a while. but is it better than creative loafing? you bet it is. but maybe this eason character will revive the reader's offbeat mojo. Hmmm. Nah!

Ugh. Well, I used to work at the R. Till last year October. And the first journalism work I ever did was as a 19-year-old intern at the Charlotte Loaf in 1995. They were nice people in Charlotte, as I remember them. I typed movie listings into a database, wrote a very fluffy cover story about summer festivals (didn't know what the hell I was doing, truthfully, though I figured it out well enough I suppose (the story ran) and I wasn't getting paid, of course, so I don't know if it really mattered all that much). I worked at a restaurant in Charlotte, too, and knew no one that did anything with the Loaf other than peruse the listings (me and my pals got ours from an upstart rag called Indie File that was actually published from Chapel Hill, if I remember correctly, and had much more interesting music reviews than the Loaf). The Atlanta Loaf is better than the Charlotte paper will ever be (viewed today occasionally when I get to ATL from Birmingham, AL, where I now live), but the Reader is in another class entirely in all respects. Miner, you're pretty much spot-on, as always. And to Westgard -- the Reader was an eye-opener for me, as a kid Southerner used to being jerked around on the job. It was a great place to work: I worked for very little cash, but the benefits were excellent, and the staff laid-back but dead serious, and the culture and manner and speech and everything around the office and in the work day-to-day was totally devoid of b.s., including from the current publisher, though he seemed to be of a rather different cast in some respects and truthfully I didn't see much of him. It does seem to make sense that, absent a gigantic influx of cash, the owners would have a transfer-of-ownership plan in plan that would keep the nuts and bolts in the town of the paper's birth and entire life. Then again, watching the stagnation of the web presence the first couple years I was there was rather, um... Anyway, the Loaf guy sounds absolutely beyond belief idiotic -- as unReader as you can get. But words are just words and don't matter, right? To all the folks on the fourth floor -- I'm sorry. I'll be in touch. Third floor -- fists raised.

Can Mr. Eason open his mouth without some sort of buzzword-laden hogwash spewing out? I suppose he could be dishonest and say he was going to look around a bit and do some nips and tucks and try and make for a gentle transition. But then, why be gentle when you've got a pivotal gateway of connectivity with the young adult audience? No need to waste time--gotta whip that pivotal gateway into shape and get that connectivity, um, connecting. Yes!!! Be afraid, young adult audience. Be very afraid.

I wonder how much longer we'll have the luxury of venting like this. How surprised would anyone be if these comments are wiped clean in a bit?

In a city as big as Chicago, with such a rich literary history, was any effort made to find a local sensibility to take over a local institution? Maybe Creative Loafing was the best offer? Maybe they will infuse a vital energy in these bundles of newsprint and the paper will have a life affirming renaissance. I'm going to assume people were out of there chairs and pursuing the best options instead of sitting waiting for an offer. I'd hate to think that someone really thinks this is the second city. 'nuff said, on to next week's paper.

If they are [wiped clean] then we can consider the independent voice dead. One thing I did notice is that on the CL Web site, in the political whore's (Wayne Garcia's) column (which is actually not bad at all compared to their other writers such as Eason's sis) referring to the acquisition of the two papers, he removed the hyperlinks to the Reader and WP web sites. The only hyperlink now remaining is the link to the jargon-heavy press release. http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/politicalwhore/2007/07/25/the-reviews-are-in-%e2%80%a6/

'plainly mr fly it is all damned nonsense for that food to rear up on its hind legs and say it should not be eaten' --don marquis, 'the futility of literature'

I think what a lot of people are missing is this is the trend in alt media whether you like it or not. While nobody likes to be bought by an out of towner, if CL didn't buy the Reader than New Times very well could have. and if any of you have the slightest bit of knowledge on what has happened at other New Times-bought papers, much more of you would probably lose your jobs. New Times comes in, slashes pretty much everyone and many times brings in out of town editors to control content. REally, this all could be worse. And by the way, the writer of the food column for CL recently won a prestigious award in FLA.

Re: JONB: He's got a point about New Times. A friend of mine went through a NT restructuring. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

What *does* Bourdain say about the Beard awards?

He says lots of very angry things: http://gawker.com/news/beard-awards/beard-awards-a-flameless-fiasco-in-the-making-247579.php

ugh: That is not an option.

Todd, You're still that class act, even if you're far away from 11. E Illinois. Thanks for even bring up production and raising the fist for the fourth floor.

Wow, Anthony Bourdain says that it's fucked up that the Beard's chef awards and dinner were held this year with no actual kitchens for the cooks to use. Thus, anyone receiving an award from the Beard Foundation for journalism should be written off completely? That's the kind of logic us alt papers should strive for! Ben Eason is lame. Some components of his papers are lame. And there are also some very talented writers on his staff, most of them in Atlanta.

"Planning to pour resources into the paper?" Don't count on it, not by a long shot. You won't get more staff or more pages, there is absolutely no precedent in recent news publishing history to suggest this. Creative Loafing is an ugly thing to behold and to read in the other communities it plagues. (In Tampa, there's just no "there there" - which may suit that market fine but will never fly in Chicago. The owners of Time Out Chicago (already a far superior product in regard to listings as well as features reporting) must be rejoicing right now. P.S. - Creative Loafing also brings up the aromatic phrase "pinch a loaf" which is what this whole situation stinks like.

we are feeling the love and the ire and it makes all the difference

Sharing the ire and sending the love to the production folks. You guys were never anything less than amazing to behold in action. It's CL's loss, but sadly, it's also ours. I tend not to get too sentimental about places where I work (perhaps that explains why I prefer to stay freelance as much as possible), but in terms of sheer intelligence, grit, talent, and verve, the staff at the Reader when I was there were some of the best people I've ever met, let alone with whom I've worked. I'm just hoping that there are better days ahead for all the fourth-floor folks. And the ones still aboard.

If they discontinue these forums here we can go over to Chicago Craigslist media watch: http://forums.chicago.craigslist.org/?forumID=133&all=N As of this writing there wasn't a single post there.

Production saved a lot of my stories over the years. How're they gonna do that from Atlanta?

Wait, are there feature stories in Time Out?

Of course, it's hard to know exactly what will happen, but one thing no one has mentioned is the question of how Creative Loafing financed this deal. We know they paid upwards of $10 million; I'm guessing they don't have that kind of cash lying around. Most likely they took on large debt, and large debt at a variable interest rate. This could mean they will need to generate fast and perhaps increased profits, and now. Having to pay rent will only add to the financial pressure. Cutbacks and streamlining initiated in Tampa could cause the Reader -- as diminished as it may be from the paper of five years ago -- to lose valuable content, and its local "feel," and acquire a cookie-cutter design much worse than the present design (of which I am no great fan). This could lead to a big loss of readers, more cuts, et cetera, in a very un-virtuous cycle. And we aren't even in a recession. I think that the current environment for journalism that what is needed, and perhaps the only hope, is some very rich guy (Sam Zell? a Pritzker? A nouveau riche Chicago hedge fund manager? Bill Gates? David Geffen? well, the last two are west coasters) to suddenly and surprisingly come to care enough about the world, and about journalism, to donate gazillions ($100 or $200 million would be nice to start) to set up a not for profit weekly with a board and staff committed to excellent journalism, more political coverage of the city from reporters who know and write about the relevant history and possible future implications of ordinances and other changes and who can contextualize what's going on, more coverage of changes in the city's geography and infrastructure and buildings, serious arts coverage, and little or nothing about fashion, restaurants, the best Chicago dentists, local sports teams, "free shit," and other "lifestyle" stuff. Writers should be free to explore things in depth, without, of course, getting boring. Such a paper would use income from its endowment to operate, and ad income would only add to the endowment fund, so that the paper was financially stable and didn't depend on ads. Maybe in the long run a truly excellent but also serious publication could woo back the people, many of them younger, who read less and less -- either in its print edition or on the Web.

I like that the Reader covers both "lifestyle" stuff, which so many commenters seem to frown on, and serious stuff. I mean, I care about police torture and I also like to go out to eat and wear clothes, so I guess it's the paper for me.

I agree. The world is the reader's canvas. But hasn't anyone noticed how much the Reader has been sliding? When it's not by Marlin or Conroy , Miner or Joravsky, it's likely to be boring. The Reader used to have humor, good writing and restaurants; now it just has restaurants. Could it be the old owners were just tired of overseeing the slide in what was once the best alternative newsweekly? They saw their chance to cash out, and they did.

I meant Marlan, of course. My mistake shows how long ago I stopped reading. But when I came to Chicago for graduate school in 1996, the Reader was a must-read. I knew a lot of people who felt that way. I still remember the Marlan story about the guys who scavenged bricks -- a classic of the type of story the Reader was known for. There were a lot of creative, probing, well-written stories, long and short. Now you would never read something like that in the Reader. I also think the paper did a better job on covering news, too. It was just a better paper, plain and simple. Something had to be done, and my hope is Eason -- as unlikely as that would be -- might provide a spark, a reason for someone like me to pick up the Reader again.

if you stopped reading long ago, how do you know whether what's in the paper is better or worse than it used to be?

Objecting to the lifestyle stuff was not my main point. It doesn't bother me that the Reader covers restaurants. Maybe I've even taken a suggestion or two there. What bothers me is the shift in emphasis to what sometimes seems like mostly lifestyle coverage. In my experience, the Reader has long had a really intelligent readership. University professors, undergraduate students, and grad students make up a large number of loyal readers, and I know personally that "Chicago Antisocial" was so moronic that not only was it hated by most of them, but some began to doubt the judgment of a publication that would print, as one Ph.D. student who is also a big partygoer told me, something that *always* missed what was most interesting about the events it covered -- because whenever she went to an event that was covered in the column, Liz did indeed miss whatever was engaging about it. Face it, the Reader has indeed been "dumbing down" for years now, with shorter stories, shorter capsule reviews, and a brite, lite redesign, and in the process of doing so, has alienated many of the loyal readers. It might be that best way to improve its bottom line is to make it a more serious newspaper again. I'd love to know how much they would save by eliminating color. But it's not clear that the editors are interesting in doing that, and Mr. Eason is planning to cut the editorial budget. Those hopeful of making the Reader an even better paper than it is now - and in many areas I do think it is still good -- are going to have to put the case for this to the new owners. For what it's worth, not much I suspect, you have my support!

I also don't understand the shift to color, except because everyone else has color. It's not necessary.

Do I ever pick it up now? Yeah, occasionally, but not like before. And why do you think I stopped picking it up religiously, dear reader? Because it had gotten insular and boring. If I wanted to read about how people decorated their apartments, I'd know where to go, however. And, Baby Boomer, I might be 20 years younger than you, but I think you answered your own question. The Reader does everything now because everyone else does it. The paper used to march to its own drummer. Now it reads and looks like the Voice or New Times or a bunch of other alt-weeklies. Why did I return to post on this blog, you may ask, dear reader? Because I just had to look. The Reader once meant a lot to me, and then I watched it become irrelevant and practically unrecognizable. Maybe it will now evaporate. It still makes me angry to pass the box on my street. I feel like a spurned lover. Which reminds me: Quit your whining.

former reader 3- i'm going to whine and say i wrote this massive reply to you and accidentally hit a key that deleted it, and it's not worth my time to recreate it. four words for you: no danger of evaporating. four more: no danger of evaporating. reinventing, yes. and in this reinvention stage which we don't have much time to suffer from, we will either create a monster or create a wet rag. the financial capital of creative loafing and the human capital of whomever is lucky or unlucky enough to remain at the Reader... we shall see what combusts between the merging of the two forms of capital. i'm glad you once loved the Reader enough to feel spurned by it. that's passion! and it's passion that keeps some of us working to find ways to bring that spark back- for you, for us, and for our new owners.

Re: Nervous Reader, July 27 comment. NR, just wanted to clarify that nobody took links off my PoHo column about the various comments on this blog and over at the City Paper. Links to those blogs remain; individual links to the comments I quoted were never in my blog post because, frankly, I wanted to get the story online as quickly as possible and didn't have time to provide individual comment links. I will go back this afternoon and remedy that. Also, there are many more links to other stories and views (Forbes, Crain's, Tampa Bay Business Journal) beyond the official release from Ben Eason. Your comments infers some kind of post hoc editing of my blog to hew to some kind of corporate line; its simply not the case. I have full freedom to write whatever I want, however I want. I do appreciate the compliment that PoHo is "not bad at all;" I get that assessment a lot, mostly at home from my wife.

Well crap. -- SCAM

http://aan.org/alternative/Aan/ViewCompany?oid=oid%3A9

Sympathies to the gang - it's truely the end of an era. good to see Dills around - you are and were one of the good ones. I spent a decade working production there (laying out the front half of section four before it got 86'd) one year or so, learning the news biz a bit and watching the paper get re-designed. while that process was (imo) nothing short of a clusterfuck run by a somewhat clueless "designer" who graced Chicago with his esthetic, erm, "brilliance" for a while, I was always impressed with the hard-core seriousness with which the thing was put together every week. People there don't make much money, but it's obvious that it was never about that. You could feel the pride and ownership they felt in building it week in and week out. They are and were tough as nails, working shit-long hours and keeping the paper tight. To say that the staff was idiocyncratic would be gross understatement - it was in many ways hipster central - but regardless of all that everyone I worked with busted ass to see that the paper was as good as can be every week. That's just one of the things that gave the paper it's charm. If you ever got the job of running a section over to Newsweb you could feel the excitement and anticipation - the thing you'd been working on was about to be read by a ton of people. I don't know shit about the new owners or CL. To me the real tragedy is that Chicago has lost a world-class indie. The Reader may continue, but without local ownership I just wonder how it can hold the same value. I had lots of beefs with The Reader, both before and after working there, but I think many, like me, felt a sense of civic pride and ownership with this paper. I don't say this as a former employee, but more as a Chicagoan who always found great use in the pages of the Reader. The coverage was often both too long and too thin, too focused and too fuzzy. They could have had more of an editorial voice, they could have and should have covered art more thoroughly, moved to the web sooner, yadda yadda yadda. But to focus on these things is to overlook the fact that they basically created the market here, in addition to doing SO MANY things RIGHT. How many regional indies can compete? The Village Voice? The Stranger? The damn thing was free. There are so many people whose names won't be known, but who made that thing happen every week. Sheila Sachs and Godfrey Carmona come to mind in production, but there are so many others. All the people on 3 who had the mind-numbing job of painstakingly proofreading the issue every week. Most people will never know their names, or how long their hours were, or how little they were paid, or just how much they fucking CARED. It's sad. Here's hoping there's a silver lining in there somewhere for all you. As tough as I imagine this is for you all, the real loss is shared by us all. I'm hopeful, but not holding my breath. Knockin' one back in yer honor. d

I didn't mean to belittle anyone's contribution, and I do feel sorry for the people who will lose their jobs. But welcome to the 21st century. Why aren't you angry with the people who let this happen, the owners and your editor? I was merely pointing out that the paper once had a larger readership for a good reason, and the main reason that changed is not the Web or craigslist. "Passion"? Yes, I felt passion for the paper at one time. That is what a great publication engenders, and the Reader stopped doing that. I wouldn't be writing this -- and revisiting this site -- if I didn't care about what happens next. Most of the passion on this blog has come from insiders -- just look. Sorry, guys, it wasn't working, and that made you vulnerable.

Well, now I can't resist, Former Reader, because there is a reason for the lack of passion you've noticed in the Reader. From information I've gotten from staff writers, editors, and freelancers, I think I can explain the change you've noticed. Time was when the criteria for accepting an article was not primarily the subject, but how well written and the editors thought it was, and how interesting they thought the writer made her or his chosen subject. This is when the Reader was still run by the people who founded it, and a few years after that, until around 2002. It was a kind of laissez-faire system in which writers were encouraged to write about things they cared about, and were asked to put that care into the writing. Editing was also done lightly. Oh, the editors might make many changes, but the idea was to try to preserve the style and voice of the author. Sometime after 2000, that started to change. As advertising started to decline, the editors reacted by becoming more and more controlling, second guessing the edits of the line editors with less than brilliant "top edits" that were frequently done carelessly if not stupidly, and apparently trying to standardize style in tiny ways that helped remove writers' distinctive voices, making the writing more consistent but also blander, making the Reader more and more like other publications. The editors also became more intrusive about what went into the paper. Instead of letting writers decide what to write on, more and more, they decided for themselves, based on their knowledge or lack of knowledge of the local scene, and writers, even freelancers, found themselves less and less following their passions and more and more doing assignments. Writers also founds themselves more often having to write according to predetermined formats about which the editors had preconceived, and rather unoriginal cookie-cutter ideas. In this process, the publication became more predigested, more like other publications, and consequently less interesting and less unique. When writers choose their subjects, they can follow their passions. The less free they are to do so, the more they become alienated laborers. Writers and editors both became demoralized. Thus did a great newspaper become a lot less than great. Meanwhile the owners seemed to care little about what was happening. Now that their large buyout checks have presumably cleared, one wonders if they cared at all. I wonder if Mr. Eason would have any idea, were he to read this, what I am talking about. To hope to know, he'd have to read a lot of back issues.

Wow. I am constantly amazed by what people present as cold hard fact in these comments.

unoriginal cookie-cutter story ideas? i was a freelancer to the Reader after the so-called decline post-2000 you speak of, and not to tout my Jew horns, but the cover story I wrote and inside feature were anything but cookie cutter, and i wasn't anything special. plenty of other stories went beyond cookie cutter. and still do. by chance have you checked out this week's cover story on a jazz flutist, or the prior week's story about a man that drives around in a van helping former gang members remove their tattoes? and isaac's column about frustrated condo owners upset with their association, but silenced all the same? cutting, maybe. cookie cutter, never. but that's just my two cents. keep airing yours though. healthy debate is better than silence.

Jew horns? Never heard anyone use that mythology in that way.

tout my own horn seemed cliche. i am a jew, and was just playing on words. sorry if i offended. :(

Thanks to "wow is right." The Reader still has lots of good stories, and lots that aren't "cookie cutter." My comments only make sense if you compare the Reader today to the Reader pre-2002. Even then, doubtless not everyone will agree.

Statements about who was running the paper when, our editorial procedures, or assignment policy aren't something one agrees or disagrees with. They're simply true or false. In the case of Worried Sibyl's Aug. 2 comment above, many of them are false. Just for the record.

I'm not offended - just wondering if I was getting clued to another term.

worried might be onto something.

About Worried Sybil's comments: I haven't written much for the Reader in the last few years, for a lot of reasons. But when I have, I've noticed absolutely no change in the way the Reader's editors deal with my copy. I don't know what the experience of other freelancers has been, but I can testify that there's been not a single attempt to standardize my style or force me into a cookie-cutter shape. So whatever Worried Sybil is talking about, it's nothing I've seen myself. This says nothing about what the new owners are going to do, of course...

Well, you have been lucky, Lee. I can't even use my real name here, because I am afraid I will never get my calls returned. Not that it matters anymore

Lighten up. That hasn't been my experience either.

Worried: now you're just falling victim to the usual freelancer's paranoia about editors. You can say whatever you like, use your real name or not, and it'll make absolutely no difference to whether you get your calls returned. I can think of one well-known, longtime Reader contributor who badmouthed, slandered, and trashed the Reader's editors at every opportunity, public and private, and they went on buying his stuff without a qualm. Editors forgive anything from people who turn in usable copy.

Let the cost cutting begin! Readers Guide to Arts & Entertainment ( suburban edition....) They gone!

Lee Sandlin, you do good work, and I'm glad ot hear that nothing changed for you. What I posted, though, was based on the experience of more than one writer and more than one editor. If Martha thinks I have posted things that are factually wrong, she should say what those errors are. It's hard to register nuances in our world, it seems. The Reader is still a really good paper. I just think that over the last five years, with things like the horrible redesign with its sometimes poorly printed color and new "rules" about length of capsules and long reviews (as opposed to, say, just indicating that things need to be shorter), and with what some writers and editors consider demoralizing intrusions from the top editors, the Reader has gotten a lot less good. It still has a lot of really good thigns.

I didn't mean to imply that nothing had changed. The Reader is obviously a drastically different paper from what it was several years ago, and the kind of very long-form journalism I like to do has become an impractical luxury for them. I'm not in the least bit happy about that. And you're right, they do have new rules about what they're willing to run, some of which I find completely idiotic. But they've always had their fair share of idiotic rules, and their editing has traditionally been intrusive -- I've had many, many screaming matches with them over the years about changes to my copy. But my recent experiences with their editing have been no different in kind from my earlier experiences -- that was the only point I was trying to make.

There was no 2002 change in the degree of owner involvement in the day to day affairs of the paper. We almost never give assignments--a longstanding policy that has not changed.

Well, my main thesis is that the absence of passion that a reader noticed is due to greater intrusiveness on the part of editors, in terms of the subjects of stories, the way stories are written, the editing, and the way the whole paper looks like a neat, cute, pre-digested package -- slicker than before the redesign, but also more homogenized. Lee Sandlin in fact confirms one aspect of that, the selection of stories, even if he hasn't seen the others. Martha Bayne hasn't really contradicted my main points. In fact editors have been a bit more aggressive about excluding some kinds of storiees in recent years. "Owner involvement" was never my point -- it was the increasinglyh intrusive involvement of the two top editors that writers and editors have noticed. I know that for some other writers, the editing has become much more intrusive in the last five or so years.

I have to back up Martha on this. I know several current writers for the Reader. Editorial hasn't changed (nor has freelancer's mixed feelings about the intrusions). The length and number of articles varies more from issue to issue, but I don't think this is a bad thing. I've been reading for almost 20 years, and for every great long article, there was one which could be shorter. It does seem they still have some freedom on the length issue. The problem is the overall space has been shrinking along with the Reader's budget for each issue, which does impact quality no matter how dedicated the staff. Since the Reader does rely on submissions rather than assignments for features, less money means a smaller pool of quality offerings. To me, the biggest change is the ever shrinking space for listings, resulting in tiny capsule reviews and less detailed entries - which does create a more impersonal, limited feeling. In most buyouts the money spent on editorial does not improve. I hope the Reader is an exception, but my fear is they will be forced to do more with less, both in terms of space and money.

At the risk of prolonging a thread that's already got to be setting new records in inside-baseball tedium, I'll reiterate my main points. 1) The Reader has in the last few years made up a bunch of very stupid rules about such things as what books they'll review -- basically, if a book isn't just hitting the shelves this very instant, they're not interested. I detest this. But I don't think it's any different from the stupid rules they've had for decades about such things as Critic's Choices. And every newspaper and magazine I've ever been involved with has had their own set of stupid rules. The Reader still gives more freedom to its writers than almost any other professional publication I know of. That may change immediately, of course... 2) The editing of the last long story I wrote for the Reader was a pretty brutal experience, and not just for me. (The first editor on the story never spoke to me again.) I thought the editing was at times disastrously intrusive. BUT it was absolutely no different in kind from the intrusions I have been screaming about for better than twenty years -- and in the end the version that ran was pretty close to what I wanted. I can't think of another venue right now where I could have published it at all. 3) I still think the idea that the Reader editors are going to visit retribution on any writer who dares to post negative things about them in this thread is silly. I can see it now: my name comes up at the next budget meeting, and Alison silently draws her finger across her throat. If that happens -- well, thanks, guys, I've had a good run.

I have been a freelancer for the Reader. This might sound like sour grapes, but I say it with affection. Ten years ago I used to actually receive assignments. (To be truthful, they were more like suggestions, but there was never any doubt they would run if i did them.) These story suggestions were not only good but plentiful, and I also found a more open environment to my own ideas. It was closer to a two-way discussion. That has been missing for a while. Now I get ideas shot down. Before these ideas may have still been shot down, but they might come back to me in a different, improved form. I still get e-mail solicitations from desperate-sounding editors. Several years ago the Reader would never have an Uptown issue or a Logan Square issue or a Best of Chicago issue -- every issue was Best of Chicago. I bet there are fewer contributors overall. Someone should count the bylines from ten years ago and compare the number to today (excluding journalism students sent over by NU).

"Several years ago the Reader would never have an Uptown issue or a Logan Square issue or a Best of Chicago issue -- every issue was Best of Chicago." Of course this is absolutely right, and it's consistent with Lee Sandlin's experience of editors limiting him to recently released books. The Reader is becoming more like most other (horrible) newspapers and magazines, pandering to what they think readers want, "news you can use," whatever's "hot," that sort of crap. The Reader of old asked writers to write about subjects they really cared about and felt they had something to say about, and judged submissions accordingly. The editors of today's Reader think they know what readers want to read. But they don't. They are insulting many longtime Reader readers by making the paper into a generic "guide." As I wrote much earlier, there are still excellent things in the Reader -- but fewer of them, and more meaningless fluff. I believe this change is a big reason, though of course not the only one, for the Reader's economic difficulties.

I've been writing for the Reader, off and on, for about 20 years. I published pieces in the Reader several years ago that wouldn't be published now. But I think the reason is that the "news hole" (horrible journalistic term) is so much smaller than it used to be. There's less room for experimental, wacky, idiosyncratic writing. Which is too bad. Especially for me.

It's backwards to blame the Reader's money problems on the changes in editorial policy. The revenue from classifieds has dried up because of Craigslist, the price of newsprint has gone way up, and the target demographic of the remaining advertisers has shifted away from Baby Boomers -- put that all together and you've got the Reader as it is now. It's a direct result of changing economics, not of some malevolent new attitude among the Reader editors. For freelancers who do more experimental and adventurous stuff, that means that our market has largely closed. That's a horrible shame, and there's no reason to expect things to get any better with the change in ownership, but, well, what else is new?

the Reader publishes less interesting writing because of Craigslist? Interesting doesn't necessarily mean long, Lee. The truth is, everybody here is right to a degree. The Reader is not as good as it used to be, and economics played a role in its decline . . . but so did content. The paper is just not that interesting, and that is why fewer people pick it up. In the panic to regain its footing, the Reader abandoned its personality -- now the paper reads like it's trying to get people to buy it.

Oh, for God's sake. My point, one last time, is this: the Reader has changed drastically in the last few years, because the economics have changed. But a lot about them hasn't changed. They don't have anywhere near as much room as they used to, and they don't run much in the way of odd and unconventional stuff -- but they still run a fair amount of stuff that's as good as the old days. As for length: their feature stories now average way under 5000 words, but I wrote a story for them that was 40,000 words long, and they did find a way to run it. We can piss and moan all we want about the new Reader versus the old, but, given the market conditions, I think the editors have done passably well by freelancers -- or, at least, by this freelancer. It's obviously a big mistake for me to speak for any others. The real question is, what's the Reader going to look like a year from now, and if nobody else minds, I'm going to keep my trap shut until we all find out.

"In the panic to regain its footing, the Reader abandoned its personality -- now the paper reads like it's trying to get people to buy it." Once again, someone has got it right. These "best of" things and "back to school guide" issues are like what other publications does, what the Reader didn't used to do, what they are doing now, and what makes them look like they are calculating to get readers rather than letting writers follow their passions. And once again I agree with Lee Sandlin that they have many good things. The point is, that they have also changed, and it's the change that readers have reacted against. In my opinion if they had not spent huge sums on the redesign, and were not spending a lot of money on color, and were still giving writers the leeway they used to have (which even Sandlin says has been lessened), they would be doing significantly better economically than they now are. The editors don't understand that the Reader is, or was, read by smart people looking for unusual things, not by people wondering whether or not to see "Spider Man VI." Reader readers may well go to that sort of thing, but they don't look to the Reader for "guidance" about it.