{"id":18400,"date":"2018-06-15T14:15:22","date_gmt":"2018-06-15T19:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.robertfeder.com\/?p=18400"},"modified":"2018-06-15T16:14:14","modified_gmt":"2018-06-15T21:14:14","slug":"sun-times-sells-chicago-reader-african-american-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/2018\/06\/15\/sun-times-sells-chicago-reader-african-american-group\/","title":{"rendered":"Sun-Times sells Chicago Reader to African-American group"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

<\/a> Chicago Reader<\/p><\/div>\n

The Chicago Reader, <\/a>the city\u2019s leading alternative weekly for 47 years, has been sold to a group led by Dorothy Leavell, publisher of the African-American Chicago Crusader.<\/a><\/p>\n

The news, first leaked at the annual conference of Rainbow PUSH <\/a>Friday, was later confirmed by the parent company of the Sun-Times,<\/a> which has owned the Reader since 2012. The deal is expected to close in the next 30 days, with the Sun-Times retaining a 15 percent interest in the publication.<\/p>\n

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Dorothy Leavell<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWe love the Reader and have worked hard to be sure it has a foundation for the future,\u201d Sun-Times CEO Edwin Eisendrath said in a statement. \u201cAll of us at the Sun-Times are thrilled that the Reader\u2019s future is in such good hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

Claiming a circulation of 85,000, the free weekly has been losing money for years. Staff reductions and budget cuts led editorial employees to vote unanimously<\/a> to join the Chicago Newspaper Guild in 2015. After nearly two years of negotiations, a strike threat and a change of ownership, staffers ratified<\/a> their first union contract in 2017.<\/p>\n

Eisendrath stumbled earlier this year when he hired Mark Konkol as executive editor of the Reader, only to fire<\/a> him two weeks later after the first issue Konkol oversaw ignited a racial and political controversy. Since February, Dave Newbart, former senior editor at DNAinfo Chicago, has been serving as interim executive editor.<\/p>\n

Unloading the Reader may not do much to improve the bottom line of the Sun-Times, which Eisendrath declared has only a \"60 percent\" chance of survival <\/a>in the next two years.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not clear what plans Leavell has for the Reader. Sources said her investors include Chicago businessman Elzie Higginbottom, who\u2019s also part of Eisendrath\u2019s investment group in Sun-Times Media.<\/p>\n

\"The Reader is a beloved Chicago institution with an important history of investigative journalism and cultural reporting,\u201d Leavell said in a statement. \u201cOur goal as new ownership is to preserve and strengthen this brand and to make the paper accessible to all Chicago communities.\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Chicago Reader, the city\u2019s leading alternative weekly for 47 years, has been sold to a group led by Dorothy Leavell, publisher of the African-American Chicago Crusader. The news, first leaked at the annual conference of Rainbow PUSH Friday, was later confirmed by the parent company of the Sun-Times, which has owned the Reader since... Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18400"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18400"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18410,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18400\/revisions\/18410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}