{"id":4008,"date":"2014-07-06T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-06T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.robertfeder.com\/?p=4008"},"modified":"2014-07-07T16:06:38","modified_gmt":"2014-07-07T21:06:38","slug":"chicagoside-disappearance-is-sad-commentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/2014\/07\/06\/chicagoside-disappearance-is-sad-commentary\/","title":{"rendered":"ChicagoSide disappearance is sad commentary"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ChicagoSide<\/a><\/a>When Jonathan Eig and Sol Lieberman handed off<\/a> ownership of ChicagoSideSports.com last March, they had high hopes the website they founded in 2012 would thrive under new management.<\/p>\n

But things haven\u2019t worked out as planned.<\/p>\n

Since ChicagoSide was acquired by\u00a0Nick Tranfaglia, director of business development at\u00a0TiqIQ,\u00a0a New York-based ticket broker,\u00a0new content ceased being added to the site. Now it\u2019s been shut down completely, with readers no longer able to access hundreds of essays, commentaries and other posts from the past two years.<\/p>\n

ChicagoSide\u2019s\u00a0Facebook page <\/a>continues to be used to promote TiqIQ\u2019s ticket sales, but that appears to be the only sign of life. Tranfaglia did not respond to repeated requests for comment.<\/p>\n

If this is the end, it\u2019s an unfortunate coda to an ambitious venture that once touted it would become \u201cthe best Chicago sports website<\/a> the city\u2019s ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jonathan<\/a>

Jonathan Eig<\/p><\/div>\n

Eig, a bestselling author and former Wall Street Journal reporter, and Lieberman, a digital developer and creative designer, launched ChicagoSide as a showcase for smart, provocative sports journalism by a cadre of established names along with a roster of \u201cyoung writers with great, original voices.\u201d Along the way, they forged editorial partnerships with the Sun-Times, Crain\u2019s Chicago Business and Time Out Chicago. But a business plan that relied on exclusive advertising partnerships and revenue from special events and promotions proved unsustainable.<\/p>\n

The best they can hope for now is to secure online access for the archive.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry to see that the ChicagoSide site is down,\u201d Eig told me Sunday. \u201cOur writers produced hundreds of wonderful stories and I\u2019d like to see them made available to readers. I know that it\u2019s helpful to writers who are looking for jobs and future assignments to have their online work easily found.<\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t heard from Nick [Tranfaglia] recently. I\u2019d be happy to pay the annual fees necessary to keep the archive of stories alive if he doesn\u2019t have any plans. I\u2019ll check into it and see if something can be arranged,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Jonathan Eig and Sol Lieberman handed off ownership of ChicagoSideSports.com last March, they had high hopes the website they founded in 2012 would thrive under new management. But things haven\u2019t worked out as planned.<\/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\/4008"}],"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=4008"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4016,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4008\/revisions\/4016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}