Get ready for a smaller Chicago Reader.
The city’s free alternative newspaper since 1971 is poised to reduce its page size when it goes from a quarter-fold format to a standard flat tabloid next month. It’s also trimming the size of its staff, including an effort to get the drivers who deliver its 135,000 copies each week to leave the payroll and become independent contractors.
Reader Publisher Mike Crystal said Wednesday that some of the paper’s recent moves, such as outsourcing production work to Atlanta, are tied to the paper’s July sale to Florida-based Creative Loafing. But, he noted, many other changes were under consideration well before the sale, such as the proposed distribution changes, the paper’s redesign and printing the paper on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s presses, rather than at Chicago’s Newsweb Corp.
“I don’t want people to think that because we were purchased that folks have come in and made decisions to act against our best interests,” Crystal said. “It’s very simple for people to point fingers at new ownership and all that kind of thing. We’re just trying to wade through this in a way that makes sense.
“There are ruffled feathers and there are people legitimately upset about some things, but I think it’s pretty much a matter of trying to work through these things.
“The problem that we have with some of this is that our [traditional] methods of doing some things within the operation are just more expensive than [at other] papers like us, so we’re sort of restructuring.”
All papers have taken a hit in classified ad revenue from free online outlets such as Craigslist.org, but alternative weeklies have been especially battered. The Reader also has had to fend off competition on its advertising and editorial turf from emerging publications such as Time Out Chicago and the Chicago Tribune’s free daily, RedEye.
“The change in the classified revenue stream has forced papers to rethink the way their whole financial model works, and that’s true of us,” Crystal said. “We’ve been forced to look hard at costs and to change things where we could.”
The Reader’s redesign and new format is scheduled to come with its Oct. 5 issue, accompanying the shift of publishing to Milwaukee. Negotiations are still being finalized, but Crystal said that move — after all 36 years with Newsweb — will mean more availability of color for the papers and a shift in distribution of papers on Wednesdays, rather than Thursdays.
That presumes the Reader is able to distribute its papers. The transition to independent contractors was scheduled to take place next week but has been postponed because Crystal has not yet been able to persuade enough of his drivers to go from hourly wages to being paid by the route and number of stops.
Although he has talked to outside companies to assume the duties, he said he would like to stick with his old crew, which would rent delivery vehicles to get the paper out.
“I just want to get with these guys and have a good conversation, but I’m not going to conclude that everything is fine,” he said. “My greatest hope is that I’m going to be able to work this out with these guys and that they’re going to be our drivers. They’re our strength. We made a change, and all the changes we’re making are kind of similar to this in a way. They’re hard for people to deal with. But … it’s a requirement that I face of having to do business in a different way.”
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philrosenthal@tribune.com
