Why I've Been Talking So Much About The Chicago Reader
You want to change the world? Make the good ppl rich.
Without The Reader, ATELIER wouldn’t have existed.
I’ve spent a good amount of time and energy in January and February to fundraise for The Chicago Reader. The day the news about The Reader might close down came out, I sunk to my bathroom floor, curled into a ball, and cried. I cried the day after. I cried again when I saw nobody responded to my fundraiser I posted on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. I hugged the giant green dinosaur sitting on the chaise lounge in my living room and mumbled: “I’m so frustrated.“
I started writing about arts and culture in 2021 when I was Managing Editor for UrbanMatter Chicago, a digital publication whose primary focus was lifestyle and hospitality. Since I had full editorial freedom, I tested water with creative roundups and exhibition profiles and immediately fell in love with it.
I mean, how could I not?
I’m an artist who originally went to school for creative writing — writing about arts and culture was, without exaggeration, my destiny.
So I’d snuck in an artist interview here, an exhibition review there. Then I became ambitious and ran a few features for EXPO Chicago and Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB).
Had UrbanMatter not been sold to another SEO clickbait farm, I would’ve continue to build our Arts section. However, the selling threw me right back into the freelance pool, and, having had a taste of covering artist, especially emerging artists and independent spaces, I simply couldn’t walk away and return to my previous life of writing purely for SEO.
That was when I came across The Reader.
I never really considered myself a journalist or a reporter, though many would refer to me as such. Even today, I still think real independent journalists are doing such deep, comprehensive reporting that self-labeling as one makes me an imposter. However, my qualifications aside, I’ve always looked up to journalists since I was a child. During the late 90s and early 2000s, there were many Hong Kong TV shows about journalists and undercover reporters. Those protagonists shaped my view of what a journalist should be: and that was before I ever learned about The Journalist’s Creed.
The Reader was my first official exposure to literary journalism. Up till then, I was bored and burnt out reading press release aggregates (and often publishing them), meaningless listicles meant more for SEO instead of the readership (again, often writing them myself, hoping to trend), and plain, dull, distant lingos reporting on a matter-of-fact happening.
If literary journalists are forced to treat their practice as a side gig, then, don’t blame them for side gig quality/quantity work. And if ethical, community-centric, dedicated publications cannot raise enough funding in traditional ways, don’t be surprised when you see 50 business news outlets echoing off each other.
Back then, I haven’t learned the difference between journalism and reporting, nor have I experienced any of the hierarchies and nuances in the news/media world. When I typed “public journal is public trust” on my LinkedIn tagline, I was feeding my ego without understanding the weight behind those words. Then, I began digging into Chicago’s emerging artist and artist’s run space scenes, to find angles, to craft pitches, and, ultimately, to hold myself accountable to my ability and responsibility to cast light on someone or something for the public to see.
It’s safe to say that everything I learned about reviewing and critiquing as an art journalist, I learned from The Reader. As prestigious and established a publication it is, it was surprisingly friendly to new arts journalists like myself. My editors in Visual Arts/Literature and Film/Theatre have been more than helpful, and the wide array of subjects and pitches accepted rekindled my passion for independent and critical journalism.
My assignments with The Reader began with capsule reviews. These 150-200-word assignments forced me to re-evaluate my method of writing altogether. When I was ME for a digital publication, I had full publishing autonomy and no wordcount limit (SEO, remember?). The result of such lack of restriction and regulation was carelessness toward my words. The worst part? I didn’t even realize how I self-compromised as a writer. My first full-length was a review for a documentary film, FORKED and it made the cover page for that issue. I would never forget the waves of joy, pride, self respect, and validation I felt when I saw my name in the paper.
Without The Reader, ATELIER wouldn’t have existed.
There are so many things The Reader does that is irreplaceable not only in Chicago, but also in the literary journalism world.
The Reader remains my highest-paying publication and was the outlet that showed me what fair compensation should look like for independent journalists. It is, hands down, the most inclusive, friendly, and dynamic publication in Chicago if not in the entire Midwest thanks to its massive print circulation, high publication frequency (weekly, as briefly as that lasted), extensive arts, culture, and community coverage, and unparalleled welcomeness and mentorship to emerging and inexperienced journalists.
None of the above is something individual columnists and small organizations would be able to do. The Reader is an institution. It operates at a caliber that individual columnists and small organizations will never be able to reach due to the massive amount of dollars, resources, and labor required to do so.
Our society and it’s obsession with heroism has created a tendency to exaggerate individual capability and disregard institutional and organizational impact, as well as the drastic gap between the two. Yet a thousand independent columnist and critic won’t be able to match even 1% of what a systematic, universal impact a people-led, opinion-driven paper like The Reader does for our community as a whole.
Outlets like The Reader are also why many columnists can continue to work pro bono, or at an extremely low subscription rate. Independent journalists can only increase our capacity when more outlets are paying a fair wage. $75, $50, even $35 per full-length feature or review is not going to pay the bill.
If literary journalists are forced to treat their practice as a side gig, then, don’t blame them for side gig quality/quantity work.
And, if ethical, community-centric, dedicated publications cannot raise enough funding in traditional ways, don’t be surprised when you see 50 business news outlets echoing off each other.
The last “digital newspaper” I wrote for sold their source’s direct contact information to so-called “preferred partners” without every receiving consent, and bragged themselves to be the fastest growing national media group.
The stories were all beats. 70%+ the stories were aggregated from other publications. There were no interview windows, nor any care about giving the source their grounds to speak. The only reason most writers there called/emailed/sent inquiries was because they needed to validate the contact information — ultimately, it was a lead mining company disguised as a news outlet.
Because quality journalism is expensive.
That’s why we need to make the good people (in this case, the good publication) rich so they can take that money and make more good people rich. Because their impact is at a whole different level.
And we as a society urgently need changes to happen at that scale.
Or: