Chicago Reader

The Chicago Reader, or Reader (stylized as ЯEADER), is an American nonprofit alternative newspaper in Chicago, Illinois, noted for its literary style of journalism and coverage of the arts, particularly film and theater. It was founded by a group of friends from Carleton College.

The Reader is recognized as a pioneer among alternative weeklies for both its creative nonfiction and its commercial scheme. Richard Karpel, then-executive director of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, wrote:

[T]he most significant historical event in the creation of the modern alt-weekly occurred in Chicago in 1971, when the Chicago Reader pioneered the practice of free circulation, a cornerstone of today's alternative papers. The Reader also developed a new kind of journalism, ignoring the news and focusing on everyday life and ordinary people.

After being owned by same four founders since 1971, by the early 2000s profits and readership of the Reader were dropping, and ownership changed several times between 2007 and 2018. In 2022, the owners transferred the Reader to a new non-profit organization, the Reader Institute for Community Journalism.

On June 22, 2020, the Reader, citing a 90% drop in advertising revenue due to COVID-19 shutdowns, announced that it was pivoting from a weekly to a biweekly print schedule, with a renewed focus on digital content and storytelling and a refreshed special issues calendar. The Reader is dated every other Thursday and distributed free on Wednesday and Thursday via street boxes and cooperating retail outlets. As of June 2020, the paper claimed to have nearly 1,200 locations in the Chicago metropolitan area and circulation of 60,000.