- Andrea Bauer
- Last weekend’s Weekend section
It was a year ago this month that Wrapports LLC bought the Reader and this paper became part of the Sun-Times Media constellation of titles. In August the Reader moved into the Sun-Times Media suite in the Apparel Center. On Friday the Reader moves into the Sun-Times.
The Sun-Times‘s Weekend section will disappear. In its place will be Agenda, a 20-page insert filled with listings, reviews, recommendations, and culture features—most of it culled from the pages of that week’s Reader and clearly labeled Reader material. The Reader isn’t changing—its content, press run, and circulation will stay the same. The Friday Sun-Times will change conspicuously.
Mara Shalhoup, editor of the Reader, told her staff last month that the concept, which they’d first heard about months earlier, was a go. Jim Kirk, editor in chief of Sun-Times Media, met with the Sun-Times staff Thursday. I asked him afterward how the meeting went. “You know, they had lots of questions, good questions,” Kirk said. “I think they understand this makes sense. The Weekend section had a great run—17 years. But we need to evolve.”
A need, I guessed, that was clearer to Kirk than to the Sun-Times staff. “That’s probably an accurate statement,” he said.