“Nice work, but you’re not ready,” Bob McCamant declared, after flipping through the portfolio of 16-by-20-inch black-and-white prints I had spent many darkroom hours creating. We sat in his office at Reader headquarters on Illinois Street, in 1986, the year I graduated from Columbia College. McCamant was one of the group of four who’d founded […]
Category: News & Politics
Posted inNews & Politics
50 years of a Chicago weekly
The history of the Reader reflects the larger history of newspaper publishing in the United States. This timeline traces the paper’s changing fortunes over the course of a half-century.
Posted inNews & Politics
Kinky or killer?
During a trial over a grisly murder, prosecutors and journalists alike traded in homophobic, sex-negative tropes that some say do a disservice to the victim and the BDSM community.
Posted inCity Life
Long live the classifieds!
A young person’s dive into the history of the once lucrative section and its humble future.
Posted inPodcasts
Listen to The Ben Joravsky Show
The Ben Joravsky Show livestreams every Tuesday through Friday between 1 PM and 3 PM here at chicagoreader.com/joravsky and on the Reader‘s YouTube channel. The show is released as a podcast each day after the live taping. Podcast-only episodes are also released throughout the week. Support the show by becoming a Ben Head.
Posted inNews & Politics
The Reader at 50
A deep dive into how this city’s alt-weekly made it through five decades
Posted inNews & Politics
A revolutionary act
BIPOC growers on what it’s like to urban farm on the south and west sides
Posted inPodcasts
Listen to the new Chicago Queer & Now podcast
Two Reader staffers explore all things queer Chicago.
Posted inNews & Politics
Archive Dive
A daily dip into the stacks, leading up to our 50th anniversary in October
Posted inNews & Politics
Medicaid has been good to my body, but it has abandoned my brain
I want choice, not a fistful of deeply unhelpful options wrestled, after months, from the banal, cruel system we make poor people navigate to access health care.
Posted inNews & Politics
Liaisons and order
The city bolstered its team of officers who engage with LGBTQ+ citizens. Queer people say that’s not enough.
Posted inNews & Politics
After 34 years, a murder conviction quietly reversed in four minutes
James Allen still has two murder cases keeping him in prison.
Posted inNews & Politics
Lakefront and center
Census data shows the biggest population increases in the Loop and along the lakefront. What does this mean for the rest of our neighborhoods?
Posted inNews & Politics
Desperate for answers
A year after Martin Urbina was murdered, his best friend searches for the truth.
Posted inNews & Politics
‘Black people should have their babies where they live’
The push for more equitable, culturally appropriate, and accessible options for childbirth