This Friday, the Chicago Sun-Times’ Weekend section will be replaced by content from the Chicago Reader, Michael Miner reports. The new 20-page section, featuring listings, reviews and features clearly marked as coming from the Reader, will be called Agenda.
“The Reader isn’t changing—its content, press run, and circulation will stay the same,” Miner writes. “The Friday Sun-Times will change conspicuously.”
Sun-Times Media Editor-in-Chief Jim Kirk tells Miner he spoke with the Weekend staff. “I think they understand this makes sense,” he said. “The Weekend section had a great run — 17 years. But we need to evolve.”
“That’s probably an accurate statement,” Kirk said when Miner asked him if that need “was clearer to Kirk than to the Sun-Times staff.” Kirk says no layoffs are planned.
The Sun-Times’ parent company bought the venerable alt-weekly last May. At the time of the sale, Wrapports LLC CEO Timothy Knight said he and Kirk would “examine ways the publications can share content and whether to distribute the Reader as part of the Sun-Times,” David Roeder reported.
I used to work for Washington City Paper, which at one point shared owners with the Reader. Later, both papers were sold to Creative Loafing.
