The Chicago Reader, one of the country’s longest-running alternative newspapers, is free once again.
So we hear.
Reader co-owner Leonard C. Goodman announced in the Chicago Tribune Tuesday morning that he’s “stepping away from the Reader immediately over ‘an unresolvable impasse’ with fellow co-owner, Chicago real estate developer Elzie Higginbottom, who wanted to move forward with the planned transition to a nonprofit newspaper.”
“We cannot continue the fight without destroying the Reader,” Goodman said in a statement to the Tribune. “I am stepping aside. I will sign off on the sale so that the Reader can transition immediately to NFP status.”
Goodman’s move means the Reader Institute for Community Journalism (RICJ) will run the Reader as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit governed by a board of directors but owned by no one. According to the Tribune, RICJ board members and Goodman sympathizers Dorothy Leavell, Sladjana Vuckovic, and Carol Bell announced they were also stepping down immediately.
“I am so happy that this impasse has been resolved in favor of the nonprofit Reader Institute for Community Journalism,” said copublisher Tracy Baim. “This has been a stressful time for our team, but I am grateful to all the support the co-owners—Elzie Higginbottom and Len Goodman—have given to the Reader these past 3.5 years. We would not be here without them. Now, we face the difficult challenge of moving into a fully independent and nonprofit future.”
Goodman’s decision to step aside comes just days after a protest outside his home organized by the Reader’s union and attended by staff and supporters from across the city. Philip Montoro, music editor and union chair, expressed gratitude for the ways in which people came together to back the Reader.
“The upwelling of support from other journalists, from community and arts groups, from our comrades in labor, it allowed us to see and feel something that we’ve always believed—and that’s that the Reader is part of the fabric of Chicago,” Montoro said. “And I think that’s the way forward for all local media organizations given how hostile the economic landscape is, that we are all colleagues now, not competitors. We’re a team, and we’re fighters, and we have a future again.”
This story will be updated once we stop celebrating, putting out this week’s print paper, and laugh-crying in relief. What can we say? We got scooped.
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