Inside Publications gets rid of last vestiges of Lerner Newspapers (UPDATED)
Update (03.01.2017): I've been told, by a reliable source, that the change was temporary for the last two issues of the year, and that it would go back to... well, I guess you can say go back to normal this Wednesday. Something about this whole thing still makes me feel uneasy, but for the time being, at least, false alarm.
When I went to get some groceries earlier today, I went to the newspaper rack to get the most recent issue of News-Star, a community newspaper that, in some form or another, covered Rogers Park, Edgewater and Uptown community areas since 1920s or so - only to see something. Well, I wouldn't say it was "new." But it was different.
This is one of those situations where I'm going to need to give some backstory, so bear with me.
The News-Star started out as just one of the newspapers in the Lerner Newspapers, a chain of community weeklies that went on to cover much of the north and northwest side of Chicago, as well as the northwestern and western suburbs. The Skyline, the newspaper covering the wealthy Gold Coast, was home to iconic gossip columnist Ann Gerber. Plenty of journalists who went on to higher-profile positions in Chicago and elsewhere started out at one of Lerner newspapers. To make a long story shorter, the chain had some ups and downs until 2000, when Hollinger International, then the Chicago Sun-Times' parent company, bought it. Over the next eight years, many papers were closed down, and others were folded into Pioneer Press. Then, in late 2007, they decided to shut down the remaining six city newspapers. And that might have been the end of it, if Wednesday Journal Inc didn't agree to buy three of them - the Booster (the descendant of Lerner's very first newspaper), the News-Star and the Skyline.
By that point, the three papers were shadows of their former selves, with only about a page or so of local content, and the rest just stuff republished from other Hollinger newspapers. WJI had been running Chicago Journal since 2000, and they were looking to expand. The company bought the names and little else. The papers got new, Chicago Journal style nameplates, Chicago Journal's Metropolis entertainment section was incorporated into them, as were columnists Don DeBat and Dick Simpson. None of the reporters that worked for Pioneer Press versions of the paper stayed on board, though Skyline columnists Ann Gerber and Felicia Dechter stayed with the paper.
To give credit where credit is due, under WJI's ownership, the papers really focused on their communities, and Metropolis' coverage wasn't bad, either. Unfortunately, the company couldn't have chosen the worst time for the expansion. A few months later, the Great Recession hit, and, by March 2009, the company decided to make cuts. The West Town version of Chicago Journal was eliminated, and Booster and News-Star were sold to Inside Publications. Well, "sold" isn't quite the right word. Inside owner Ron Roenigk agreed to share a portion of adverting/classifieds revenues with WJI for a few months.
Now, Inside Publications had been publishing its own weekly community newspaper, the Inside, since the 1960s. Originally covering Lincoln Square, Ravenswood and Lakeview areas, it expanded to Lincoln Park (it's where I first picked up a copy of it all the way back in 2006) and other North Side neighborhoods.
When the company bought the papers, Roenigk merged Inside and the Booster into Inside-Booster - which only made sense, since there was coverage overlap. News-Star kept covering the same areas. The nameplates kept the Chicago Journal-style design, but added Inside's black border and quote from a famous person on the left side. The basic layout was also more Inside than Booster, and none of the writers stayed - though the columnists were brought over. WJI's Skyline and Inside-Booster started competing over the same territory - first just Lincoln Park, but then, as Inside-Booster's coverage was expanded further south, they increasingly started fighting over the same area. Though, in my admittedly biased opinion, I thought Skyline covered Gold Coast, Streetrville, Old Town, River North and Carbini-Green much better.
Then... Well, if you've been following this blog since 2012 or so, you know what happened then. Skyline and Chicago Journal were losing money, and WJI started looking to either sell the papers or, failing that, shut them down. Inside Publications wound up buying Skyline, retaining the columnists, but not the reporters. (At the time, Roenigk said he'd consider pitches from me, but he never replied to my e-mails). Interestingly, this is around the time the nameplate went another shift, closer to the original Chicago Journal style design, but everything else was still firmly Inside-style.
As months went on, the company began to claim, somewhat dubiously, that the papers were representing the legacy of Lerner Newspapers. With Gerber and Dechter still writing for them, you could kind of claim a connection, and at least the names lived on, in some form. in the end of 2015, Ann Gerber, the most prominent link to the old era, retired due to declining health (she passed away in November).
And now, as the new year dawn, Inside Publications did away with Skyline, News-Star and Inside-Booster, returning to just plain Inside.
In some ways, the move was symbolic. There were already plenty of overlap, article-wise, between the three different newspapers. It wasn't like during WJI days when, aside from Metropolis, all of the articles were unique. But, at the same time, the three papers weren't completely identical. Each paper put more prominence on the articles relevant to their coverage area, and an article or two was unique to each paper.
The new Inside has a mix of articles from the Skyline's coverage area, articles from Inside-Booster's coverage area and articles from the News-Star's coverage area. I would say it was weighed toward the former's, but I guess we'll have to see what happens in the next few issues.
There is an obvious benefit to doing it this way - less articles overall means less money to spend on writers. But it still feels kind of sad that they aren't even pretending to carry on the legacy of the Lerner Newspapers anymore. Sure, the names are still on the nameplate, but it's probably just the matter of legal obligations.
(From what I understand, if you want to start a new newspaper, or launch a newspaper with a new name, you have to pay some fees to the state - unless you can show that this paper is a successor some previous newspaper. It's why Archer Journal News has a "succcessor to Journal-News" subtitle on the nameplate, and why, since My Suburban Life west suburban newspaper chain renamed all of it's papers "[Name of Suburb] Suburban Life," there is a legal disclaimer that they were successors to [fill in name it had before].)
And so, one of the last vestiges of Lerner Newspapers vanishes, not with a bang, but with a whimper.
When I went to get some groceries earlier today, I went to the newspaper rack to get the most recent issue of News-Star, a community newspaper that, in some form or another, covered Rogers Park, Edgewater and Uptown community areas since 1920s or so - only to see something. Well, I wouldn't say it was "new." But it was different.
This is one of those situations where I'm going to need to give some backstory, so bear with me.
The News-Star started out as just one of the newspapers in the Lerner Newspapers, a chain of community weeklies that went on to cover much of the north and northwest side of Chicago, as well as the northwestern and western suburbs. The Skyline, the newspaper covering the wealthy Gold Coast, was home to iconic gossip columnist Ann Gerber. Plenty of journalists who went on to higher-profile positions in Chicago and elsewhere started out at one of Lerner newspapers. To make a long story shorter, the chain had some ups and downs until 2000, when Hollinger International, then the Chicago Sun-Times' parent company, bought it. Over the next eight years, many papers were closed down, and others were folded into Pioneer Press. Then, in late 2007, they decided to shut down the remaining six city newspapers. And that might have been the end of it, if Wednesday Journal Inc didn't agree to buy three of them - the Booster (the descendant of Lerner's very first newspaper), the News-Star and the Skyline.
By that point, the three papers were shadows of their former selves, with only about a page or so of local content, and the rest just stuff republished from other Hollinger newspapers. WJI had been running Chicago Journal since 2000, and they were looking to expand. The company bought the names and little else. The papers got new, Chicago Journal style nameplates, Chicago Journal's Metropolis entertainment section was incorporated into them, as were columnists Don DeBat and Dick Simpson. None of the reporters that worked for Pioneer Press versions of the paper stayed on board, though Skyline columnists Ann Gerber and Felicia Dechter stayed with the paper.
To give credit where credit is due, under WJI's ownership, the papers really focused on their communities, and Metropolis' coverage wasn't bad, either. Unfortunately, the company couldn't have chosen the worst time for the expansion. A few months later, the Great Recession hit, and, by March 2009, the company decided to make cuts. The West Town version of Chicago Journal was eliminated, and Booster and News-Star were sold to Inside Publications. Well, "sold" isn't quite the right word. Inside owner Ron Roenigk agreed to share a portion of adverting/classifieds revenues with WJI for a few months.
Now, Inside Publications had been publishing its own weekly community newspaper, the Inside, since the 1960s. Originally covering Lincoln Square, Ravenswood and Lakeview areas, it expanded to Lincoln Park (it's where I first picked up a copy of it all the way back in 2006) and other North Side neighborhoods.
When the company bought the papers, Roenigk merged Inside and the Booster into Inside-Booster - which only made sense, since there was coverage overlap. News-Star kept covering the same areas. The nameplates kept the Chicago Journal-style design, but added Inside's black border and quote from a famous person on the left side. The basic layout was also more Inside than Booster, and none of the writers stayed - though the columnists were brought over. WJI's Skyline and Inside-Booster started competing over the same territory - first just Lincoln Park, but then, as Inside-Booster's coverage was expanded further south, they increasingly started fighting over the same area. Though, in my admittedly biased opinion, I thought Skyline covered Gold Coast, Streetrville, Old Town, River North and Carbini-Green much better.
Then... Well, if you've been following this blog since 2012 or so, you know what happened then. Skyline and Chicago Journal were losing money, and WJI started looking to either sell the papers or, failing that, shut them down. Inside Publications wound up buying Skyline, retaining the columnists, but not the reporters. (At the time, Roenigk said he'd consider pitches from me, but he never replied to my e-mails). Interestingly, this is around the time the nameplate went another shift, closer to the original Chicago Journal style design, but everything else was still firmly Inside-style.
As months went on, the company began to claim, somewhat dubiously, that the papers were representing the legacy of Lerner Newspapers. With Gerber and Dechter still writing for them, you could kind of claim a connection, and at least the names lived on, in some form. in the end of 2015, Ann Gerber, the most prominent link to the old era, retired due to declining health (she passed away in November).
And now, as the new year dawn, Inside Publications did away with Skyline, News-Star and Inside-Booster, returning to just plain Inside.
In some ways, the move was symbolic. There were already plenty of overlap, article-wise, between the three different newspapers. It wasn't like during WJI days when, aside from Metropolis, all of the articles were unique. But, at the same time, the three papers weren't completely identical. Each paper put more prominence on the articles relevant to their coverage area, and an article or two was unique to each paper.
The new Inside has a mix of articles from the Skyline's coverage area, articles from Inside-Booster's coverage area and articles from the News-Star's coverage area. I would say it was weighed toward the former's, but I guess we'll have to see what happens in the next few issues.
There is an obvious benefit to doing it this way - less articles overall means less money to spend on writers. But it still feels kind of sad that they aren't even pretending to carry on the legacy of the Lerner Newspapers anymore. Sure, the names are still on the nameplate, but it's probably just the matter of legal obligations.
(From what I understand, if you want to start a new newspaper, or launch a newspaper with a new name, you have to pay some fees to the state - unless you can show that this paper is a successor some previous newspaper. It's why Archer Journal News has a "succcessor to Journal-News" subtitle on the nameplate, and why, since My Suburban Life west suburban newspaper chain renamed all of it's papers "[Name of Suburb] Suburban Life," there is a legal disclaimer that they were successors to [fill in name it had before].)
And so, one of the last vestiges of Lerner Newspapers vanishes, not with a bang, but with a whimper.