And your ears shall hear…

“I have written for the Chicago Tribune’s ChicagoNow blogging community since 2011. I woke up one morning in August of 2022 to find that Alden Global Capital stole my blog. After 11 years of writing and over 1,000 blog posts, all of my hard work had simply vanished.

They call Alden a vulture hedge fund, and I think that’s honestly a misnomer. A vulture doesn’t hold a wounded animal’s head underwater. This is predatory.” – Metro reporter Charlie Johnson

Tribune Publishing was bought by the Manhattan hedge fund company and ChicagoNow was shut down without warning on August 18, 2022. There were rumors that this might happen, but nothing concrete. Now I’m piecing together all of my past posts with the Wayback Machine, hoping to retrieve my blood, sweat, and tears.

Alden has a reputation for sharply cutting costs by reducing the number of journalists working on its newspapers. In March 2018, Margaret Sullivan, the media columnist for The Washington Post, called Alden “one of the most ruthless of the corporate strip-miners seemingly intent on destroying local journalism.” Vanity Fair dubbed Alden the “grim reaper of American newspapers.” -Wikipedia

ChicagoNow did not pay me, on the contrary, they sold ads on the back of our blogs. But most of us were ok with that, as long as we had a platform to showcase our hard work. We loved the community that was cultivated by manager Jimmy Greenfield, who used to organize Christmas parties and quarterly events where we’d all come together. It was super cool to meet bloggers face to face after frequently reading their work. This community loved writing, it was a craft we’d carefully hone while offering others advice and suggestions.

The new owners did not fly to Chicago to address the staff, nor did they bother with paeans to the vital civic role of journalism. Instead, they gutted the place. –McKay Coppins of The Atlantic

We would comment on each other’s blog posts and champion their writing. While others wrote about abuse, divorce, politics, and beer, I primarily focused on music. I mostly used my blog to gain access to theatres and concert halls, where my favorite artists were playing. Sometimes a press agent would offer me an interview or a chance to do a concert preview in order to spread the word about their artist. During my tenure at ChicagoNow, I made a lot of inroads and connections, it was a lifeline into the city of Chicago, and the music industry. I was proud of my blog and felt accomplished every time I posted. Now the Cut Out Kid is a shadow of himself, though I keep telling myself, that “If I rebuild it, they will come.”