As summer comes to Chicago, beachgoers won’t be the only ones trying to lose weight. Newspapers are slimming down—but also gussying up, they hope, with an influx of new advertisements. The Tribune Company announced sweeping cuts last week. The Chicago Tribune and its sibling papers are expected to lose about twelve percent of their pages. Also last week, BusinessWeek magazine announced it would shutter its experimental free monthly devoted to Chicago business. But a little growth spurt back at the Tribune might point to one new direction for the industry — the company says it’s launching a weekly paper for Chicago high school students. So what’s this all mean for the health of Chicago’s print media?

Joining us now are two people with a keen interest in the industry’s health. Michael Miner is the media columnist for the Chicago Reader. And Charles Madigan is a journalist who spent many years at the Chicago Tribune and is the editor of the essay collection -30- The Collapse of the Great American Newspaper.


Music Button: The Orb, “Vuja De”, from the CD The Dream, (Six Degrees records)