ChicagoNow was a blogging site managed by

Tribune Publishing Tribune Publishing Company (briefly Tronc, Inc.) is an American newspaper print and online media publishing company. The company, which was acquired by Alden Global Capital in May 2021, has a portfolio that includes the ''Chicago Tribune'', ...

, owner of the print ''

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television a ...

'' newspaper. It featured a network of blogs of international, national, and local interest on a variety of topics ranging from crime to public schools to politics and diplomacy. Notable ChicagoNow contributors included the staff of the ''

Chicago Reporter ''The Chicago Reporter'' is a monthly periodical based in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Founded in 1972, it covers poverty and race issues. It was founded by John A. McDermott, who sought to create "the nation's first publication devoted to analyzing an ...

'', and

Shimer College Shimer Great Books School (pronounced ) is a Great Books college that is part of North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. Prior to 2017, Shimer was an independent, accredited college on the south side of Chicago, with a history of bein ...

president Susan Henking. On August 18th, 2022, the site was shut down with no announcement.

History

ChicagoNow was launched in August 2009. Its launch coincided with the Tribune company's bankruptcy. As a newspaper-run blogging community, with the initial tagline "a blog by and for locals", it represented what one observer called "a new value proposition for newspapers". ChicagoNow utilized

Movable Type Movable type (US English; moveable type in British English) is the system and technology of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual alphanumeric characters or punctuatio ...

as its blogging platform when it first launched but switched to

WordPress WordPress (WP or WordPress.org) is a free and open-source software, free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in PHP, hypertext preprocessor language and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported secure hypert ...

in 2011. The website of the ''Tribune'' daily ''

RedEye Red eye, red-eye, redeye or variants may refer to: Related to the eye * Red-eye effect, in photographs * Red eye (medicine), an eye that appears red due to illness or injury * Red, an extremely rare eye color due to albinism * Red eyeshin ...

'', which later moved to its own domain, was initially hosted on ChicagoNow. After the acquisition of the Tribune by Alden Global Capital ChicagoNow was shut down without warning on August 18, 2022.

Reception

In April 2010, the World Editors Forum described ChicagoNow as a "hyperlocal blog network" that has "a personal quality that many larger newspapers lack." In September 2010, ''

Time Out Chicago ''Time Out'' is a global magazine published by Time Out Group. ''Time Out'' started as a London-only publication in 1968 and has expanded its editorial recommendations to 328 cities in 58 countries worldwide. In 2012, the London edition beca ...

'' criticized ChicagoNow for hosting an unidentified police officer in what they called "a hate-filled, racist rant by blogger Joe the Cop, entitled The ghetto shooting template, for three days and counting now." ChicagoNow removed the posts in question, stating that while they don't edit posts, they reserve the right to remove them.

References

External links

*
Tribune Media Group's ChicagoNow 2009 introduction
American blogs Tribune Publishing Internet properties established in 2009 Internet properties disestablished in 2022 2009 establishments in Illinois {{Chicago-stub