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'', t ...

, owner of the print ''

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is an American daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1847, it was formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper", a slogan from which its once integrated WGN (AM), WGN radio and ...

'' 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'', and

Shimer College Shimer Great Books School ( ) is a Classic_book#University_programs, 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, or ...

president

Susan Henking Susan E. Henking (born 1955) is an American religious studies scholar. She is currently the 20th president of Wells College. She was the 14th and final president of Shimer College in Chicago from 2012 to 2017. She then served in interim roles at ...

. On August 18, 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 used

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

as its blogging platform when it first launched, then switched to

WordPress WordPress (WP, or WordPress.org) is a web content management system. It was originally created as a tool to publish blogs but has evolved to support publishing other web content, including more traditional websites, electronic mailing list, ma ...

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

RedEye ''RedEye'' was a publication put out by the ''Chicago Tribune'' geared toward 18 to 34-year-olds. It was published every weekday since its inception in 2002 until February 3, 2017. Publication was reduced to weekly starting February 9, 2017. ...

'' was initially hosted on ChicagoNow but later moved to its own domain. 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 333 cities in 59 countries worldwide. In 2012, the London edition became ...

'' 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

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