Chicago Reader
This Friday, the Chicago Sun-Times' Weekend section will be replaced by content from the Chicago Reader, Michael Miner reports. The new 20-page section, featuring listings, reviews and features clearly marked as coming from the Reader, will be called Agenda.

"The Reader isn't changing—its content, press run, and circulation will stay the same," Miner writes. "The Friday Sun-Times will change conspicuously."

Sun-Times Media Editor-in-Chief Jim Kirk tells Miner he spoke with the Weekend staff. "I think they understand this makes sense," he said. "The Weekend section had a great run -- 17 years. But we need to evolve." (more...)

Chicago Sun-Times
Former Washington Post television critic Tom Shales will blog on Roger Ebert's site, Ebert announced Sunday. Ebert's blog post about Shales includes a 1983 article Shales wrote about Ebert and his former "At the Movies" co-host Gene Siskel.

"Sixteen years after the article below appeared," Ebert writes, "when Gene Siskel fell ill we needed a substitute on the first shows Gene would miss, and we both immediately agreed on the same man: Tom Shales." (Here's a clip of Shales on the show.)

Shales took a buyout at The Washington Post in 2006 and worked there as a contract writer until the end of 2010. In September of that year, he left an unusual message on Washington Post Company Chairman Don Graham's Facebook page. "I'm over-and-outta here; I'm a-headin' for the last roundup; Like Webster's Dictionary, I'm Morocco-bound," Shales wrote." When I interviewed Shales a few weeks later, he said the paper had told him they couldn't "afford" him anymore, that he was "heavily in debt" and that his house was "underwater."

Since then, he's published a best-selling book on ESPN, which he wrote with James Andrew Miller.

Wrapports LLC, the Chicago Sun-Times' parent company, may buy the Chicago Reader soon, Lynne Marek reported Wednesday in Crain's Chicago Business. That would be a seismic change for a newspaper that's always operated in opposition to the city's big dailies, doing vital reporting on Chicago as well as covering the stuffing out of its arts and music scenes. (The Reader also owns the Straight Dope message board, which has a large and loyal community.)

One of the draws, according to Marek's story, is the Reader's arts and entertainment listings; another is its advertising relationships with A&E businesses. "Music and entertainment is pretty sticky content online," marketing consultant Mark Roth told Crain's.

There aren't many examples of companies owning dailies and alts in the same town. Times-Shamrock Communications owns alt-weeklies in Baltimore, Orlando, San Antonio and Detroit, but only in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, Pa., does it own weeklies that compete with its dailies. Both of those weeklies, electric city (I immediately thought of the rap video from The Office, too) and diamond city, are A&E-focused.

The Columbus Dispatch's parent company has owned Columbus Alive, another entertainment-focused alt, since 2006; in 2011 it bought The Other Paper, which covers politics, news and A&E.

And the San Francisco Examiner bought the San Francisco Bay Guardian in April, pledging not to futz with the editorial voice of the scrappy paper, which covers politics and news as well as A&E. "We have no intention of changing the editorial voice of the Guardian. If anything, a refreshed progressive voice is needed in the city," Examiner president Todd Vogt told the San Francisco Chronicle. (more...)

Chicago Tribune | Time Out Chicago
Chicago Sun-Times restaurant critic Pat Bruno, 68, isn't happy that he was pink-slipped via a phone call from a mid-level editor after decades with the tabloid. "I've known (publisher) John Barron for 28 years," he says. "All he had to do is pick up the phone and tell me himself. He didn't have the balls to do that. I wasn't expecting roses at my feet, just a phone call from someone who appreciated what I did all these years." There's no word on what the Sun-Times will run in his place, reports Chicago Tribune restaurant critic Phil Vettel. "Bruno won't disappear, I'm guessing," he writes. He'll land freelance work elsewhere, maybe start a blog ('I have to figure out how to do that,' he joked), maybe show his face, peeking out from that wide-brimmed hat of his, on TV."

Chicago Tribune | Crain's Chicago Business | Chicago Sun-Times
With this agreement, the Sun-Times has effectively exited the printing and distribution business. The Tribune has distributed Sun-Times papers since 2007. The printing move will save the Sun-Times $10 million annually with 400 employees taken off the payroll. Pressroom personnel, paper handlers, electricians, machinists, drivers, and operating engineers will be among those dismissed. Sun-Times chairman Jeremy Halbreich tells his paper: “This has been a very, very difficult decision. But in my role, I have got to do things that keep our newspapers in business.”