The Chicago Reader, the city’s storied alternative weekly newspaper, may be on the brink of extinction again. Driven by an “urgent need to reduce costs” and the “imminent risk of closure” amid financial challenges, the Reader announced the immediate layoffs of six non-union employees, organizational restructuring and the resignation of CEO Solomon Lieberman in a news release this week. The half-century old publication, which converted with great optimism to a nonprofit nearly three years ago, has continued to struggle under the new business model, falling short of its ambitious fundraising goals and sinking deeper into the red. Operating on an upwardly revised but “razor-thin” $4.75 million budget, the Reader lost close to a half-million dollars last year, according to Ellen Kaulig, the newspaper’s recently installed chief of staff. “We are out of reserves, and so what we have done are the drastic cuts necessary for survival,” Kaulig said Thursday. The Reader, which resumed weekly print publication last summer after scaling back to biweekly for several years, still delivers 60,000 free, advertising-supported newspapers across the city every Thursday, leaning into coverage of the local arts scene as its core mission. It also offers a 24/7 digital product heavy with concert and theater reviews, with a smattering of long-form journalism that was once its bread and butter. After Tuesday’s announced layoffs, the Reader has 34 employees, including 20 union journalists. It also has one less name on the masthead. Lieberman, who joined the Reader two years ago as CEO and publisher, submitted his resignation to the newspaper’s board Monday. He previously relinquished his role as publisher in November, with the Reader elevating Amber Nettles to the position as of Jan. 1. “We are not planning to replace the CEO,” said Nettles, who joined the Reader as sales director in 2020. The elimination of the CEO role will be part of the cost-savings strategy for 2025. Lieberman earned $126,923 in 2023, according to the organization’s most recent Form 990 filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Lieberman did not respond to a request for comment Thursday. The Reader, which depends equally on philanthropy and advertising to meet its budget, was operating at roughly breakeven as recently as 2022, according to its tax filings, losing about $48,000 on $2.7 million in revenue. In 2023, the Reader lost about $400,000 on nearly $3.4 million in revenue, and last year set the budget significantly higher at $4.5 million – a number that was adjusted upward mid-year by another $250,000. But a “perfect storm” of revenue shortfalls and loans coming due at the end of 2024 led to sharp reductions at the start of the new year, Kaulig said. The Reader had projected $2.5 million in contributions for 2024 and came up $920,000 short, Kaulig said. The still-evolving 2025 budget is being reduced to about $4 million, she said, with the layoffs of six business-side employees and the resignation of Lieberman accounting for a chunk of the cost savings. “The budget has been constantly evolving, because philanthropy has been contracting nationwide, and that’s touched us as well and caused us to change our budget,” Kaulig said. The strategy for getting the Reader into the black includes increased donor outreach and fundraising efforts, requiring advertising payments upfront and focusing on revenue goals with “integrity and urgency,” according to the news release. Getting the operation right-sized may also involve more layoffs, but the Reader is in negotiations with the Chicago News Guild, the union representing full-time editorial employees, in an effort to avoid that, according to Eileen Rhodes, chair of the nonprofit Reader Institute for Community Journalism board, which oversees the publication. “We’re doing everything we can to not have to do any layoffs on the journalism side,” Rhodes said Thursday. “We’re working very closely with the union to see … how we can preserve as many jobs as possible.” Launched in 1971 by a group of Carleton College graduates as a free weekly, the Reader became known for its ambitious long-form journalism, arts news and offbeat classified ads. Like many print publications, the Reader struggled in the digital age, leading to a series of ownership changes, financial challenges and some near-death experiences. The original ownership group sold the Reader in 2007 to Creative Loafing, a small chain of alternative weeklies based in Atlanta. Atalaya Capital Management, a New York-based hedge fund, acquired the Reader out of bankruptcy in 2009. Wrapports, a Chicago investor group that acquired the Sun-Times in late 2011, added the Reader to its portfolio in May 2012 for about $2.5 million. In 2018, Chicago attorney Len Goodman and real estate developer Elzie Higginbottom bought the Reader from the Chicago Sun-Times for $1 and the assumption of debt, rescuing it from dissolution and pumping more than $1 million each into the alternative newspaper to keep it afloat. The Reader went nonprofit in May 2022 under then-publisher Tracy Baim in a tumultuous and protracted process that pitted Goodman against Higginbottom before picketing employees helped push it over the finish line. Baim stepped down and the board installed Lieberman as her successor in February 2023, adding the since-eliminated CEO role to the job. As part of its new revenue-focused strategy, the Reader plans to rely on more crowdfunding campaigns. It already has one in the books that generated significant revenue in 2024. Last year, the nonprofit enticed fans of alternative journalism to buy into “Free Chicago: 50 Years of the Reader,” a planned coffee table book highlighting the first five decades of the Chicago Reader. Funded through a Kickstarter campaign, it raised $188,217 from 1,611 backers, according to the crowdfunding website, with a promise to deliver the book by December 2024. The project is delayed, Nettles said, with a draft of the book “due next week” and a down payment already made to the printer. “We want people to have that book, and everyone who has ordered that book is getting that book,” Nettles said. [email protected]