Chicago Public Media teams up with alternative weekly Chicago Reader on advertising sales

Chicago Public Media is looking to boost advertising in a challenging environment by teaming up with a local alternative weekly to sell advertising and sponsorships. 

The six-month pilot will include bundling placements across the Chicago Reader and CPM’s Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ. CPM acquired the Sun-Times in 2022. 

CPM Chief Partnership Officer Tracy Brown said that her organization and the Reader may share complementary advertising opportunities around audiences and content. 

“For instance, the Reader has a lot of … arts and culture content, and they are weekly,” Brown said. “Their audience to some degree looks very different from ours.” 

The Sun-Times has 886,000 weekly print and e-paper readers and a digital audience for its website and newsletters of about 1.2 million weekly readers, Brown said. She added that WBEZ currently has a weekly cume of 461,000. 

The teams will work together to package offerings that allow for “bundling discounts that wouldn’t have been possible without this partnership,” William Weibert, senior director of advertising at the Sun-Times, said in an email. An offer could include WBEZ, the Sun-Times, the Reader or all three. 

“It’s a great way for our advertisers to get a lot more reach,” he said. 

CPM and the Reader came together with two main goals, Weibert said. They wanted to find out how they can work together to improve efficiency for both sales teams and clients while helping to sustain the mission of providing quality journalism to Chicago. 

“We understand that this is a very unique approach for public media,” Weibert said.

Brown said the partners shared their media kits and advertising rates. 

“It is about having some trust as well,” she said. 

Brown said the initiative comes as many media organizations have seen declines in advertising, including those involved in the partnership. 

“We recognize how important the news ecosystem here is in Chicago,” Brown said. “We want for all of the news organizations to remain viable and relevant.” 

CPM brought in about $13.1 million in program underwriting and advertising in 2024, down from more than $13.4 million in 2023, a financial report shows. Program underwriting revenue for the year ending June 30, 2024, was about $4.7 million, down about 6% from a year earlier.

The Reader, which distributes 63,000 free copies of each issue across Chicago, hasn’t seen a full recovery in advertising from the coronavirus pandemic. Before the pandemic, advertising was 80% of its revenue, but that has declined to 50%, said Chief of Staff Ellen Kaulig in an email. 

Kaulig said the Reader covers restaurants, venues, creators and small businesses, and those core advertisers are still recovering and dealing with other national economic issues like tariffs and inflation. 

“In that half decade, there are also just natural changes to lifestyles, advertising, technology and new trends like AI,” Kaulig said. 

CPM and the Reader realized that combining the three storied brands could offer a unique product to advertisers, she said.

“CPM and the Reader have a lot of commonality in audience, but our means of output are seen very differently by advertisers,” Kaulig said. “… ​​The best way to overcome a hurdle is with a unique approach that makes your strengths shine. If we can collaborate with so many amazing local outlets on co-publishing, why not take the same approach to advertising?”

Kaulig added the teams are working collaboratively to develop pitches.

Brown said the organizations will evaluate the pilot’s success based on revenue growth and other factors. She said CPM could also learn about commission structures, how the organizations can pursue accounts in a mutually beneficial way and how not to cannibalize the organizations’ existing clients and relationships. 

“The reason that we are piloting it is to test the model and to do some experimentation that allows us to learn what to do and what not to do,” Brown said. 

Kaulig added, “The heart of this pilot is about working together for mutual benefit and learning to create something that works for all involved.”

Brown said the partnership could provide lessons for other media outlets.

“Could this be a model that could be replicated in other regions?” she said.