This page is a work in progress. Please feel free to leave suggestions for inclusions in the comments.
Chicago isn’t the center for U.S. media production that New York and Los Angeles are, but there is plenty going on in the Midwest metropolis. With upwards of 10 million people in the greater Chicago area, the third-biggest city in the U.S. forms a colossal market for media of all kinds. This page attempts to map out some of the lively independent and alternative media scene. “Alternative” is a slippery designator, I’ll admit. For the purposes of this page, all it means is small to midsize, community-oriented, non-corporate and / or non-profit.
Public Radio
Chicago public radio’s starting point is WBEZ 91.5, the city’s NPR affiliate which produces local coverage of Chicagoland and the one and only This American Life. But there’s some other interesting places on the radio dial in Chicago that are taking public radio in new directions.
Vocalo 91.1 FM
Billed as “Chicago’s Urban Alternative,” Vocalo is a bold experiment in format that mixes hip-hop, Latino, and commentary with the ear-pleasing entertainment value of a commercial station but the ear-to-the-ground sensibility of an underground or college radio station.
Lumpenradio 105.5 FM
Lumpenradio is a real gem and another unique approach to public radio. 80s pop and funk and other retro music, left wing politics, and local chatter all tied together by a sort of late-night-AM-radio-meets-avant-garde aesthetic. Best heard on the south side, Lumpen’s signal broadcasts from the Co-Prosperity Sphere community space in Bridgeport.
CHIRP 107.1 FM
A volunteer-run music-focused station playing a wildly eclectic mix of styles by enthusiasts of all kinds, CHIRP (Chicago Independent Radio Project) is low-power radio audible on the north side of Chicago, where it’s broadcast from, and online everywhere. CHIRP has been on the airwaves since 2017 but began ten years earlier, and owes its existence to years of activism to get low-powered broadcasting rights approved – a victory that others have benefited from.
And of course, college radio is a kind of public radio, driven by non-commercial concerns even when run out of private universities. Chicago’s college stations include 88.5 WHPK out of the University of Chicago (the “pride of the south side”); Northeastern Illinois University’s student-run WZRD 88.3 FM (“Chicago’s only freeform radio station,” broadcasting since 1974); WLUW 88.7 FM (the “Chicago sound alliance”) out of Loyola University; and WCRX-FM 88.1 out of Columbia College Chicago. Evanston’s WNUR 89.3 FM, broadcast out of Northwestern University, is also worth a listen.
Web and print journalism
Chicago Reader
The Chicago Reader is Chicago’s flagship alternative newsweekly, founded in the early 1970’s during the heyday of counterculture tabloids. The Reader continues to be freely distributed each week, and cover arts, culture, and politics in Chicago in print and on the web, despite upheavals in ownership: after being sold in the mid-aughts to Creative Loafing, an alt-weekly chain which then declared bankruptcy, the Reader ended up in the hands of the Chicago Sun-Times company before changing ownership yet again. Now operating with a L3C quasi non-profit structure and with a veteran publisher of African American periodicals leading the new ownership, the Reader continues to look for a way forward in uncertain times for journalism.
Southside Weekly
Chicago’s newest print newsweekly is also an experiment in finding a new model for the alternative newsweekly that draws on the format’s strengths – civic engagement, accountability reporting, and ear-to-the-ground arts coverage. The paper operates as a non-profit with a combination of paid staff and volunteer effort, and conducts workshops to welcome and develop local contributors. As implied in the title, the Southside Weekly is focused on the vast southern swath of Chicago which includes many of its most disinvested neighborhoods and many with majority Black and Latino populations, and focuses its attention on news and culture in those neighborhoods.
Block Club
Named after Chicago’s tradition of neighborhood block clubs, this non-profit news website is attempting to scale the hyperlocal approach to dozens of Chicago neighborhoods; readers can hone in on their area and follow the kinds of incremental updates (the opening of a new taproom, a rash of car break-ins, a missing person or a new community market) that are of interest to people right where they live.
Small press
Haymarket Books
Named after the infamous square in Chicago where a labor rally turned into a deadly conflict between protestors and police, Haymarket Books is an independent non-profit publisher that wears Chicago’s militant left tradition on its sleeve. Almost 20 years in, Haymarket is more of an alternative titan than a riotous upstart: their roster goes far beyond Chicago authors and includes Angela Davis, Howard Zinn, Amy Goodman, Naomi Klein, and Rebecca Solnit; they do publish Chicago authors, though, notably Eve Ewing and Bill Ayers.
Chicago Review Press
Operating since the early 1970’s, Chicago Review Press has grown into a substantial independent publisher with close ties to Independent Publishing Group, one of the biggest book distributors in the country. The publisher started with a focus on Chicago and Midwest-centric non-fiction and continues this, although it also has imprints focused on African American-interest, fiction, and academic titles; other publishing areas include DIY, film and music.
Curbside Splendor Publishing
This indie publishing house began as a punk band, before turning its energy towards books in 2009. With an “aim to rewrite the tradition of Midwest publishing,” Curbside Splendor releases fiction, non-fiction and poetry and experimental forms including illustrated works and comics. They also operate Chicago’s only indie-only bookstore (and record shop), Curbside Books and Records in the South Loop.
Spanish language
Contratiempo
This Spanish-language monthly arts and culture magazine, distributed freely in newsprint tabloid format, shows the cultural might of Chicago’s huge Latino community: while there are hundreds of Spanish-language news magazines in the U.S., a content-rich arts and culture journal like Contratiempo is rare. Featuring a mix of original content and contributions translated from or by writers whose work appears in English in local alternative newsweeklies, it offers a deep guide to art and politics in Chicago and beyond with an international lens. Published by a non-profit association of Latino writers since 2003, which has convened events and workshops in addition to publishing.
