Yeah. No one drinks Pabst, either. Except, now everyone drinks Pabst, and the hipsters still guzzle it down!
Oh hipsters, your ironies are so ironic that, ironically, I can not fathom them! Is it the cheezy thick-framed glasses? Would that help me? Cuz I think it might. Would it? I’m so unsure! Please tell me!
Even if the Reader goes the way of the dinosaur, the forums should still survive… right? I mean, I would think the forum subscriptions pay enough to keep the board running… right? 
It was nice knowing you all…
I was not reading the Chicago Reader before anyone else stopped reading it.
Actually, a coalition of marijuana advocacy groups are pooling their money to buy The Straight Dope. They plan to keep the board running, but all non-marijuana-themed threads will be deleted, and harshing someone’s mellow will be a bannable offense.
I was thinking about buying The Straight Dope also, but I would have to change the name as I’m not straight.
I would add a new forum just for kittens/cats related stuff. Pictures and videos would be allowed.
Bannable offenses:
Dissing the kitties
Asking if you can say “fuck you” in the pit;)
Yeah. All kidding aside, I have always been a proponent of SDMB being a member-owned enitity.
We have enough lawyers on board (don’t we?) who could help us with this (maybe do it Sonny Bono) so we wouldn’t have this shit hanging over our heads all the time.
Thanks
Q
Good Gad, no!
“Good Gad, no!”, don’t use one of our lawyer-members" or “Good Gad, no!”, we don’t have any members who are lawyers?
Q
Because bringing in the lawyers always makes everything better . . .
'I’m not from the government or the internet, but I’m a lawyer and I’m here to {snicker, giggle} . . . and I’m here to {MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!} . . .
‘I’m sorry, what was I saying?’
Note: I do see what you’re saying Q but the gods must be appeased and the least they’d settle for was a little anti-lawyer ridicule. 
Perhaps we should consult the Bard.
200 Quatloos!
So are we a “stand alone” (financially) entity, and do we actually need the Reader? Or is it the other way around, the Reader needs us?
Q
Harshing someone’s mellow (outside of the Pit, of course) would make a fine bannable offense. We’d have to assume, however, that those participating in Great Debates have no mellow to be harshed. 
But we can still bogart that joint, right?
In all seriousness, someone could just buy the domain name because they want it for some reason. I don’t imagine that this message board generates much money, so the Chicago Reader’s owners might well agree to sell the Straight Dope for the right price.
Eep!
The answer is unclear. Though the Reader has been up for sale before, that outcome was more assured. (Or so we thought.) And at that time there was no doubt that the Straight Dope was a Reader property. Even then the site was attached to the Reader but stood apart from it to some degree. The Reader and the Straight Dope do share some resources and all the management of the site is still in Chicago, same as it always was.
The Straight Dope began as a Chicago Reader feature and continues to be so nearly 40 years later. I would say all these properties need each other. The Straight Dope needs publication outlets besides the main SD website; the papers need content. It can’t be just Dan Savage and Tom the Dancing Bug.
Geeze. Thanks loads for outing my REAL identity.
(J/K).