Creative Loafing, parent company of the Chicago Reader has filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
The people in the story make it out to be a “good thing”, especially in regards to their online presence. I know this is a brand new story but if there’s any word on this affecting the SDMB, I’m curious to hear it.
And good luck to you guys. I hope the positive face presented in the story is the accurate one.
What they’re telling me right now is that the filing won’t affect anything we’re doing with the Straight Dope and that they’ll continue to meet payroll, keep the lights on, etc. I’ll post more when I know more.
Ed, good luck to you and the staff!
I fear the positive spin is more hype than fact.
Being “over-leveraged” means they bit off rather more debt than they could chew. (Sounds like one of those questionable loans that has the country in such a tizzy right now. Mebbe the lender suddenly got cold feet.)
It’s also said they aren’t doing to well at remitting payroll taxes to whichever government gets it. When a company starts doing that, it is, too often, a sign that it is circling the bowl.
Of course, I’m in no position to judge their actual condition right now. We’ll have to wait and see what happens.
On preview: I see Little Ed’s dropped in. I hope they can keep their word; but given that they are already admitting that “assumptions we made have not turned out to be so successful”, breath-holding is contraindicated.
Now’s your chance buy the Cecil Adams name along with The Straight Dope and make it all your own! 
This provides some more detail:
Thank you for the link to the blog Mr. Zotti. I have a question. (of course)
Does this mean Jerry can get back to improving the SDMB? The long stall can’t be good for growth.
According to Boardreader’s graphs, looking at the Straight Dope Message Board posting activity graph by week, there was a nice surge in posting that has since fallen back to pre-update levels. I am guessing the stall in completing the upgrade is directly related to drop.
I ask of course as I love the SDMB and would like to see it grow probably almost as much as you do.
Jim
Thanks for keeping us updated, Ed. It’s nice to be given what information you do have: hopefully this way we can avoid seven pages of vituperative nasturtium casting in the Pit. Fingers crossed, everyone.
Plenty of companies have come out of restructuring stronger than ever. Here’s hoping that’s true of CL.
Absolutely (but might I very quietly mutter than “vituperative nasturtium” would be a good band name?)
Thank for keeping us informed, Ed, and fingers noq ctoxxed. 
We have always been at war with over-leveraging.
And suddenly the drama of the past few months makes a lot more sense.
Good luck, you guys. It sounds like you’re going to need it.
Fingers are crossed.
Thanks for the update, Ed.
Here is another article with more details:
http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2008/09/29/daily21.html
Frankly it doesn’t look great. Here’s hoping they can turn things around.
Looking at the latest news on CL I found something I did not know before:
http://www.suntimes.com/business/1192624,CST-FIN-reader30WEB-w.article
*"Eason had made substantial changes at the Reader in the little more than a year that he has owned the newspaper. The paper cut its full-time staff and shrunk to one section instead of four. It is now printed in Milwaukee instead of Chicago. *
Jeesh, I leave Chicago for 10 years and all hell breaks loose!
Does this mean that we will get $700 billion toward the next server upgrade?
In for a penny in for a pound. For those people complaining about pennies. The metal in them will soon out value your paper. They’ll get twice that Muffin.
From the article, it seems clear that Creative Loafing’s denial of a causal link between the acquisitions and the filing is a bunch of B.S. The creditors forcing this filing are the sources of the funds used for the acquisition. IOW, they can’t pay the loans they used to buy the Reader. How is that not a causal link?
Plenty of us are currently staring down the barrel of the economic gun ourselves. Here’s good wishes to all involved.
This thread reminded me of something I had learned (and forgotten) back in my television days - when the economy goes sour, advertising budgets get hacked. So I shouldn’t have been surprised that a small newspaper chain is having cash flow problems. The local paper, now owned by McClatchy, has just scaled back again (and we’re back to comic strips so small we geezers-in-training need a magnifying glass to read 'em).