Crain's Chicago Business

Crain's Chicago Business is a weekly business newspaper covering business in Chicago. It is published by Crain Communications. It has a print circulation of 45,000.

History

Crain's Chicago Business was launched in June 1978. The genesis of the newspaper came in 1977, when Crain Communications chief Rance Crain went to Houston to give a speech to the Houston Advertising Club. He spent an afternoon listening to the publisher of the Houston Business Journal explain how his publication was developed. "I figured if a business publication worked well in Houston, it would be twice as successful in Chicago," Rance Crain once said. Rance Crain was the newspaper's first editor-in-chief, while Art Mertz (1917–1993), a longtime sales manager at Crain Communications' Advertising Age magazine, served as the first publisher of Crain's. Rance Crain tapped Steve Yahn, a senior editor at Advertising Age, to develop the prototype, do the initial hiring, and get the paper going, effectively acting as the paper's first editor. "We wanted to call it Chicago Business, but another guy came out with a paper with a similar name [which was short-lived]," Yahn said. "I told Rance he ought to put the Crain name on our publication to differentiate them, and he did."

Crain's originally had been planned to publish every other week, but with the demise of the Chicago Daily News newspaper going on that year, those creating Crain's decided to make it a weekly publication, using the end of the Daily News for marketing purposes and also drawing on editorial talent from the failed paper.

Staff

Onetime Chicago Daily News financial writer Dan Miller was the first managing editor of Crain's and soon became its editor, with Greg David succeeding him as managing editor.

In 1989, Mark Miller was named editor of Crain's, succeeding Dan Miller (no relation), who had left to join oversee Crain Communications' City & State magazine. Between 1982 and 1989, Mark Miller had been the managing editor of Crain's. Mark Miller served as Crain's editor from 1989 until leaving in 1993 to join the Chicago Sun-Times as deputy managing editor.

In 1993, David Snyder became the editor of Crain's, a post he held until 2000 when he became general manager/interactive of the paper.

In 2000, Robert Reed, who had been the executive editor of Crain's, moved up to become its editor. Reed stayed in the job until leaving Crain's in early 2003.

In November 2003, the paper hired Jeff Bailey from the Wall Street Journal's Chicago bureau to be the editor of Crain's. Over Bailey's brief tenure, he introduced a radical makeover of the publication, introducing two news sections.

In February 2005, Bailey left Crain's after just 15 months in the job, telling his colleagues that he and the paper's publisher, David Blake, "did not get along well enough to be a team." During Bailey's time at the helm, more than a half dozen veteran staffers left the paper, including Steven Strahler (who subsequently returned to the paper as a contract writer—a position he holds to this day) and Jeff Borden. Bailey was replaced by the paper's longtime managing editor, Joseph B. Cahill.

In December 2008, Crain's laid off manufacturing reporter Bob Tita.

In March 2009, Crain's laid off three more editorial employees, including Bruce Blythe, an assistant managing editor. The move occurred at the same time that Crain Communications imposed companywide 10 percent employee pay cuts.

In June 2010, Brandon Copple, who had been managing editor of Crain's since 2005, left to join Groupon in a similar role.

In February 2011, Jim Kirk, a former Chicago Tribune business editor who most recently had been managing editor of the nonprofit Chicago News Cooperative, joined Crain's as chief of editorial operations.

In November 2011, Joseph B. Cahill, the paper's editor since 2005, announced he would step down in January 2012 to become a general business columnist for Crain's. The paper currently is in the search process for a new editor.

External links

• Crain's Chicago Business newspaper website