Cover illustration: Chad Kouri, Breakout Artist 2011/ Cover design: Fletcher Martin
I was in the entryway of the Gene Siskel Film Center, talking to a couple of folks after an event, and we started discussing Newcity’s new format. A woman passing by overheard some of the conversation and asked me if I was the editor of Newcity. When I said I was, she told me she really missed our Free Will Astrology column, which we are not running in the new format. I told her that we are still running it online, every week, on Newcity.com. This reminded me that we’ve not really communicated in this space how much you can find in Newcity’s digital spaces, in addition to in print. In the month of March, for example, we published sixty-eight stories online—reviews, previews and features in addition to the astrology column—that never appeared in print. So if you have not been exploring our digital world, visit Newcity.com and explore. And while you’re at it, sign up for our weekly email newsletter, which covers both print and digital stories.
One feature that you won’t find online or in print anymore is Tony Fitzpatrick’s “Dime Stories.” After six years as a columnist for Newcity, which led to a book and should have been a TV series if you ask us, Tony’s decided to mothball his typewriter. We hope it’s just a hiatus rather than a permanent retirement, but he’s got plenty of other ways to stay busy, from making his art to acting in the television series “Patriot” on Amazon to running his art gallery, Adventureland. Back when Studs Terkel died, long before Tony started writing a column for Newcity, we asked Chicagoans in our annual Best of Chicago edition to vote for “Best iconic Chicago personality now that Studs is gone.” The audience chose Roger Ebert, but we chose Tony Fitzpatrick. Studs lived to be ninety-six, and kept being Studs and doing what he did till the very end. Here’s to another forty years of Tony being Tony.
Brian Hieggelke
Look for Newcity’s May 2017 print edition at over 1000 Chicago-area locations this week.
Editor's Letter: September 2021 What stands out this fall is the number of institutions that have undergone major transitions in leadership or even transformations that involve not only changes in management but in some cases new spaces or even a fundamental rethinking of how things are done.
Editor's Letter: July 2021 As you'll read in my feature about the new Art Preserve in Sheboygan, I first, and last, visited the area a couple of times on business in the late eighties…
