It's the end of the world as we know it...and I feel fine

Before I started writing here at the beginning of August, I spent the last nine years at ChicagoNow, a blogging site owned by the Chicago Tribune. When I decided to leave to write here exclusively, I wrote a final post saying goodbye to my readers. Yes, it was a bit critical of Tribune management, but more about having gratitude for the opportunity I had there.

Apparently, whoever is in charge there didn’t see it that way. They pulled the post a few hours after it was published. Then they doubled down by closing the site. Writers there knew it was going to happen, we just didn’t know it was going to happen that day. By shutting down without warning, all previous work was lost.

Someone helped me find my final post there. Because not all my regular readers didn’t get the opportunity to read it before it was pulled, I decided to republish it here. Also, tomorrow I’ll have one more post about how ChicagoNow ended and how my final piece broke the system. Yeah, it’s a bit self-indulgent, but I promise those will be my last words on the subject. So here goes…and thanks for reading.

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It was May 11, 2013. That was the date I wrote my first I’ve Got The Hippy Shakes piece at ChicagoNow. It was an introduction to who I am and what I planned to do here. It didn’t take long for those plans to change. I think the change was much better for both myself and my readers.

It’s now nine years and fifteen hundred and thirty-seven posts later. I never would have guessed that would have happened. It’s been a great run here, but most great runs have an end date….and today that end date is mine.

Maybe some of you are asking why. Well, kids…in the last couple of months things at ChicagoNow have drastically changed. The grapevine says we’re closing up shop soon, but no one at Tribune/Alden will tell us when. The writers here have plenty of questions about this but we can’t get any answers because no one knows who to ask. We were told at the end of June that someone would be in touch with us soon. Almost two months later, not a word has been heard. What a way to run a business.

In the last week, there have been a couple of subtle changes. The ChicagoNow section was taken down from the Tribune.com website. Yesterday, someone removed the link that takes us to the WordPress site where we write new posts. Yeah, most of us found a way to get around this, but I’m taking all of this as a sign that the end is near.

I could use the rest of this space to trash Tribune/Alden for doing this, but why not go out with my head held high? As bad and unprofessional as they’ve been recently, they also gave me this space which allowed me to get a lot of crap off my chest over the last nine years. Also, not once was I censored or told I couldn’t write something. That’s unheard of! It also allowed me to reach over one million readers/clickers in over two hundred countries. It’s overwhelming when I think about this. I’m grateful for all of it, especially for all of you who have spent any of your valuable time reading whatever nonsense that came from my brain. Really, thank you.

By the way, while this is the finale at ChicagoNow, it’s not at the end of this column. You can find me at Substack under the same name. It’ll be the same old same old, just in a new space. You decide if that’s good or not.

So, that’s all I got. Once again, thanks for everything and hopefully we’ll see you on the other side.

“It’s the end of the world as we know it, AND I FEEL FINE!”