Reflecting On 10 Years of Chicagoist
By Chuck Sudo in News on Oct 23, 2014 9:45PM
A simple cake was made in 2005 to celebrate Chicagoist's first birthday. Tonight we have food trucks and a hosted bar to ring in turning 10. (Photo credit: Rachelle "Chicagoist Prime" Bowden)
Allow me a moment of indulgence, please.
When people ask me how I wound up writing for Chicagoist I tell them the truth: it was a flip of a coin. In May 2005 Chicagoist celebrated its first anniversary while Gapers Block was entering its terrible twos and both sites were looking for writers. Familiar with both websites and their writing styles but unsure on which one to apply, I flipped a quarter I grabbed from a tip jar at the late HotHouse on East Balbo. (HotHouse was another Chicago institution which helped shape my worldview and that’s a story for another time.) If the quarter turned up heads, I would apply to Gapers Block. Tails and I would reach out to Chicagoist.
The flip turned up tails. I flipped the coin a second time to determine whether to write for the A&E section or Food beat (another tails wins scenario); nine years later, here I am.
My time writing for Chicagoist, the past four as Editor-in-Chief, have been the most rewarding professional and personal experiences of my life. Writing for Chicagoist opened several doors for me in this town to freelance with editors I respected from afar and learned from with every pitch and assignment. Personally, Chicagoist introduced me to scores of people on staff and away from the site whose friendships I cherish to this day, even if I don’t see many of them as often as I wish.
In the days leading up to tonight’s anniversary party, I’ve thought about several of them. Like Scott Smith, who met Erin Shea at one of the site’s earliest staff meetups. They wound up falling in love, married and had a highly photogenic ham of a daughter. Margaret Lyons wound up parlaying her love of pop culture and television into jobs at Time Out Chicago and New York Magazine. Margaret Hicks developed the idea—and received encouragement—for her Chicago Elevated walking tour business while writing for Chicagoist. Joe Erbentraut and Kim Bellware moved from here and now top the masthead at Huffington Post Chicago. Amy Cavanaugh continues to write beautiful stories about Chicago’s local food scene at Time Out Chicago. Anthony Todd took over for me on the food and drink beat and became one of Chicago’s most talented young food writers. Samantha Abernethy went on to become a website editor at Obama for America. Marcus Gilmer went from The A.V. Club to WBEZ to the Sun-Times and now the San Francisco Chronicle.
These are several examples of the people who helped make Chicagoist the website it is today. It isn’t a solo act and it’s never been. It takes the passion, wit and talent of dozens of former and current staff and the guidance and encouragement of a talented team of editors. Lisa White, Jim Kopeny, Melissa McEwen and Jon Graef have made my job easier simply by my being able to trust them to have the same mission as I: to serve readers and staff in equal measure. When I took over as editor from Marcus, Gothamist LLC co-founders Jen Chung and Jake Dobkin gave me one objective—grow the site. They would offer words of encouragement occasionally but the message was clear that I had wide leeway to do it on my own. It took a while to convince readers and staff I wouldn’t turn Chicagoist into all food and drink, all the time (and win their trust) but that mission from Jen and Jake has been achieved several times over.
I wouldn’t be here today praising where Chicagoist is in Chicago’s media landscape without all the writers who have come and gone, those who remain and those who have yet to take a chance as I did nine years ago. It also wouldn’t be possible without you returning every day, bookmarking the site, sharing the stories that interest you with others, and repeating that process. For that I thank you. I don’t view tonight as much as an anniversary as I do a homecoming, ten years in the making.
See you all tonight.