A free newspaper for Chicago sports fans is being launched this week by two publishers who may not know how much they don’t know. Igor Golubchik says that Chicago Sports Weekly, despite its title, will not limit itself to Chicago sports, and in two or three years he and Vlad Veren intend to extend the brand to other cities. “If you drop the word Chicago it becomes Sports Weekly,” he said, “and that’s what it is. But now it’s just in Chicago.”
“Really,” he said. “I had no idea.”
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Reklama also publishes Vzglyad, a Russian-language weekly in Milwaukee; Chicago Review, a Russian-language weekly oriented to business, the arts, and entertainment; and Bomond, a free Russian-language monthly with a French-derived name (loosely meaning “the good life”) that Golubchik describes as a “luxury, upscale, glossy magazine” along the lines of Chicago Social. It’s available nationally wherever affluent Russians congregate. “It really goes fast,” Golubchik told me. “No matter how fast we increase the circulation it’s never enough. They fly out.” The cover promises “Modern Russian Luxury.”
Operating on a shoestring, Sprow and Scalise consistently filled their pages with elegant reporting and essays. “We’re the only people who somehow get nice things said to us by e-mail from both Rick Telander and Jay Mariotti,” Sprow said. “I don’t know if we’re doing something right or we’re just pansies who won’t ruffle any feathers.” He seemed pretty sure they’ve been doing something right.
“It’s a weird age of sport,” says Sprow. “I remember talking to [longtime Chicago baseball writer] Jerry Holtzman for an interview I was doing for a story where he was telling me there were so many things he was proud that he didn’t divulge.” Holtzman was remembering an era when in the eyes of sportswriters what a ballplayer did off the field was no one’s business but his own. Today, everything’s out there. Questions of taste and ethics apart, the profusion of sports coverage drives editors batty because a new idea’s so hard to come by. “If you can even have one ounce of uniqueness every few issues,” says Sprow, “you’re doing something right, because the volume is so obnoxious. There’s a certain drudgery to knowing everything’s being written about and still looking for something different. Sometimes a story really well written–that’s enough. Sometimes a story really well reported–that’s enough.”
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