When I describe the Tribune‘s top-secret project, everybody makes the same snarky comment. The Tribune is designing a weekly edition that it will offer subscribers for a surcharge. The premium content will consist of long, thoughtful reporting and commentary—local in its focus—on the news and cultural affairs. The inevitable comment is this: That’s what the Tribune is already supposed to be doing.
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I’ve obtained a partial copy of a dummy. Five Star consists of four sections printed on heavy, expensive stock. They’re called the A Section, Culture, Focus, and Words, and the first three—all but the tabloid literary section—are broadsheets, roughly 13 by 23 inches. That was a pretty standard size in the day when newspapers were newspapers, but it’s zaftig by current standards, two inches wider than the present Tribune, which was narrowed by half an inch in 2007 and another inch in February. The dummy’s 56 pages in all, with a coffee-table heft that sends a message: read me or don’t, but your home will feel tonier for having me in it.
There are no ads.
At the back of Culture are two pages of puzzles and comics, including a comic by Chris Ware. I asked Ware if he’d signed on with the Tribune and would be drawing for Five Star when it comes out. He didn’t know anything about it. So we shouldn’t think Chris Ware—we should think Chris Ware-ish. And what about the Jeff Tweedy byline over a column on typographical errors that tosses around names like Max Beerbohm and Delmore Schwartz? That turns out to be an exercise in hopeful thinking. The actual text was written by Joseph Epstein for the Weekly Standard.
Chicago Live! is supposed to be up and running sometime this fall. The idea is to monetize news by sending it up across platforms—a 90-minute stage show before a paying audience that’s recycled on radio and the Internet. Last I heard a venue hadn’t been chosen, but the Tribune was looking at a space in the basement of the Chicago Theatre. v
