Crain's Chicago Business
 |
|
| Editor | Michael Arndt |
|---|---|
| Categories | Business |
| Frequency | Weekly |
| Publisher | David Snyder |
| Total circulation (2013) |
49,005 |
| First issue | 1978 |
| Company | Crain Communications Inc. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Website | ChicagoBusiness |
Crain's Chicago Business is a weekly business newspaper in Chicago. It is owned by Detroit-based Crain Communications, a privately held publishing company with more than 30 magazines, including Advertising Age, Modern Healthcare, Crain's New York Business, Crain's Detroit Business, Crain's Cleveland Business, and Automotive News. It has a print circulation of 53,313 and a readership of 219,693 per week. ChicagoBusiness.com, the paper's digital equivalent, draws over 1 million unique visitors per month and over 2.2 million page views per month.
The first issue of Crain's Chicago Business is dated April 17, 1978. In 1977, when Crain Communications chief Rance Crain went to Houston to give a speech to the Houston Advertising Club, he spent an afternoon listening to the publisher of the Houston Business Journal explain how his publication was developed. "I figured if a business publication worked well in Houston, it would be twice as successful in Chicago," Rance Crain said.
Rance Crain was the newspaper's first editor-in-chief, while Art Mertz (1917–1993), a longtime sales manager at Crain Communications' Advertising Age magazine, served as the first publisher. Rance tapped Steve Yahn, a senior editor at Advertising Age, to develop the prototype, do the initial hiring, and get the paper going, effectively acting as the paper's first editor. "We wanted to call it Chicago Business, but another guy came out with a paper with a similar name [which was short-lived]," Yahn said. "I told Rance he ought to put the Crain name on our publication to differentiate them, and he did."
Crain's was originally planned to publish every other week, but with the demise of the Chicago Daily News that year, those creating Crain's decided to make it a weekly publication, using the end of the Daily News for marketing purposes and also drawing on editorial talent from the failed paper.
The first newsstand issue of Crain’s Chicago Business appeared on Monday, June 5, 1978, a 46-page edition with an exclusive lead story on how the Marshall Field & Co. department store chain was planning further suburban expansion.
To promote the new paper, Rance handed out free issues to commuters at Union Station during the morning rush hour. “While I was passing out copies, a newsstand vendor in the station came up to me,” Rance recalled. “He said, ‘I sure hope you don’t have much of your own money tied up in this, because it’s not going to work.’”
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