As ReelChicago’s sixth year draws to an end, we’ve calculated some amazing stats that demonstrate the Reel’s consistent coverage of Chicago’s visual media industry.
Since 2002, when we resumed industry trade coverage after 23 years of ownership of the Original Screen magazine, we have brought you more than 5,000 news stories.
This number includes 1,560 columns (The Reel Thing, Indie Film Focus, Screenings & Events, etc.). With each column containing an average of 10 individual news items, that adds up to an incredible total of 15,600 pieces of additional information.
And the 5,000 count doesn’t include the nearly 900 BackTalk items we’ve printed since we first introduced the feature in 2004.
Our 30th anniversary will arrive next month, marking how we forged a community where none had existed before, when 4-page, typewritten Screen, The Indispensable Newsletter, hit mailboxes Jan. 29, 1979 during an equally paralyzing blizzard and SAG strike.
We’re told we are the longest-running film trade writer in the business and, during the glory Screen days, the leading market innovator.
But wait, those days aren’t relegated to the realm of musty nostalgia. The best is yet to come.
Reel Chicago is in the process of evolving into a monstrous, newly designed, cutting-edge site expansion.
The new Reel will be your go-to portal for expanded content and many exclusive, useful features hard to find elsewhere that will be assembled here, for your convenience, on one site.
In the meantime, to celebrate our anniversary, we’re planning a party, of course, and a gala issue. Send us your comments and remembrances of high and low points of the last three decades to include for publication in January. (I’ve survived two roasts so I can take a third.) Send photos, too.
And let us know if you also will be celebrating a milestone, 20, 25 or 30 years in business, so we can toast your achievements, as well.
Deadline is Jan. 15, 2009.
