The Madness of Sultan Tayyip

ISTANBUL -- May 29 is an historic date for Turkey, and particularly for this eternal city on the Bosphorus. On that day in 1453, Sultan Mehmed II, known to Turks as Fatih (the Conqueror), took Constantinople from the Byzantines, launching a Turkish reign that continues to this day.

Exactly five hundred sixty years later, a few miles north of where Mehmed II built a castle in preparation to take the city, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan turned up at a pomp-filled afternoon event along the Bosphorus to launch a grand and controversial infrastructure project – and his own political decline.

Growing up a dozen miles away in Kasimpasha, a conservative, working class district on the north bank of the Golden Horn, Erdogan earned a reputation as an indomitable brawler. This take-no-prisoners persona propelled his political rise, into office as mayor of Istanbul in 1994, and, nine years later, prime minister.

After a decade of strong economic growth, today's Turkey is brash and influential, much like its leader. Istanbul, the country’s cultural capital and economic engine, has developed into a tourist mecca and go-go metropolis of 15 million, where jackhammers, scaffolding and construction cranes are as familiar as the city’s Virginia Slim minarets.

But now the lord of the realm appears to be fighting an army of ghosts in addition to the usual suspects. That groundbreaking ceremony, for a third bridge across the Bosphorus, presented a trio of offenses that pushed public ire beyond the breaking point. The $3 billion project will require the razing of one of Istanbul's few remaining forests and is going ahead despite the opposition of environmentalists, urban planners and the Istanbul master plan.

During the event, officials announced that the bridge would be named after Yavuz Sultan Selim, a 16th century Ottoman ruler. Selim the Grim, as he's known, is remembered by Alevis -- a moderate Islamic minority of about 15 million people in Turkey, or 20 percent of the population -- as responsible for their mass slaughter. Selim is no hero to progressives either: in 1515 he made printing, a recent invention at the time, punishable by death.

Finally, after finishing up his remarks on the bridge, Erdogan directed a few words to a small band of demonstrators that had refused to give ground that morning to bulldozers attempting to uproot a handful of trees and begin construction on a replica barracks and mall project in Taksim, Istanbul's central square. “Do whatever you want,” said Erdogan, more paternalist than pugilist. “We have made our decision on Gezi park.”

“That really pissed people off,” said Imre Azem, the director of Ekumenopolis, a 2011 documentary about urban transformation of Istanbul. Azem was among the first handful of campers at Gezi Park the night bulldozers first arrived, Monday May 27. “So a lot more people came, and then there was the first dawn operation, at 5am Thursday, and after that it got huge."

We all know what came next: the government's harsh crackdown on Gezi demonstrators sparked mass protests in dozens of cities across the country, resulting in thousands injured and arrested and at least five people killed. The question now is whether all these events might lead to Erdogan’s demise. In a way, they already have.

Rather than cowing their leader, the mass protests have exposed his tin ear and stoked his inner despot. In a midnight session this past week, parliament passed a bill that castrates the country’s leading body of architects and planners (Chamber of Turkish Engineers and Architects), handing to a government ministry the chamber's ability to review major urban projects and issue permits and visas.

This is a direct affront to the Gezi protest movement, which was at root a fight against authoritarianism and government-controlled urban development. The new policy will essentially allow development by fiat, leading to more third bridges, more Gezi Parks, and more public protest. Instead of offering a solution, Erdogan has presented the protest leaders his middle finger.

What’s more, as a result of financial and monetary instability sparked by the protests, Ankara has launched investigations into financial market dealings with foreigners, and more recently into capital markets and its foreign exchange deals. These beg the question, why would a leader whose considerable reputation rests largely on a decade of economic dynamism (in addition to the shackling of the military) endanger the country’s credit rating and potentially scare off foreign investment? Why would Erdogan put Turkey’s great 21st century growth story at risk? His nature.

When cornered, a brawler tends to keep fighting. “Some people are saying I'm too rough," he said in June, referring to his response to the protests. "I'm sorry. This Tayyip Erdogan is not going to change." If he had been a bully before, post-Gezi Erdogan seems a modern-day Selim the Grim, with a dash of the madness of King George.

"Social media is the worst menace to society,” he said during a TV interview, despite the fact that his official Twitter account has more than 3 million followers. He blamed the protests on the international media, foreign extremists and an insidious "interest-rate lobby," among others, and said the same forces were behind the recent protests in Brazil. “The same game is being played in Brazil,” Erdogan told a rally of his supporters in Samsun. “They are controlled from the same center."

Unaware of the irony, Erdoğan urged Alevis, who have led the protests in many cities, not to be provoked by the efforts of the main opposition party. "Right now, the owners of the TV channels and newspapers that provoke the Gezi events, those who want to pour Alevis onto the streets, are all members of the [opposition] CHP,” he said.

The most troubling sign may have come this week, when he named Yigit Bulut, a TV personality who worries that world powers are trying to kill the prime minister via telekinesis, as a top economic adviser.

Leaders of Turkey have rarely wanted for foils or been big on checks and balances, but Erdogan’s decade in power appears to have warped his understanding of his position, and of democracy itself. A couple months ago he was at his peak, angling to rewrite the constitution, install a French-style presidential system and remain in office until the 100th anniversary of the republic in 2023. That scheme is now in tatters, and every move he makes seems dubious, from his protester conspiracy theories to his fumbled Syria policy and his government's confused, confusing response to the ouster of Mohamed Morsi in Egypt.

The government's response to the Gezi Park protests appears to have reduced public support for the the prime minister. A survey released in June found that Erdogan’s job approval ratings had fallen more than 10 percent since April, while support for the AKP had dipped one percent. Looking longer term, the very commercialization and urbanization Erdogan has ridden to economic glory has drawn millions of Turks to the cities, creating a more informed, urbane populace and perhaps starting to erode his largely rural, conservative base.

Still, there’s no reason to expect the AKP to fade from Turkish politics anytime soon. Millions of supporters still respond to the snap of Erdogan's fingers, but his stranglehold on national power has slipped. He's lost the political deftness that propelled his rise and, with elections looming next year, is barred by AKP rules from running again for prime minister.

The auspicious date of the third bridge groundbreaking was surely no accident. Erdogan has repeatedly linked himself to grand Ottoman-era rulers, such as with the opening of the Panorama 1453 Museum a few years ago. His visions -- the third bridge, the Marmaray rail tunnel under the Bosphorus, the world's largest airport, the $2.6 billion financial center, the Camlica Mosque -- might all be viewed as efforts to leave his mark on the former Constantinople.

But now that conquest has been slowed, along with Erdogan's political career. He'll still rank among the best leaders the republic has had, but his dream of becoming a modern-day Fatih or a second Ataturk will remain just that. The debate about whether he's lost his marbles will likely rage for some time, but for Sultan Tayyip, the end is nigh.

The Other Winners from Gezi Park: Urbanists Everywhere

After five days of battling police forces, Taksim Solidarity, a collective formed by protesters in Turkey’s largest city and dedicated to advocacy for the threatened green space of Gezi Park, finally listed its demands Monday night: That Gezi Park remain a park; officials involved in the recent police aggression are forced to resign immediately; tear gas bombs banned; all jailed protesters released; and demonstrations allowed throughout Turkey.

As of Tuesday, protests have flared in dozens of cities across the country, and at least 1,700 people have been arrested, hundreds injured and at least two killed, with a handful in critical condition. Just today, a 240,000-member workers union began a two-day nationwide strike to protest the police’s excessive use of force. Why the sudden mass support? “This is not about a park,” read a leaflet circulated online. “This is about democracy.”

It may have begun with the Emek Theatre, a century-old Istanbul cinema torn down by the municipal government to become a mall six weeks ago. Or with the way the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) rushed to pass a restrictive new alcohol law last month. Or the way Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan defended it, saying the previous laws on alcohol had been created by “two drunkards” (likely referring to the beloved founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk, and his comrade-in-arms Ismet Inonu, the country’s second president), while his new version was “commanded by religion.” It might have started with the government’s long-running crackdown on domestic media and freedom of expression, or its decision to eschew a master plan for Istanbul.

Whatever the case, by this past weekend, when a demonstration to save one of the few remaining green spaces in central Istanbul exploded in a matter of hours into a visceral national movement, it was clear that Turks had had enough of the AKP’s authoritarianism. Catalyzed by an unwanted makeover of public space, Istanbul residents demanded a say in the governance of their country and the development of their urban environment. A small group of determined urban activists transformed a local effort to “save the trees” into a call heard around the world to “reclaim the streets, and the country.”

Just a month ago, Erdogan was at the peak of his power, plotting to rewrite the constitution and transform the government to install a French-style presidential system. After a decade of strong economic growth, Turkey is brash and influential, much like its leader. Istanbul, the country’s cultural capital and economic engine, has developed into a tourist mecca and go-go metropolis of 15 million, where jackhammers, scaffolding and construction cranes are as familiar as the city’s cigarette-slim minarets.

Istanbul is only 1.5 percent green space, compared to 17 percent in New York City. The city’s central area of Beyoglu is particularly nature-free. At the northeast rim of Taksim Square, Gezi Park may be unkempt and little appreciated, but it is also one of the few remaining areas with trees in the district. On top of that, in a city suddenly filled with swank shopping destinations, it was slated to become yet another mall.

“Just like our ancestors, we are continuing to write history and leave behind creations,” Erdogan said at a groundbreaking ceremony for a $3 billion bridge over the Bosporus last week. The bridge, to be completed in 2015, is named after 16th century Ottoman conqueror Yavuz Sultan Selim — the man widely seen as responsible for the slaughter of Alevis, a moderate Muslim people that today makes up some 15 percent of Turkey’s population of 75 million. “This is how we are building a powerful Turkey,” Erdogan added. “For the seven hills of Istanbul, we have seven grand projects — one is this bridge, a third necklace over the Bosphorus.”

Other Erdogan-backed projects in the works for Istanbul include the world’s largest airport, the city’s largest mosque on a hill overlooking the Bosporous, and a project to carve out a Suez Canal-style waterway to the west of the city, linking the Marmara to the Black Sea — a project the prime minister himself has called “crazy.” Thus far, the government has made all the decisions about these projects with little to no public discussion.

The third bridge had long been opposed by progressives and environmentalists because its anchors were to be built in some of Istanbul’s last great swathes of green, not far from the Black Sea, and the expectation was that the resulting traffic would doom those areas to smog and sprawl. Yet the government, led by Erdogan’s AKP, went ahead despite the opposition. Again, residents were not consulted.

Other troubling government actions in Istanbul include the following: Mass evictions of low-income residents to make way for renewal in tumbledown Istanbul districts like Sulukule, Tarlabasi and Zeytinburnu; the stoppage of May Day activities in Taksim Square by cutting ferry, bus and metro service in the area and sending out tens of thousands of policemen to apply liberal doses of teargas; and the evisceration of Taksim, the heart of the city and the site of a constant stream of smaller protests in recent years.

Several dozen protesters took to the park early last week and refused to vacate to allow for demolition. In response, Erdogan underestimated the people’s frustration and overestimated his own power. “Do whatever you want,” he said. “We have made our decision on Gezi park.”

Police came to retake Gezi Park at dawn last Thursday, burning tents and applying teargas, pepper spray and the occasional beating. The protesters scattered but soon returned. After authorities again forcibly evicted the demonstrators the following morning, protesters returned in greater numbers and spread details of the attacks via social media.

With the national media cowering, much of the news about what came to be known as Occupy Gezi has spread, particularly in those first few days, via Twitter and Facebook. One photo from last Thursday — of a smart-looking woman in a red dress, white handbag slung over her shoulder, all but ignoring a policeman’s aggressive pepper spraying — became a symbol of protesters’ defiance.

Woman in red becomes leitmotif for Istanbul’s female protesters. Credit: Photo by Osman Orsal. Reuters.
Other widely circulated images included a gas-masked whirling dervish protester and, not surprisingly, some nasty head wounds. Protesters in Turkey have flooded networks with up to 100,000 tweets an hour, directing each other to hotspots, calling for media coverage and highlighting authorities’ acts of violence. They used the crowdfunding site IndieGoGo to raise more than $80,000 for a full-page ad in the New York Times.

Not all the protesters have been angels. They set dumpsters on fire, graffitied walls, smashed windows, looted shops and burnt cars. Some used small makeshift weapons. But the vast majority has been peaceful, and Sunday morning many of them worked together to clean Gezi Park.

Erdogan, yet to respond to the demands of Taksim Solidarity while on a state visit to North Africa, seems to have turned into a modern-day Selim the Grim. “There is now a menace which is called Twitter,” he said during a TV interview Sunday, echoing dictators everywhere. “To me, social media is the worst menace to society.” The following day, as Turkey’s stock market took its biggest tumble since Erdogan came to power, he blamed the protests on “extremist elements” and said intelligence agencies were looking for a foreign hand. He also said, “anyone who drinks is an alcoholic” and threatened to meet the protesters’ numbers with more of his own.

Solidarity from Zuccotti Park to Gezi Park. Occupy Wall Street and members of New York City’s Turkish community picketed the Turkish consulate in New York Street on June 3. Credit:Michael Fleshman on Flickr
Leaders of Turkey have never been big on checks and balances, but Erdogan’s decade in power seems to have warped his understanding of his position and of democracy itself. Perhaps it’s not surprising. Growing up in conservative, working-class Kasimpasha, Erdogan earned a reputation as a take-no-prisoners brawler. Rather than negotiate or surrender when cornered and losing control, a brawler keeps on fighting, clinging to the feisty, indomitable attitude that put him on top. He has let go of his mall plan for Gezi, but suggested he might build a mosque in its place.

With the prime minister the clear loser, the big winners from the past week are President Abdullah Gul, who has hit many of the right notes in responding to the protesters and who seems to have opened a rift between himself and the suddenly out-of-touch Erdogan; Turkey’s youth, who now have a much greater understanding of their power; and Istanbul, the city Mehmed II conquered so many years ago has discovered, once again, that it is unconquerable, and largely able to control its own destiny.

And one more, outside Turkey: The international urbanist community, which has a new, tone-perfect example of how concerns about public space can spur greater, broader calls for democracy and basic rights, and how people everywhere are equally willing to fight for some measure of control of their parks, neighborhoods and built environment.

Due to its still-considerable support, there’s no reason to expect the AKP to fade from Turkish politics anytime soon. But Erdogan’s stranglehold on national power may continue to slip with more clashes in the days to come. As I write, reports are flooding in of more teargas in Ankara, Antalya and other cities, while thousands of Istanbullus head toward Taksim Square early Tuesday evening. Once more unto the breach.



Story originally ran at NextCity.org, on June 5th 2013.

Twitter Boosts Chicago Cabbie's Business

by David Lepeska

for Atlantic Cities


Years ago, Rashid Temuri studied computer science during a short stint in college. By the time he created the Twitter account @ChicagoCabbie in 2011, he'd been driving a Chicago taxi for a decade and a half.

He planned to tweet responses to people's complaints about Chicago taxi-riding, hoping to increase understanding between riders and drivers. But when locals learned he was an actual cab driver, they started putting him to work. “People would Tweet, 'Hey, it would be awesome if you could come meet me and give me a ride,'” recalls the Karachi-born Temuri, who's lived in the Chicago area for 20 years. "So I started picking people up."

A year later, @ChicagoCabbie has more than 4,100 followers. Temuri has been covered by dozens of local news outlets and a handful of tech and international websites. "This whole thing is growing so fast on its own and it's become something I never imagined," says the 36-year-old. His workload has increased to the point that he often passes excess ride requests on to a half dozen colleagues he trusts.

It's a vital service. As a Chicagoan, I can testify that most calls to a taxi service in this city go as follows: an interminable wait on hold, followed by a meandering conversation with a customer service rep that ends with her saying a car might be available in the next hour and that they'll call back.

If and when the cab does turn up, the vehicle is often old and unkempt. Though not the world's first Twitter cab service -- a similar business launched in London a few years ago -- Temuri's is the first to focus on correcting his colleagues' mistakes, and the most technologically advanced. "I feel bad for my cabbie community, and I blame them for the way they behave," says Temuri. “My goal is just to make the service better.”

And how. When Temuri gets behind the wheel every morning, he announces it with a tweet. From there, anyone can track his location with Google Latitude. He responds almost immediately to ride requests (via text msg, Foursquare, email, yfrog and Twitter), sends out an iCal invite to confirm the call and turns up when he says he will.

His Ford Escape Hybrid is immaculately clean and smells like it. Riders can hop onto the free WiFi, or start up a chat with their host, who is happy to swipe their credit card on his iPad at drop-off. (Stenciled on the car's side is Flash Cab, the dispatcher from which Temuri still takes the occasional rider. Though at first uncomfortable with Temuri's freelancing, his bosses at Flash have since come around, probably because of the free publicity.)

If @Chicagocabbie has changed the way many Chicagoans think of, and order, taxis, it has also upended Temuri's life. After years of seeing taxi driving as a tedious fall back job, he's used it to return to his first love: technology. "I'm absolutely loving it now," says Temuri, "to the point that I'm about to start working on a new app."

Unable to reveal any details due to a non-disclosure agreement, he says he's helping a European technology firm develop an app that will improve and organize the taxi experience, for both riders and drivers. That would put it in competition with the likes of Uber, the mobile livery car service, and Taxi Magic – both of which Temuri seems to have improved upon by eliminating the middle man to cut costs and speed delivery.




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originally ran May 4, 2012 at http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2012/05/how-twitter-helped-one-man-become-chicagos-most-popular-cab-driver/1927/

Jazz Age magazine becomes media experiment

by David Lepeska

in The National

One Sunday afternoon in mid-February, a mostly forgotten magazine from Chicago's Jazz Age resurfaced in a most 21st century way. "A secret no more," founding editors JC Gabel and Josh Schollmeyer tweeted. "Please welcome back into the world The Chicagoan."

Sold only at local boutiques, independent bookstores and 1920s-style pop-up news-stands, the 194-page ad-free publication quickly became an almost mythic object of desire. "I couldn't read my copy of @TheChicagoan on the train today because everyone wanted to look at it," local writer and filmmaker Kevin Elliott tweeted.

Friendly notices appeared in local and national media outlets. As the number of available copies dwindled, Sarah Freeman, a local artist, expressed a twang of guilt: "The roommate and I both have copies of @TheChicagoan. I feel like we are hoarding a precious resource."

Nearly 5,000 copies sold out in a month, at $20 each, shocking even the men behind the operation. "The whole thing took on a life of its own in a really great, wonderful way," Schollmeyer said during a joint interview with Gabel. "Now we have to go out and make it a business."

Their experiment - building a newfangled, non-profit media outlet fronted by a biannual print magazine - is sure to be closely watched. For now, observers are mainly applauding the creation of a throwback publication in a throwaway age.

"So much has been lost in the print world that it's really refreshing and encouraging to see some brilliant, young, media-savvy guys get together and say, 'Let's try it this way'," says Robert Feder, a respected Chicago media analyst.

The tale of the original begins in 1926, with Chicago at its economic peak. Stockyards butchered 20 million animals a year. The city's population ballooned. Skyscrapers began to crowd the Loop, home to the world's largest building and its largest hotel.

Slums, squalor and racial conflict festered, too, and in the era of Prohibition, the gangster Al Capone held the city's newsmen in thrall. Enter The Chicagoan, published every two weeks in top hatted-trim and looking to counter "Hog Butcher to the World" and den-of-vice stereotypes with sophistication and high-mindedness.

Editors came and went and the writing often fell short of the high standard set by The New Yorker, founded the previous year and The Chicagoan's obvious model. Yet its art matched that of any contemporary, particularly the cover images.

One 1927 story examined Chicago as the capital of bootlegging, detailing the "multitude of blind pigs, speakeasies, drinking clubs and booze joints which harass the peace of the Second City". But as the years passed, the magazine, full of writing errors, attracted few noteworthy contributors. Readership declined as its editors chose to ignore the Great Depression and focus on what books to read, where to eat and shop.

In late 1933, Esquire appeared. Its first issue, marked by an urbane intelligence and work from Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos and Dashiell Hammett, sold more than 100,000 copies. Its second issue quadrupled that, and 16 months later, in April 1935, The Chicagoan closed.

Six decades on, the cultural historian Neil Harris stumbled across nine dusty volumes with "The Chicagoan" on the spine in a library at the University of Chicago, where he teaches. Struck by the magazine's artwork and seriousness, he looked it up and found no record.

"It was unknown," recalls Harris. "I'd been in Chicago for a few decades and had never heard about the magazine."

Harris and his wife worked for two years putting together a gorgeous, 400-page volume, The Chicagoan: A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age, published in 2008 by the University of Chicago Press. It reproduces one 1927 issue in its entirety, along with 80 full-sized cover images, and retells the magazine's history.

The tale soon reached JC Gabel, editor of Stop Smiling, a respected arts and culture magazine he launched at 19 years old in 1995. He wrote an essay about The Chicagoan, which never ran: in early 2009, Stop Smiling stopped printing, and Gabel took to freelancing. "I got out there and the marketplace was terrible," he recalls. "Everything became advertorial service industry slop."

In January 2010 he met with Harris, a media-world acquaintance, and talk turned to the failure of Chicago media outlets to run important, deeply reported stories. "Almost in jest we were like, 'Let's just restart The Chicagoan'." says Gabel. "It seemed like a pipe dream, but we talked to some friends in the media and all of them were enthusiastic about the idea."

Harris had exhumed and dusted off the corpse. Gabel began updating and reanimating it. At the urging of a friend he met with Schollmeyer, who directs digital content for Playboy and had also been bemoaning the decline of journalism in Chicago.

The two began to envision a smartly written and well-produced print publication with a strong online presence, and sought advice from the sages of Chicago media. "They were talking about using the highest stock paper, the best reporting and photos, printing long-form stories, getting the rights to some publication from the 1920s," Feder laughs, recalling an early 2010 meeting with the duo. "I thought to myself, 'If this ever makes the light of day, I'll be amazed'."

With a dusty, 1929 drawing of an old-time news-stand on the cover, the first issue contains 26 stories, including fiction and poetry, a profile of a local jazz musician and a look at atomic-age postcards.

There may be a few clunkers in the bunch, but Schollmeyer's 48-page oral history of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert - the Chicago film critics who became national treasures - more than offsets the price of admission. The 26,000-word article, which required more than a year of work, interlaces 50 interviews with key players to tell the story of the critics' combative relationship.

It exists mainly because Schollmeyer refused to accept the 3,000-word limit offered by local publications when he first shopped it around. The e-book, released in March, climbed into the top 120 sellers on Amazon and became a Kindle bestseller. "It's a masterpiece," says Feder, who is among those quoted in the story, "and it would not have seen the light of day in any other media."

But precisely what sort of medium is The Chicagoan? Certainly it is not its predecessor. The original focused on the high life. The revival is an intelligent response to a preponderance of similar content today. The first was born in the city's salad days, the second in tough economic times, with journalism at death's door.

The new Chicagoan also represents an embrace of two related but divergent trends. The rise of n+1, McSweeney's and Intelligent Life - all featuring smart, long-form writing and marketed as stylish objects with lasting value - testify to the first.

The second is an unavoidable reality of 21st-century life. "Everybody says, 'Why don't you just do the print thing and make it very bespoke and stick with that?'" explains Gabel. "That would be walking around with blinders on."

In November, the editors plan to publish their second issue and offer a $99 annual membership that includes two print issues plus access to web-exclusive stories, a monthly tablet-only article and public events. Their app will arrive around the same time, with a blog-laden website due next spring.

But Gabel and Schollmeyer are in no hurry. Printing the first issue and registering as a non-profit organisation cost nearly $50,000, paid for by donations from board members and staff. Now broke, they realise their vision needs time to take root and plan to launch fundraising efforts this month.

Contributors, staffers and bills require payment. "This has to be done very carefully or it becomes a boondoggle as a non-profit," says Gabel. "Look at what happened to CNC."

The week The Chicagoan launched, the Chicago News Cooperative, a three-year-old non-profit media experiment and partner of The New York Times, announced it would cease operations. CNC had sought to build an online portal for sharp local reporting. Schollmeyer, who made his name by turning the little-known Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist website into a national award-winner, is confident The Chicagoan can better navigate the shoals of 21st century journalism.

A March report from the Investigative News Network found that 75 per cent of all non-profit news efforts fail in their first year, in part due to poor planning and a poor grasp of new technologies. Those that succeed tend to grow at a modest rate and accept little foundation funding.

The Chicagoan may be on the right track. But CNC's demise remains a hurdle locally. "When we go to cultural institutions looking for funds, there's no way anybody's going to take the risk," says Gabel. "The money we need is not astronomical, but we're only going to do this if we can do it for real."

Gabel estimates The Chicagoan, which recently moved into sponsored office space in the city's Loop, would be sustainable with 20,000 annual $99 members, in addition to grants, subscriptions, sales and donations.

The editors claim to be "platform agnostic", or willing to embrace any format that works. "We want to do long-form, new journalism with high-end short fiction and break new voices about Chicago and the Midwest," says Schollmeyer. "That's our mission; how we get to you doesn't really matter."

Whether it ends up as a website that runs monthly e-stories, an irregularly published literary journal or something else entirely, its creators intend to stick to that mission.

This city has produced several noteworthy media outlets: Esquire and Playboy many decades ago; The Baffler, This American Life and Stop Smiling more recently. This summer, the satirical publication The Onion is moving to Chicago from New York.

Like the editors of that multi-platform outlet, Gabel and Schollmeyer are conscious of their brand. They understand their fanbase, its lust for a locally focused publication crafted with care.

They saw it firsthand a few months ago. "I can promise you that spirit we created will never be co-opted," says Schollmeyer. "If that means we only do one of them, so be it. It's going to be pure and beautiful and pristine."



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ran in The National on June 19, 2012
www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/music/jazz-age-magazine-the-chicagoan-returns-as-media-experiment