Newcity is pleased to announce the return of our biggest performing arts issue of the year, The Players: Chicago’s leading performers.

Once again, we’ll be chronicling the many behind-the-scenes individuals who bring Chicago theater, dance, opera, comedy and performance to life. It’s an insight into the inner workings of Chicago’s arts culture that you can’t find anywhere else, any time.

It will be an issue that lovers of the stage cannot miss.

If you have not reserved space, please do so. This edition will reach Chicago’s most avid supporters of the performing arts, not to mention that your investment will help support Newcity’s ongoing increase in coverage at a time when everyone else is stepping back. And it is timed to serve as a winter/spring preview of sorts, hitting as most of the second half of the season is just getting underway.

Our performing arts rates are quite reasonable, even for color ads. Please reserve space by next Friday, January 14. Artwork is due Monday, January 17.

Click here to read the last three editions of The Players

If you’d like more details about who else advertises with us, our demographics and our online opportunities, please visit: http://newcitynetwork.com/advertising-marketing/performance-advertising-theater-dance-comedy-opera/

For the last several years, we’ve published Life 101, an issue dedicated to education in January, based on the theme “Change Your Life.”  The mandate ranges from the casual—a cooking or dance class, a topical forum—to continuing ed and degree programs, especially advanced degrees. Our University of Chicago publication returns that week from break, so you’ll also connect very well with that community.

If education is part, or all, of your mission, we hope you’ll engage with us as we endeavor to create a truly special issue. You won’t connect with a finer audience of voracious knowledge seekers anywhere, we guarantee that.

Please let us know right away if you’d like to reserve space or see rates.

Ad  space deadline: Thursday, December  30
Artwork deadline: Monday, January 3

PS: Last year’s editorial content can be found here:
http://newcity.com/2010/01/05/life-101-the-2010-education-issue/

We are pleased to announce that we will be combining our most popular year-end features into a special double issue to be published December 23. With a Holiday Movie Guide and a New Year’s Eve Party Guide, we’ll be ready to help our audience fill in all of their downtime from Christmas through New Year’s. And our super-popular Top 5 of Everything will be there to help folks ensure they haven’t missed anything.

If you want to end your year on the highest note a business can hit, make sure you advertise in this one. We need your space reserved by Thursday, December 16 and your artwork by that weekend. Email advertising@newcity.com or call 312.243.8786 x17.

Newcity will not publish an issue in print on December 30, but will return on January 6, 2011.

Newcity’s Best of Chicago is the publishing event of the year in the Windy City and this year, for our eighteenth edition, we’re taking it up a notch by publishing it on a brighter, heavier paper stock, and in a stitch-and-trim format that encourages audiences to keep this thing around for a full year.

With 200 or so categories, most of which are not repeated for five years, Newcity’s Best of Chicago has no competition as a chronicle of the finest our city has to offer. And with our signature takes on the city’s zeitgeist provided in a comprehensive audience poll (example: Best Campaign Slogan for Rahm Emanuel), you can be confident that your marketing message will reside at the very center of Chicago’s conversation.

So give your operation the adrenaline shot of the year by booking space in the Best of Chicago.

Issue Date: December 9
Space Reservation Deadline: December 2
Preferred Materials Deadline: December 3

Advertising@Newcity.com or 312.243.8786 x17

See the archives from the past couple of years here: best.newcity.com

Hits the streets the day before Black Wednesday!

With a “shop-local” gift focus + a selective guide to seasonal events

Who should advertise?

Retailers,  including museum gift shops, who rely on the holiday season to make or break your year and have a great story to tell our large, city-based and affluent audience;

Nightclubs who want to tell us where to go on Black Wednesday (this issue comes out the day before);

Theaters, dance companies and cultural institutions who produce special shows for the season;

Restaurants, who would like to feed our audience,  as they look for sustenance after shopping, or meet friends to exchange holiday cheer, or on their way to a holiday dance or theater production;

Artists and gallerists who organize or participate in art- or artisan-driven local gift fairs;

Fashion retailers, who want to sell holiday party outfits to our audience members to wear to the theater, to the club, or to holiday parties. (Not to mention salons to make them pretty.)

In other words, anyone who wants to make things happen in this holiday season.

Issue Date: November 25 (Streets Tuesday, November 23)

Ad Deadline: Thursday, November 18 (space); Friday, November 19 (materials)

Photographer Lisa Predko recounts on her blog how she put together this week’s cover.

Newcity’s been treating Chicagoans to an adult take on Halloween ever since it was just a kids holiday. Make sure you book ad space now if you’re banking on a big Halloween weekend.

Researchers at Rice University found that about a third of Groupon deals are unprofitable for the companies doing them, and that about 40 percent of those who do them will not do so again, even if profitable, due to the low-quality of customers gained in the promotion. More here.

Outside the Loop Radio interviewed Newcity publisher Brian Hieggelke and much of the Chicago Weekly leadership team about the publication and its unique mission. You can listen to it here.

The Chicago Weekly is finalizing its popular “Best of the South Side” edition, aka its Orientation week issue, as incoming students report to campus in Hyde Park this weekend. If you’re looking to get a message out to UofC students specifically, or Hyde Parkers in general, you won’t find a better vehicle. Click here for more information about Chicago Weekly.

In a related topic, Poynter is reporting this week that “Students Prefer Printed College Newspapers over Online.” It’s consistent with what we’re experiencing. Though students are extremely wired, they increasingly turn to analog modes for certain elements of their life. Thus the resurgence of vinyl, for example. And print.