More alt-weekly consolidation

When we first saw this Romensko link on Gawker, announcing the Chicago Reader and Washington City Paper's purchase by ATL-based Creative Loafing, our impulse was to prematurely eulogize the Chicago Reader, the weekly that first pointed us to the gallery openings with ice buckets full of Goose Island, and fed us media criticism before we knew what that was (let alone that our first boss when we returned to the city, ever underage, knew the Hot Type scribe). Anyway, we still plan our Chicago excursions by triangulating between friends and fingers pointed randomly at the Reader's picks, and the paper still publishes some of our favorite music writing, so we'll hope all that continues and acknowledge the obvious--that we have no insight into the business side of the papers involved [that the Reader and City Paper had ties to the Stranger and Mercury was news to us as well--see the announcement's footer]...

• and defer to Hot Type's blog, comments.