Chicago Classical Review wants you to advertise

Wed Aug 31, 2011 at 12:20 pm

By Lawrence A. Johnson

It’s that time of year again when, taking advantage of the brief lull between Chicago’s summer and fall music seasons, we make a request to Chicago Classical Review readers and local music and arts organizations to support this website through banner advertising.

As we start our third full season, it is clear that Chicago Classical Review has made a major and substantial impact in comprehensively covering Chicago’s classical music scene. We are the first to post reviews that often appear only days later in the newspapers and no other local outlet comes close to offering CCR’s broad and varied coverage—not just the CSO and Lyric Opera, but the wealth of terrific chamber groups, music series and smaller ensembles that make our city such a vibrant and fascinating place.

Yet, the fact is that running an arts journalism website like this on a very tight budget still requires sufficient advertising support to allow us to continue our work. We do not charge for access to our website and Chicago Classical Review’s archive is always available for free.

Nor are we a charitable institution, a foundation or a nonprofit that can draw on tax-free financial support from public grants or private benefactors. We are a business and, as a business, we depend on advertising to pay our writers and our upkeep.

We have a loyal team of music organizations that support Chicago Classical Review through advertising (groups that often have the smallest ad and marketing budgets) and we greatly appreciate that continued support.

But as low as we keep operating expenses, we need additional ad revenue to pay our writers, maintain our website, and to expand in covering the vast panoply of music organizations, large and small, throughout the Chicagoland area.

I ask all regular readers who would like to see Chicago Classical Review continue its work, to consider purchasing banner advertising for their businesss. You can contact me for advertising details and rates including generous specials for full-season buyers.

The majority of our advertisers have been classical performing organizations, but we are by no means limited to music ensembles or classical artists. Restaurants, hotels, clubs, law offices, car dealerships, universities, accounting firms, realtors, construction companies, private music instructors — any individual or business that would like to ensure the future of Chicago Classical Review is welcome to advertise with us. Our traffic has increased significantly this past season, and advertisers can be assured of reaching an educated, sophisticated and financially secure readership.

If every organization that CCR reviewed last season and a small percentage of readers purchased just two weeks of advertising each, that would be sufficient to see us through next year. If you are not able to personally support CCR with advertising, but know a friend, relative, or business associate who might be interested in doing so, I ask you to contact them on our behalf.

Chicago’s 2011-2012 music season promises to offer another exciting year of events and, with your support, Chicago Classical Review will continue to be there to cover it all in a lively, fair, intelligent, and comprehensive way.

Lawrence A. Johnson
Editor
Chicago Classical Review

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