We’re excited to announce that Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist Sarah Conway will be the next editor in chief of the Chicago Reader! Conway comes to us after eight years at City Bureau, where she most recently served as senior reporter and special projects manager, as well as managing editor. You can read our full press release here.
We sat down with Conway to ask her some of the questions you may have, including her first introduction to the Reader, the movies she could talk about for hours, and what exciting plans she has in store for us.
Question: Tell us about yourself! What has life looked like so far?
Sarah Conway: Life has been a little bit of everything. I grew up in Joliet and rural Grundy County as a kid, and moved around the country and world for over a decade, spending years at a time in New York, Madagascar, Niger, Washington, D.C., Iraq, and finally Chicago. Over time and many stories later, I found myself a mother to two daughters and an investigator of systems and people, which led me to work with a smorgasbord of local newsrooms and initiatives here in Chicago. Now, I tinker across mediums, spanning investigative journalism, live radio, and film.
Why did you decide to come to the Reader?
I came to the Reader because I deeply believe in Chicago’s independent media ecosystem and am committed to strengthening collaborative, community-rooted journalism in the city.
We live in a time of rising inequality and fascism in the U.S., where we need alternative journalism more than ever. After more than a decade of working across Chicago newsrooms—managing teams, founding projects, and mentoring hundreds of emerging reporters—I saw the Reader as a place where my experience in leadership, collaboration, and innovative storytelling could have a meaningful impact.
How would you describe your approach to journalism?
I approach journalism with a reporter’s mindset, rooted in curiosity, rigor, and a commitment to public service. My work is grounded in collaboration—whether that means building projects across newsrooms, supporting and mentoring reporters, or engaging community members as partners in the storytelling process. I strive to create journalism that is inventive, ambitious, and deeply accountable to the people and issues at the heart of every story. At the Reader, my goal is to build stronger connections with Chicagoans through empathetic storytelling so that people across the city can see themselves in our work.
Which Chicago neighborhood do you call home? What makes you stay here?
I live in South Shore in an intergenerational three-flat with my family. I feel most at home in the stretch of the city from Kenwood to South Shore along the lake. I love my block and neighbors, and we all watch out for each other. Legend has it that our street’s former block club used to meet in our basement long before we got here. One reason I stay is to help that connectivity come back to life, and to garden with my kids and neighbors.
What exciting new plans do you have in store for the Reader?
I’m excited to step into this role and build with the existing Reader staff to bring readers more community-based investigations, tantalizing and arcane feature stories, and profiles of everyday Chicagoans doing extraordinary things. I’m excited to explore and develop ways to integrate comics, public events, zines, guides, radio, movies, and more into the fabric of our writing. When someone asks what’s going on in Chicago, I want them to be handed the Reader as the only primer they’ll need.
Tell us about your first introduction to the Reader.
Back in the aughts, I used to drive up to the Music Box Theatre in my little station wagon as a teenager from rural Illinois to see movies. I believe the first copy I read was in the lobby before a 2003 screening of Guy Maddin’s surrealist comedy, The Saddest Music in the World. For me, stumbling onto that copy of the Reader helped redefine what journalistic writing could be and how I could be part of that ecosystem.
What’s your favorite Reader story or issue you’ve ever read?
John Conroy’s 1990 Reader cover investigation into torture at the hands of the Chicago Police Department, “House of Screams.” It was the first of 23 articles that Conroy would write on disgraced former commander Jon Burge and police torture for the Reader, setting the stage for greater police accountability in Chicago’s investigative journalism community.
What are you obsessed with journalistically?
- Being a public records request friend or foe, depending on the government agency
- Comic journalism
- As told to’s inspired by Studs Terkel’s Working
- Stephanie Manriquez’s vision for community and youth-led grassroots radio over at Lumpen 105.5 FM
- Visual forensic investigations
- Zines, self-publishing (aka journalists emulating John Cassavetes)
- Archival projects preserving and highlighting community history, like Nuestro Chicago Archives
- Community-led and -owned investigations
What are you obsessed with non-journalistically (personally)?
- Ghost stories and Appalachian cryptids
- Yao Yao’s pickled mustard green fish soup with spicy, sour broth in Chinatown
- The illicit, hidden microcinemas of Amsterdam
- Collecting original movie posters (I recently bought a Dutch-language poster for Barbra Streisand’s A Star Is Born.)
- “Criterion Closet Picks” video drops on YouTube
- The El Naranjo Fog at Anticonquista Café in Pilsen
- A day at King Spa & Sauna in Niles with mandatory visits to the fire sudatorium, their movie theater, then a trek across the parking lot to H Mart for half-priced sushi later in the day
- Gemini and Pisces supremacy
We heard you curate movie screenings at the Chicago Art Department. Which movies could you talk about endlessly?
So many. I cocurate Cinemanita, a community film club at the Chicago Art Department in Pilsen, with my life and creative partner Eli Ramirez. I look at cinema mostly through a sentimental lens: Movies were my first books and first friends. One of my earliest memories was watching Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams on VHS with my dad on a snowy night in 1991. In general, I like films that are an equal blend of weird, mysterious, and ethnographic; this is similar to my taste in journalism.
Usually, with films, I go in and watch as much as I can of a director’s work. Some of my favorite directors are Abbas Kiarostami, Pier Paolo Pasolini, the Dardenne brothers, Jafar Panahi, Wong Kar-wai, David Lynch, Agnès Varda, Ousmane Sembène, and Jayro Bustamante, among others. If I had to choose one, I’d cheat and pick three: Kiarostami’s Koker Trilogy, a delicate, playful set of films that blend fact and fiction in a remote northern Iranian village.
Speed round! Deep dish or tavern-style? Concrete beach or sand beach? Favorite city park? Favorite CTA line? Favorite place to spend a Friday night?
I’m a texture girl, so the ultra-thin, crispy, flaky aspect of tavern style has a hold on my heart. My go-to is Vito and Nick’s Pizzeria’s fresh-basil-and-garlic thin-crust pizza. My favorite city park is Promontory Point in Hyde Park; it’s truly a vibe to sunbathe or slowly slip into the lake from the enormous limestone rocks on a breezy summer night. My favorite CTA line is the Brown Line for the views. Most Fridays, I’m at home cooking dinner, then watching Blu-rays or Criterion Channel and gabbing. If you do find me outside, I’ll likely be catching a screening at the Music Box Theatre, Siskel Film Center, or FACETS, unless I’m hosting my own.
What’s your dream for the future of journalism?
I dream of a world where anyone who can a) breathe and b) observe can see themselves as a journalist. The list of requirements to do this work really ends there. I want people to write the story they’ve always needed, or that their families and communities have always needed. No one has to be any certain type of way, but rather open and willing to write about the world and all that inhabits it as truthfully as possible.
Journalism needs more, not less, perspective, and with a city this big, I believe we can find it.