When I moved to town 30 years ago last month, a Chicago Reader staff writer told me that if I managed to get my byline in the paper, it would keep company with those of the best storytellers in the city.

This was a golden age for the Reader, when the paper was divided into four thick, black-and-white sections that stained your fingers by the time you paged through the Adult Services ads. It was a comprehensive arts and culture catalog of everything the city had to offer each week, headlined by some of the best longform narrative journalism in Chicago history.

I did publish my first story in the Reader that year, a concert review of the Japanese pop band Pizzicato Five at Metro. Kitry Krause was my editor, and she kicked it back to me for two rewrites before putting one of her sharp, merciless blue pencils to the words. It was a meticulous, grueling experience, and when it was over, I was gutted.

But the tight, well-constructed piece tucked inside section three had found a home in the same paper that published legendary writers such as Steve Bogira, John Conroy, and Grant Pick.

Later on, the Reader started falling on hard times, and a writer for a local online aggregator started regularly referring to us as the “Old Gray Doorstop.” That site, whose frequent MO was to pick the pockets of reporters who performed actual legwork, is now moldering in a popular entertainer’s sock drawer.

We’re still here.

Three decades on, I’m still surrounded by the best storytellers in Chicago, a new generation that believes so passionately in the stories—and the paper that pays their rent—that I’m humbled anew. Just read Leor Galil—the last full-time music critic in Chicago—and tell me that’s not true. Read Katie Prout’s moving work on the unhoused; Devyn-Marshall Brown on the labor movement; or Micco Caporale on the Gathering of the Juggalos, and tell me we aren’t at the sunrise of a new golden age.

It certainly hasn’t been easy getting this far. The Reader’s weathered several near-death experiences in the time that I’ve been on board, but we’ve always pushed through.

You might have heard we’re in the midst of another dire financial crisis, and I’m afraid I’ve never been more worried for it. We might not make it this time. That 52-year-streak of the best storytelling in Chicago could come to an abrupt, inglorious end.

We’re still here, though. We have a clear path forward, but only if we can raise enough from enough supporters to make it through this crisis. So please consider making a tax-deductible donation to help keep this free and freaky, not-for-profit Chicago treasure alive when we all need it most.