A young black Chicago philanthropist has purchased a dormant local news site. But because that philanthropist is Chance the Rapper, and because he made the announcement in “I Might Need Security” (the best of the four new songs he dropped last night), the good news comes with an asterisk. What good news doesn’t?
I’m cautiously optimistic, but I’m also concerned about a politically active celebrity buying a media outlet—and I would be whether the MTV incident had happened or not. Imagine the challenge of writing about the city’s music scene when the person who pays you is a towering figure in that scene. We don’t know what Chance will be like as a media owner, and I prefer not to speculate. We just know that he is the owner, and so does whoever will work for him.
