Last Friday, the city of Chicago agreed to pay out $20 million to settle lawsuits filed by four former death-row inmates who said they had been tortured by police officers and subsequently wrongly convicted. The four men were among dozens of black men who said they were tortured, beaten with phone books and suffocated with plastic typewriter covers while in police custody in the 1970s and 1980s, according to special prosecutors.

The stories of three of those four men, who were pardoned by former Gov. George Ryan in 2003, were first told by John Conroy, a veteran reporter for The Chicago Reader, an alternative weekly. On Friday, Mr. Conroy received a note from Jo Ann Patterson, whose son had been nearly suffocated in police custody in the process of obtaining a confession that proved to be false.

“My son, Aaron Patterson, tortured by the Chicago Police Department, would not be alive today, I believe, without your articles about police torture in the City of Chicago. You documented and wrote the realization of police torture, of which we will never forget. You help save my son’s life for which I thank you.”

Mr. Conroy was busy dealing with a flurry of e-mail messages that day because on Thursday, he had been laid off. The Chicago Reader, which had published his work for over 20 years, decided it could no longer afford to support his reporting. Citing declining revenue and a need to trim costs, Alison True, the editor of the paper, laid off four of its most experienced reporters, including Mr. Conroy. The Washington City Paper, another newsweekly owned by the same company, announced five newsroom layoffs as well.