Another one bites the dust in Chicago

Veteran Chicago Sun-Times media columnist Robert Feder announced today that he is taking an early retirement package and leaving the paper after 28 years.  His scheduled departure date has not yet been decided.

The Chicago native got national media notoriety while a high school student in the 70s as the founder and president of the “Walter Cronkite Fan Club.”  He joined the Sun-Times in 1980 as leg man to TV critic Garry Deeb, who had just come from the Chicago Tribune, where he gained a reputation for his barbed writing on television and radio and attacks on local sacred cows like sports announcer Jack Brickhouse and Sun-Times gossip columnist and TV talk show host Irv “Kup” Kupcinet.  After his much-ballyhooed switch to the Sun-Times, Deeb all of a sudden became much tamer and left the paper in 1983 to completely become irrelevant as “entertainment reporter” for ABC-owned WLS in Chicago.  Feder was promoted to media columnist and reporter, eventually being moved from the entertainment section to the business section, where he wrote four columns a week up to now.

As a columnist, Feder left program criticism to critics like P.J. Bendarski, Daniel Ruth and Phil Rosenthal, but often scooped the competition, always had his ear to the ground and helped support his favorites like radio DJs Steve Dahl and Mancow Muller (in particular, along with Deeb, Feder’s positive hype helped Dahl shake off the “Disco Demolition Night” stigma and become the something of an elder statesman of Chicago radio he is now).  But more than anyone else, Feder, with his continuous writing about an African-American woman from Nashville taking over a morning talk show at WLS, helped propel Oprah Winfrey into the spotlight both locally and nationally.  (Interestingly, he was sometimes accused of racism and sexism for his often-negative reporting of two other Chicago African-American woman broadcasters, former WBBM-TV and WLS news anchor Diann Burns and WBBM-AM morning drive anchor Felicia Middlebrooks.)

Like many other employees at the troubled Chicago tabloid, Feder could also be guilty of taking cheap shots at Tribune Co.-owned WGN Radio and TV for no other reason than they were owned by the Sun-Times’ competitor, most notably in his constant shots (which have continued to this day) at WGN management for dropping the 40-year-old Bozo the Clown franchise in 2001 despite the evidence that the show’s target audience was simply not watching broadcast TV anymore (and yes, misplaced Boomer nostalgia could also have entered into it).

In the end, Feder must’ve seen the firing of TV critic Doug Elfman earlier this year as a sign that maybe it was time to leave (the paper did not replace Elfman, with wire service copy and part-time reviews from entertainment reporter Misha Davenport serving as TV criticism).  At least the Tribune still has Rosenthal as a media columnist and Maureen Ryan as a critic, but it’s always better to have competition.  And Feder’s parting, joining more critics and writers this year nationally, is not a good sign for any kind of serious media coverage in daily newspapers.

UPDATE:  Fellow Sun-Times columnist and veteran TV journalist Carol Marin offers her tribute to Feder.

Also, readers offer tribute, including former colleague P.J. Bendarski (now at Broadcasting & Cable), talk radio host Jay Marvin, former Chicago anchorman Jim Ruddle and radio legend John Records Landecker.

Finally, Phil Rosenthal tells Tribune readers today why he purposely doesn’t model his column after Feder:  “[I]f the Tribune wanted me to be another Robert Feder, it should hire [him]…rather than me.”