The good news is that we can now read Robert Feder’s media blog for nothing. The bad news is that Feder—for the moment, at least—is now writing it for nothing, as the Tribune has stopped paying him a fee to put it behind its paywall.
Feder had no more to say about those “business reasons,” much less about why no one should have been surprised the Trib showed him the door. The balance of his brief message was devoted to thanking the Trib for the “unique opportunity” it had given him and his readers for their “loyalty and trust.” His blog wasn’t going anywhere, he assured those readers, and now it was free!
Feder is an exemplary journalist of our time—someone who keeps figuring out new ways to do what he does as the old ways disappear. In 1980 Feder and Gary Deeb, who’d been the enfant terrible TV critic at the Tribune, both joined the Sun-Times. Feder served as Deeb’s yeoman sidekick until Deeb lit out for television in ’83, and then Feder took over the beat. Where Deeb had specialized in two-fisted scorn, Feder focused on reporting, and over time acquired a reputation as the go-to source of breaking news on TV and radio in Chicago. But in 2008, the Sun-Times fast becoming a basket case, Feder left in a buyout and took his show on the road. He blogged a year for Chicago Public Media’s Vocalo—which called him its blogging “superstar”—and for a couple of years after that he covered media for Time Out Chicago.
