Last week brought the hard but inevitable news that Bruce Sagan died. He was 96.
Bruce was the smartest, kindest, most determined person I’ve ever known in the local news business. Our paths intersected multiple times over the years on shared industry boards, in an ill-timed but bold partnership to save the last of the old Lerner papers in the city, and then in a turnabout, our giving Bruce advice on how he might steer his beloved Hyde Park Herald into the hands of a nonprofit venture.
Long before I ever met him though, Bruce’s efforts to build his Southtown Economist newspaper into a legit daily paper, following the closing of the Chicago Daily News, set in motion, a few years later, the launch of Wednesday Journal.
Here’s how that happened.
Bruce owned the Hyde Park Herald, the Southtown and then a string of other neighborhood papers, including one he launched in Oak Park and River Forest in the early 1970s. It was called The World. Like his efforts in Hyde Park where the Herald drove the agenda and tackled tough issues of race and urban renewal and the ever-presentness of the University of Chicago, The World was a strong read. Lots of hard reporting around issues of Oak Park’s efforts at integration, smart politics coverage, a genuine point of view. It outstripped the then-dominant Oak Leaves which was in determined white wine at the country club social page mode.
The World was a great local newspaper.
But to focus his efforts to make the Southtown a Chicago-wide daily, Bruce sold off the weeklies, except for the Herald. The World was purchased by Pioneer Press, owner of the Oak Leaves. It was promptly gutted and turned into a weekend rag.
That led to a leap by the publisher of the OWL Shopping News to turn it into the Oak Park News and to hire a kid reporter to be its editor. Along with two colleagues, we did a lot of good work, answered the failing publisher’s plea to find him a buyer, and when that plan cratered, we departed in the spring of 1980 to start Wednesday Journal.
Same plan as The World. Hard reporting on tough issues. Everything local. Features that showed we lived in town. And, pretty much like now here at our nonprofit Growing Community Media, we turned to people across the villages and sold them shares of stock in our unlikely venture. It’s what you do when you’re 24 and really want to report on your hometown.
If you saw the obits last week you know Bruce also saved the Joffrey and brought it to Chicago, and was central to building the new Steppenwolf. He also helped save the Sun-Times a couple of times, and the Reader, too. This was a good man who understood the power of local news. It was my great honor to know him.
