Bruce Sagan, longtime Chicago publisher and arts champion, dies at 96

Bruce Sagan, the Chicago newspaperman who turned a failing neighborhood weekly into a platform for investigative reporting, built one of the largest community newspaper groups in the country, and later played a central role in transforming Chicago into a major center for dance and theater, died Sunday at his home in Chicago after a brief battle with cancer. He was 96.

Over more than seven decades, Sagan was an indefatigable force in Chicago journalism and civic life. As the owner and publisher of the Hyde Park Herald — which he bought in 1953 at age 24 — he gave voice to a South Side neighborhood confronting racial change, housing discrimination and urban renewal. He published exposés on negligent landlords and controversial city planning decisions, coverage that helped Hyde Park qualify for one of the nation’s first federally funded urban renewal projects.

When he sold his Economist Newspaper Group 35 years later, it had grown to nearly 30 papers with 1,000 employees and a circulation exceeding 400,000. 

  
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