MICHAEL MINER (1943-2026)
|
Chicago journalist and playwright Michael Miner passed away on May 1 at age 81. Mike was best known as the longtime author of the Chicago Reader’s “Hot Type” column, in which he covered media, politics, and the arts. His columns sometimes focused on controversies involving Chicago theater and how it was covered by the local and national press. He also copy-edited theater reviews by the Reader’s team of staff and freelance critics.
As a playwright, Mike was the coauthor with Scott Jacobs of KISS IT GOODBYE, a play about Ben Hecht’s early years as a Chicago journalist before he became a playwright and screenwriter. The work had a 1985 run at Chicago’s Organic Theater. In 1987, Mike contributed to another Organic production, THE SEED SHOW, an evening of short works; Miner’s piece, ”Private Dancing,” was a comic study of a Chicago crime reporter that featured “a nice assortment of droll lines and wry observations, as well as a few structural surprises,” according to a Chicago Tribune review. Born August 13, 1943, in St. Louis to Richard Smith Miner and Elisabeth Caroline Matthey, Mike earned a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. His first writing job was for the Disciples of Christ Christian Catalogue, where he contributed copy like “Before you chow down, be sure to bow down.” Mike enlisted in the United States Navy, where he served on an aircraft carrier off North Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin. After an honorable discharge, he got a job as a reporter and editor in St. Louis at United Press International before moving to Chicago to work at the Chicago Sun-Times. In 1975, he took a leave of absence from the Sun-Times to go back to Vietnam to report on the end of the war. As it drew to a close, instead of taking a spot on one of the last choppers out of Saigon, Mike posed as the husband and father of a young Vietnamese family to help them escape to Paris. Along with his work at the Sun-Times, Mike began a long association with the Chicago Reader, when he contributed to the Reader's debut issue in October 1971. In the late 1970s, he left the Sun-Times and joined the Reader as a staff writer and editor, continuing there until his retirement in 2017. During his career as a journalist he won the Chicago Headline Club’s Peter Lisagor Awards for Best News Column or Commentary in 1991, 1992, and 2008. Mike is survived by his spouse of 48 years, Betsy Nore; daughters Molly (Alex Rosenthal), Joanna (Daniel Thomas), and Laura Miner; grandchildren Solomon and Neva Rosenthal, and Elise and Jesse Thomas; and siblings Dixie (the late John McIlwraith), Peter, Clyde (Joyce), and Mary Michele (Paul Perri) Miner. |