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Published on Thursday, 17 March 2011 15:37
Coming less than a day after the
passing of its Chairman James Tyree, the Chicago Sun-Times made some newsroom cutbacks this morning, laying off an unknown number of staffers. Included in those layoff was the paper's business columnist Lewis Lazare. Lazare wrote regular columns covering both local media and the local advertising community. In addition to his newspaper columns, Lazare wrote the
"Media and Marketing Mix" blog for the Sun-Times' website.
Lewis Lazare had been with the Chicago Sun-Times since November 2000. He wrote columns on marketing & advertising since 2003. After media columnist Robert Feder exited the Chicago Sun-Times in October 2008, Lewis Lazare added covering local media to his workload. Early on, he faced sharp criticism of his media coverage after replacing Feder, as his breadth of knowledge of the local media beat was nowhere as deep as his predecessor's.
Prior to his time at the Sun-Times, Lazare had been a staff writer at the Chicago Reader, where he wrote about arts. He was also a writer and Associate Editor at Crain's Chicago Business, where he covered both media and advertising. His first job in journalism was as a Chicago-based writer for Variety magazine.
Lazare is a native of Hopkinsville, KY, and has degrees from both Dartmouth College and Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. In addition to his writing skills, he was well known publicly for wearing old-fashioned bow-ties.
His most recent media column was published in this morning's edition of the Sun-Times and
online on the newspaper's website. There was no openly advanced knowledge of the layoff. Lazare's biography and links on the Sun-Times website have already been removed. For now, only his blog remains.
News of the Sun-Times staff cut-backs was first reported by the Chicago Tribune's media columnist Phil Rosenthal on his
Tower Ticker blog this afternoon, with an update two hours later to include the news of Lazare's release. Former Sun-Times and current Time Out Chicago's media writer Robert Feder announced Lazare's exit from the paper soon after that
via his Twitter account.
The Sun-Times lay-offs and their timing are said to be unrelated to the passing of Jim Tyree.
