Michael Miner kept Chicago journalists on their toes.
As the longtime media columnist for the Chicago Reader, if he saw something in the local papers or television news that seemed to miss the mark or made him roll his eyes, he’d write about it in his “Hot Type” column.
Mr. Miner pondered such topics as hypocritical columnists, biases, bad grammar and questionable editorial takes.
Former Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich remembered in a Facebook post how reporters used to rush to pick up a copy of the Reader on publication day.
“What did Miner have to say about that hot Sun-Times or Tribune story? Was he going to lacerate some terrible reporter? Or editor? Or praise some great reporter? Or editor?” Schmich wrote.
Yet, when Schmich told Mr. Miner during an endearing conversation at a party for a mutual friend two months ago of the fear he could strike into the hearts of reporters, she noted that he was surprised at the thought of anyone finding him scary.
Mr. Miner died May 1 from natural causes. He was 81.
Mr. Miner’s wife, Betsy Nore, said he just wrote about what he saw and didn’t give much thought to the rest.
“I don’t think he ever realized that he had that kind of power, to tell you the truth,” she said. “He didn’t see that, feel like that at all.”
Former Reader investigative journalist Ben Joravsky said Mr. Miner was a humble guy.
“He helped make journalism in Chicago better and more honest by forcing journalists to think about their work, about how something may be biased or unfair — things most of us have struggled with at one point or another,” Joravsky said.
Mr. Miner empathized with journalism’s thorny issues.
“He didn’t use his column as a blunt instrument. What he wrote was thoughtful,” said Alison True, a former editor with the Reader who noted that Mr. Miner wrote with a sense of humor and did not indulge in “gotcha” moments.
He worked as a reporter for the Sun-Times from 1970 to 1978. He also wrote for the Reader during that time, including the alternative weekly’s first edition in 1971.
When his Sun-Times bosses refused to send him to cover the Vietnam war in 1975, Mr. Miner took a leave of absence, traveled there on his own and covered the fall of Saigon.
“He sent his stories back to the Sun-Times, and they were happy to have them,” his wife, Betsy, recalled. “While he was there, four days before the fall of Saigon, he met a doctor and his wife and two kids, ages 4 and 1, who were all trying to get out of the country, and the doctor asked Michael to pretend to be his wife’s husband. So Michael signed some papers saying he was the husband, and because he was an American he got them on a plane to France where this whole family ended up settling.”
After leaving the Sun-Times, Mr. Miner began working as a writer and editor at the Reader, eventually turning his focus to writing on the media in the 1980s.
In 1982, while at his office in the Loop, Mr. Miner received a call from a neighbor that his North Side home was on fire.
He dashed home to see a firefighter carrying his 10-month old daughter onto the roof of the front porch. She was soot-covered, but alive. The woman who’d been babysitting, a 47-year-old family friend named Nina Gray, was found strangled in a bathtub. Months later, he wrote about the experience of being on the other side of a horrific tragedy, including how he refused to allow a photographer to take pictures of his daughter as she recovered at Edgewater Hospital.
“Photos that splash horror and grief for decorative purposes on our front pages are newspapering at its most vulgar,” he wrote at the time.
Mr. Miner again wrote about the incident in 2011 — 29 years after it happened — detailing how the firefighter who saved his daughter had attended her wedding and was the subject of a touching toast at the reception.
“No one was ever convicted of the crime and it haunts us still,” he wrote.
Mr. Miner was born Aug. 13, 1943, in St. Louis to Richard and Carol Miner. He was raised in Canada, where his father worked as an accident investigator for a railroad company.
The family later moved back to St. Louis, where Mr. Miner attended high school and proved to be a gifted student.
He graduated from high school at 15. At 19, he earned a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri.
He later joined the Navy and served on an aircraft carrier off North Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin.
His first job in journalism was as a reporter and editor in St. Louis at United Press International before moving to Chicago. While at the Reader, Mr. Miner edited stories by John Conroy that broke news of police torture.
Mr. Miner’s “thoroughness let me sleep at night,” Conroy said in a Reader retrospective on Mr. Miner’s career that was published in 2011.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Miner is survived by his daughters Molly Miner, Joanna Thomas and Laura Miner, as well as four grandchildren.
A memorial will take place at 3:30 p.m. May 19 at the Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton.
Minh Tran, who was 4 when Mr. Miner helped his family flee Vietnam, is slated to speak at the memorial.