Robservations: WGN scores with Lin Brehmer's ode to the Cubs

Lin Brehmer

Robservations on the media beat:

Lin Brehmer

Fans know Chicago radio treasure Lin Brehmer as a rock and roller who writes with the soul of a poet. That was on display Sunday when WGN-Channel 9 set Brehmer's glorious essay about the 1984 Cubs season to pictures and music during the Cubs pregame show. (Here is the link.) Credit Bob Vorwald, director of production at the Tribune Broadcasting station, with bringing "Lin's Bin" to life on TV. (Here's the link to an earlier one — on Opening Day March 28.) Brehmer is in his 28th year as morning star of Entercom adult album alternative WXRT 93.1-FM. Sadly, the Cubs are in their final year on WGN.

Dex Card

Another legendary personality from the Top 40 heyday of WLS 890-AM has passed away. Word belatedly reached Chicago friends Sunday that Dex Card, 85, died of natural causes on September 11, 2018, in Bonita Springs, Florida, according to his companion, Patricia Cothran. Best known as afternoon DJ and host of the "Silver Dollar Survey" on WLS from 1964 to 1967, Card later worked at the former WCFL here. He also owned radio stations in Wisconsin before retiring to Florida in 1993.

Jackie Spinner

Jackie Spinner, associate professor of journalism at Columbia College Chicago and former correspondent for Columbia Journalism Review, has been named editor of Gateway Journalism Review, the newsletter and quarterly print magazine published by Southern Illinois University School of Journalism. Spinner, an SIU journalism alumna and onetime editor of the Daily Egyptian student newspaper, was a staff writer and bureau chief for The Washington Post from 1995 to 2009. Gateway Journalism Review is the successor to St. Louis Journalism Review, founded in 1970.

Andrew Patner

The work of the late Andrew Patner will be celebrated at a panel discussion Friday presented by the University of Chicago Press. Moderated by John R. Schmidt, the panel will feature musicologist Douglas W. Shadle and New Yorker music critic Alex Ross. Free and open to the public, the event will be at 11 a.m. at Italian Cultural Institute, 500 North Michigan Avenue. It coincides with the publication of Patner's essays in A Portrait in Four Movements: The Chicago Symphony under Barenboim, Boulez, Haitink, and Muti. Patner served as critic-at-large at classical music WFMT 98.7-FM and contributing critic on classical music for the Chicago Sun-Times. In 2015 he died of a bacterial infection at 55.

Dan Jedlicka

Two Chicago media figures were inducted Friday in the Morton College Hall of Fame. Among six 2019 honorees were Dan Jedlicka (Class of 1963), former automotive writer and editor for the Sun-Times, and Alice McGee (Class of 1981), who rose from intern to supervising producer of "The Oprah Winfrey Show." "It's a privilege and honor to give lasting recognition to these individuals, each of whom gives us great pride to call them Panthers," said Stan Fields, president of Morton College. Located in south suburban Cicero, it's the state's second oldest community college.

Friday's comment of the day: Bill Fassnacht: WBBM-Channel 2 is like that one restaurant in the neighborhood that has a great location but nothing ever seems to make it there.