{"id":30010,"date":"2021-06-18T19:03:16","date_gmt":"2021-06-19T00:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.robertfeder.com\/?p=30010"},"modified":"2021-06-18T19:03:16","modified_gmt":"2021-06-19T00:03:16","slug":"john-kass-signs-off-chicago-tribune-adventure-happens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/2021\/06\/18\/john-kass-signs-off-chicago-tribune-adventure-happens\/","title":{"rendered":"John Kass signs off at Chicago Tribune: 'An adventure happens'"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

<\/a> John Kass<\/p><\/div>\n

John Kass, the Chicago Tribune's<\/a> most prominent columnist and one of its leading conservative voices, called it quits Friday after 38 years at the newspaper.<\/p>\n

Kass, 64, was the latest to opt for a voluntary buyout offered by Alden Global Capital, the New York-based hedge fund known for severe cost-cutting at newsrooms across the country.<\/p>\n

According to the Chicago Tribune Guild roughly a quarter of all newsroom staffers \u2014 including columnists Eric Zorn and Heidi Stevens \u2014 applied for buyouts this week.<\/p>\n

\"You readers are the reason I\u2019ve been able to do this for so long,\" Kass wrote in his farewell column<\/a>. (Here is the link.<\/a>) \"You\u2019ve stood by me. You\u2019ve had my back. And as subscribers, you\u2019ve fed my family and helped pay our bills. I owe you everything.<\/p>\n

\"The Tribune has offered me and many others a separation agreement. This is my last column for the Chicago Tribune.\"<\/p>\n

He promptly unveiled his new venue \u2014 an independent blog site at johnkassnews.com.<\/a> \"Instead of reading me in the newspaper, you can read me here. Free. Until I figure out the next move,\" he wrote.<\/p>\n

A Chicago native and graduate of Harold L. Richards High School, Kass attended Columbia College before he landed a job as a reporter for the Daily Calumet.\u00a0He joined the Tribune in 1983 and was promoted to columnist after the death of Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Mike Royko in 1997.<\/p>\n

Last summer Kass's column was moved off Page 2 and relegated to an op-ed page labeled \u201cTribune Voices\u201d after the Chicago Tribune Guild accused him of invoking anti-Semitic tropes in a column about billionaire George Soros.<\/p>\n

Calling himself a victim of \u201ccancel culture,\u201d Kass said at the time: \u201cI will not apologize for writing about Soros. . . . I will not soil my name by groveling to anyone in this or any other newsroom.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his farewell Friday, he wrote: \u201cWhat happens next? An adventure happens. I\u2019m not going away. If you follow me on Facebook and listen to \u201cThe Chicago Way\u201d podcast, you\u2019ll learn all about it. . . . I still have a few spears left to throw. Let\u2019s see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Kass, the Chicago Tribune's most prominent columnist and one of its leading conservative voices, called it quits Friday after 38 years at the newspaper. Kass, 64, was the latest to opt for a voluntary buyout offered by Alden Global Capital, the New York-based hedge fund known for severe cost-cutting at newsrooms across the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30010"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30010"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30014,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30010\/revisions\/30014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}