Savage Gone, Neil Steinberg Cut To One A Week In Sun-Times Columnist Shuffle

By Chuck Sudo in News on Jun 4, 2013 2:00PM

Terry Savage (left) and Neil Steinberg.

More changes are afoot at the Sun-Times, this time with their vaunted lineup of columnists. Crain’s Chicago Business reports personal finance columnist Terry Savage is out as a result of more cost-cutting at the paper. But the bigger news is that Neil Steinberg’s column has been cut from four times a week to one. (Steinberg will still contribute features to the paper.)

Reducing the frequency of Steinberg’s column comes after an April 26 article about an exotic automobile time share company in Palatine that let Steinberg borrow a Bentley to drive to a party in Sycamore with his wife. Sun-Times Editor-in-chief Jim Kirk believed veered too much into advertorial. Kirk and Steinberg had a heated discussion about the column, and Steinberg told Crain’s Kirk "didn't like that and I respect that and I won't do that anymore.”

Steinberg is one of the most prolific writers at the Sun-Times. In addition to his column and the feature stories, he’s arguably the best obituary writer in Chicago, as his recent penning of the Rev. Andrew Greeley’s death will attest. But he allowed that writing a weekly column “was like trying to breathe through a straw.” Steinberg is also an accomplished author. He told Crain's he'll still be getting paid the same even with the reduction in his column's frequency.

As for Savage, Kirk said her contract was not renewed because it didn’t fit the paper’s focus on covering local business leaders. Savage told Crain’s Wrapports LLC chairman Michael Ferro called her column “very expensive” and that management told her she could stay on if she found a new advertiser for the column. Savage said she reached out to a couple banks, “but I was uncomfortable with that” because of the perceived conflicts of interest.

The Sun-Times stopped producing Grid, its weekly business magazine, in another cost-cutting maneuver. reduced production of the print version of Grid, its business magazine, from weekly to monthly; its online version continues to update content daily.

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