The Press: Maverick's Rise

In 1953, after a two-year rise from copyboy to overnight editor of Chicago's hardboiled, fast-moving City News Bureau,* brash, blond Bruce Sagan (rhymes with pagan) paid $2,500 for a withered weekly called the Hyde Park Herald. Breathing life into the body and new fire into the Southside community. Publisher Sagant mounted a hard-hitting campaign for slum clearance, coupled picture spreads of slum dwellings (including owners' names) with authoritative how-to-do-it articles on redevelopment. Outcome: Hyde Park qualified for federal aid as the Midwest's first and biggest project of this type approved under the new...