Rick Kogan

Rick Kogan is a senior writer and columnist at the Chicago Tribune who uses narrative reporting to connect cultural figures, books and city life into clear, character-driven stories. His work sits at the intersection of entertainment, literature and metro coverage, with a particular emphasis on how people and institutions shape a city’s cultural memory. Obituaries, columns and reviews share the same frame: he starts from a life or a place and works outward to show its resonance.

Obituaries and tributes to cultural figures

Obituaries and memorial pieces are a defining part of Kogan’s coverage, and he treats them as full narratives rather than brief notices. He regularly writes about figures from news media, literature, entertainment and politics, tracing the details of careers alongside the impact they had on audiences and communities. His obituary for comedian Tom Dreesen, long known as Frank Sinatra’s opening act, uses the death notice as a starting point to follow a path from suburban origins through nightclub circuits and major stages, showing how one performer’s story fits into a wider entertainment landscape.

The emphasis is less on summary and more on the scenes and relationships that made a life distinct.

This approach extends to other tributes, where he foregrounds the craft and character of the subject as much as their résumé. Authority comes from reporting and long familiarity with the region’s cultural corridors, so these pieces tend to include contextual detail about clubs, venues, newsrooms, publishers or political environments rather than stand-alone biographical sketches.

The tone is steady and observant, giving space to small incidents, quotes and settings that capture why a person mattered to the city’s cultural story.

Columns on arts, institutions and the streets

Kogan’s column work ranges across arts and entertainment, metro Chicago and public events, but he keeps the focus tight on specific institutions, neighborhoods and gatherings. In his long-running “Sidewalks” and related columns, he writes about streets, taverns, small businesses and local haunts, using reported detail and conversation to show how they function as cultural stages.

Pieces often center on a single place or event and then layer in history, regulars and owners, making the setting itself a character that carries memory and identity.

He covers public celebrations and seasonal events in the same way, treating parades, festivals and holidays as windows into how people express themselves in public space. A column on Halloween celebrations, for example, focuses on costumes, organizers and crowds to show how a city embraces spectacle and play. Across this work he draws on a broad arts-and-entertainment brief - theater, music, visual art, nightlife - but keeps the reporting grounded in specific corners and institutions rather than in industry-wide trend stories.

The result is a beat that reads as a running portrait of a city’s cultural infrastructure, from sidewalks to major venues.

Books, media and reflective criticism

Beyond obituaries and city columns, Kogan writes regularly about books and media, using the same narrative sensibility to frame his criticism. His review of “Eliot Ness: The Rise and Fall of an American Hero” treats the subject as a tragic figure and focuses on how the author’s choices illuminate character, not just historical facts, underscoring his interest in storytelling craft as much as subject matter. When he writes about documentaries, such as a recent column on “Untold Mr. T,” he moves quickly from the premise of the film to questions of depiction, memory and how well the work captures the personality at its center.

Kogan also steps into first-person essays when he has direct involvement in a cultural project, as in his account of serving as guest editor of Poetry Magazine. That piece describes immersing himself in contemporary poetry and editorial work, then reflects on how the experience reshaped his view of the magazine and its audience. His broader bibliography includes numerous books that extend his interest in city life, taverns and local history, and those projects reinforce the depth of reporting that underpins his newspaper work.

Alongside this, he hosts a radio program devoted to conversation and storytelling, a role that strengthens the conversational cadence and anecdotal texture found in his print columns and essays.

Across formats, Kogan’s distinctiveness lies in how he uses entertainment and cultural coverage to preserve and interpret individual lives, institutions and scenes. He writes with long familiarity and a reporter’s eye, but his pieces read as carefully built stories that connect subjects to the wider narrative of the city’s cultural life.