Best Chicago news columnist (other than Tony Fitzpatrick, of course)

Blair Kamin, Chicago Tribune

It’s not that often that a columnist, let alone an architectural critic, makes national news, but when Blair Kamin became the leading critic of the Trump Tower sign, well, consider this correction that NBC’s “Today” show ran, according to Jim Romenesko’s blog:  We do have a clarification on something you may have heard here on Friday after our report on the controversial Trump sign on Donald Trump’s new Chicago building. During a live phone interview, Trump said of the controversy: ‘This was started by a third-rate architecture critic from the Chicago Tribune who I thought got fired. He was gone for a long period of time.’ Well, in fact that critic—Pulitzer Prize-winner Blair Kamin—has been with the Chicago Tribune for more than twenty years and also spent the 2013 academic year as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard.” We’re tempted to just let this quote stand as our entire argument, but consider this: long before the Donald throwdown, Kamin’s column, a pointed and probing exploration of architecture and urban design in one of the world capitals of such things, has long been arguably THE reason to read the Tribune.

Audience Choice: Mary Smich

Best of Chicago 2014