Jim DeRogatis, the Chicago Sun-Times’ pop music critic, is leaving to teach at a Chicago college and blog for the local public radio station, WBEZ. (’BEZ is also the host of the radio show, Sound Opinions, he does with the Chicago Tribune’s Greg Kot.)

The Sun-Times’ travails have gone on a ridiculously long time. In the form of a calamitous ownership by Rupert Murdoch, they predated my arrival in Chicago in 1988, and continue still. But the paper somehow managed to retain a formidable staff, which is of course what a newspaper is all about.

But people have been leaving, drip drip drip. DeRo’s departure was of course scooped by the amazing Rob Feder, who covered his beat at the Sun-Times (local radio and TV) better than any reporter I’ve ever watched. He not there any more, and did the story about DeRogatis for the ‘BEZ blogs.

Ebert remains, too. I don’t live in Chicago and so don’t see the paper day-to-day anymore. But the impression from afar is that it’s hard to see how losing people like Jim doesn’t represent the real beginning of a final door closing at the paper.

There’s a lot of talk about the disappearing film critics, or the disappearing rock critics. In fact, there’s a lot more and better writing on the web. The dirty secret is that most local film and rock critics aren’t that good, and even at prominent papers, as with most of the rock magazines, they fall into promotional writing, lassitude, and solopsism.

Jim’s an old friend, so take that into account when I say he was the best most aggressive and full-bodied pop writer in America. Was he irritating? Yes! Did he have hobby horses? Yes! Did he romanticize Lester Bangs too much? A thousand times yes!

But he listened aggressively, and championed new and local music, holding it to a national standard. He also took stands against rock’s geezer brigade, and took a lot of institutional heat for it. Unlike virtually every other pop music writer in America, he was also a reporter; he monitored the local scene, crusaded against city laws that threatened local live music, and just in general did more than do phoner interviews with pop acts coming through town.

He also wrote about the national music industry. He might be best-known nationally for breaking the R. Kelly story—and nearly going to jail because of it—but the salient fact there is that it wasn’t a fluke.

It was a natural result of being an actual fucking reporter—one whom people in the community turned to when there was an important story out there.

DeRogatis’s new position is at Columbia College in Chicago. It seems like a smart move for him—the S-T might not be around this time next year. He will still be doing his radio show and still writing. (Greg Kot, I should mention, is as formidable as DeRogatis on most of these counts; the city’s critical corps to this day far outstrips any other in the country.)

So I want to make clear. This isn’t a blow to readers, who will still be able to read him, or to DeRogatis, who will no doubt be better off outside of a calcifying institution; but it is the latest blow to a number of things: the country’s daily newspaper industry in general and the Sun-Times in particular, but also to a unique city’s sense of itself and shared experience.