Jim Kirk
KC Crain, president and COO of Crain Communications Inc., brought back Jim Kirk as publisher and executive director of Crain’s Chicago Business. He fills a position that has been vacant since David Snyder stepped down as publisher in 2016.
A longtime Tribune Publishing/Tronc executive, Kirk was most recently senior vice president, strategic initiatives at Tronc. Before that, he played an important role during Tronc’s sale of 136-year-old The Los Angeles Times to Patrick Soon-Shiong for $500 million. As Davan Maharaj exited LAT as editor in chief in 2017, Kirk was called to the rescue as interim EIC. After the stint in Los Angeles, Kirk was dispatched to New York to serve as interim EIC of The New York Daily News, which had been experiencing frequent turnover of editors in recent years.
Kirk started his career at The Chicago Tribune as reporter and section editor. He joined Bloomberg News in 2009 as government team editor in Washington, and in 2010 returned to Chicago to become managing editor of the Chicago News Cooperative. He later spent a year as chief of editorial operations of Crain’s Chicago Business. From 2012 to 2017, Kirk was publisher and editor in chief of the Chicago Sun-Times.
