Career
From 1998 until his death in 2015 he served as Critic-at-Large for WFMT radio, which broadcast his wide-ranging weekly interview and commentary program, Critical Thinking. He was also a regular contributor of arts journalism to the Chicago Sun-Times from 1991 until his death. Previously, he worked as an arts critic for WBEZ and as a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal.
His book about the iconoclastic journalist I.F. Stone was published in 1988.
Patner was born in Chicago and attended Kenwood Academy, the College of the University of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in history. In 1993, he became the first regular writer for a mainstream Chicago newspaper to write about being gay.