Shia Kapos

Shia Kapos is a Chicago gossip columnist who writes about personalities and scoops for the Chicago Sun-Times under the Taking Names brand. She also writes the Taking Names blog at shiakapos.com. Taking Names was started in 2007 while Kapos worked as a senior reporter and columnist for Crain's Chicago Business.
Early life and education
Kapos was raised in Kaysville, Utah, a farming community between Salt Lake City and Ogden. She has described learning how to drive a tractor before she learned how to drive a car. She worked on her high school newspaper and yearbook editor, where she was editor. She is of Greek descent.
Professional career
Kapos got her start in journalism right out of high school, working as a librarian at the Salt Lake Tribune. She worked nights and attended the University of Utah by day, where she earned degrees in journalism and English.
She later worked in San Francisco in book publishing as a copy editor and then as a radio reporter before moving to New York City, where she worked as a copy editor coordinator for Avon Books. She returned to newspapers and the Salt Lake Tribune as Business Editor and then Government and Politics Editor. Her team won numerous awards for their coverage of state government.
Kapos moved to Chicago in 2001, where she worked as a two-year general assignment reporter at the Chicago Tribune. She followed that with a stint as Midwest Correspondent for People magazine, where she covered human interest stories and celebrity sightings. In 2006, she was hired by Crain's Chicago Business to cover executive Lifestyle. Editor Andrea Hanis soon assigned her to be a columnist under the Taking Names brand. Together, they built Taking Names into a much-talked-about column. In 2016, Kapos moved Taking Names to the Chicago Sun-Times, where she continues to write stories and scoops about notable Chicagoans. She also writes her shiakapos.com blog independently.
Kapos was named best blog by the national Society of Business Editors and Writers; has been a finalist for the Chicago Lisagor journalism awards, and has twice been named by media reporter Robert Feder as one of the most powerful women in Chicago media.

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