Mark Lacter, 59

This morning L.A. Observed disclosed the death of its business editor and writer, Mark Lacter. LAO editor-in-chief Kevin Roderick reported that Lacter’s “wife, the author Laura Levine, told me that Mark suffered a stroke yesterday and could not survive the bleeding on his brain. He was 59 and died at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.”

A former Los Angeles Business Journal editor, Lacter was a regular commentator on radio station KPCC and also published in Los Angeles magazine. In 2005, he was named by the Society of Professional Journalists as Distinguished Journalist of the Year

Although Lacter would often infuriate Frying Pan News readers with his swipes at unions, he also railed against developers who were manipulating the government’s EB-5 visa program and, more notably, against the outlandish inequality between Los Angeles’ haves and have-nots. To the end Lacter believed in an economic system that allowed those workers on its lowest rungs to climb up to the middle class.

“We’re not just talking about an opportunity to be a dishwasher,” he told KPPC’s Steve Julian. “We’re talking about the chance to buy a house, to have your kids go to college — opportunities that only happen if the job market is a lot more robust than it is right now.”