Feder got his start in journalism at Lerner Newspapers' Skokie Life newspaper. He then joined the Chicago Sun-Times in 1980, starting out as a legman for TV/radio columnist Gary Deeb. Feder eventually became the paper's TV and radio columnist after Deeb left to join a Chicago TV station, and Feder remained at the Sun-Times as its TV/radio columnist until the fall of 2008.
In 2008, Feder took a buyout from the Sun-Times.[1] After a one-year hiatus, he joined Chicago's Vocalo.org as a blogger, where he worked until December 2010.
Feder joined Time Out Chicago as media critic on January 3, 2011.
On April 8, 2013, Feder announced in an email and on his Facebook page that with the closure of Time Out as a printed magazine and its shift to a digital-only platform, he would accept a buyout of his contract and leave Time Out Chicago.[3]
On August 15, 2013, Feder launched "RobertFeder.com", under a licensing and marketing agreement with Chicago Tribune Media Group. That agreement included some of his blog posts appearing as articles in the Chicago Tribune newspaper. While he continues to blog at his website, his licensing and marketing agreement ended at the end of August 2016 and was not renewed.[4] Since April 26, 2017, he operates his blog under an agreement with the Daily Herald, a newspaper serving the northern, northwestern and western suburbs of Chicago.[5]