Read Online Believer: My Forty Years in Politics by David Axelrod - Free Book Online

political correctness and good taste relegated the once-celebrated but vaguely racist classic to the archives). On other walls, huge clocks marked the time in Chicago and in Washington and other world capitals. Above the newsroom was an observation window, from which visitors could look down on the frenzy. And by nine, the action was stirring, as dayside reporters checked in for their assignments.
    I was greeted by Sheila Wolfe, the day city editor and intern coordinator, who had stuck her neck out by hiring me over a flood of impressive applicants from America’s leading journalism schools. In an intern class of nine, I was the lowly claimer among highly trained thoroughbreds. Now, I thought, she looked slightly dyspeptic as she considered her long-shot bet. “You ready?” she asked as she led me over to the City Desk to introduce me around.
    The first to extend his hand was Bernie Judge, the young, dark-haired city editor, who would become a great mentor and a lifelong friend. Bernie was a veteran of the City News Bureau, a local wire service with a grand history in Chicago’s front-page lore. In fact, the playwright Charles MacArthur, who coauthored the hit Broadway comedy
The Front Page
, got his start there, as did Royko, Seymour Hersh, and a raft of other celebrated reporters and writers. On Bernie’s wall hung a quote from A. A. Dornfeld, the longtime night city editor of City News, that summed up the wire service’s gestalt: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out!” Translation: get it right!
    Sheila turned me over to Don Agrella, the crusty assignment editor. Agrella had spent his entire career working for Chicago newspapers, as had his brothers Chris and Joe. Between them, they had more than a century of experience. I would quickly learn that when Agrella shouted your name—followed by a “hat and coat!”—it meant there was breaking news somewhere in the city, and you had better get a move on it.
    In our first encounter, he looked a little bemused. “Nice suit,” he said, with the smile of the veteran gently hazing a rookie. “But it’s going to get a little dirty. There was a tornado in Lemont last night. Lots of damage. I’m sending you out with Jeff Lyon.”
    Lyon, a second-generation reporter and one of the paper’s star writers, showed up a few minutes later, appropriately dressed in blue jeans and a Hawaiian print shirt. He was my Sherpa as we tromped through the muddy, littered streets of Lemont, and then visited a local hospital, looking for victims. After a few hours, we called our notes in, and a rewrite man turned those facts into a coherent narrative. Rewrite men, I learned, were the anonymous heroes in journalism’s trenches. By the time we returned, there was a story with Jeff’s and my bylines in the afternoon editions. Damn, I thought. Whole new world.
    The next day, Agrella’s hazing continued. That summer, Frank Fitzsimmons, the mobbed-up Teamsters president, had proposed obscenely large pay raises for himself and other top union officials. Agrella had an idea. “Hey, kid,” he said, calling me over to the desk. “Why don’t you go out and find some Teamsters and see how they feel about Fitzsimmons giving himself a raise.”
    I had no clue where to start, but also no inclination to ask. Agrella smelled my fear. He directed me to a set of loading docks on the Southwest Side, where he said I would find a bunch of Teamsters packing or unpacking trucks. What he didn’t mention was the obvious: regardless of their feelings, Teamsters were not terribly eager to be quoted speaking disparagingly of the guy at the top. They were angry about the pay raise, but not enough to risk life and limb.
    “Are you fucking nuts?” said one driver, pushing me off the running board of his truck, when I asked him for a reaction to the Fitzsimmons raise. “You trying to get me killed?” His was the standard response.
    Still, the only thing scarier to me than an angry Teamster was