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Authors: David Axelrod
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the prospect of returning to Agrella from my first solo assignment without a story. Finally, I found a few guys bitter (or crazy) enough to challenge their corrupt and menacing union boss on the record.
Such were my days that summer, a steady and varied diet of challenges, each meant as a test and almost all of them an education. I loved the paper, and like the eight other aspiring reporters who worked as
Tribune
interns that summer, I desperately wanted to stay. History said the
Trib
would keep only a few of us, and I was bound and determined to be among them.
It was a diverse class, and everyone’s assumption was that the paper’s selections would reflect that diversity. So I found myself competing all summer with a bright, young Jewish guy named Paul Weingarten. We each quietly assumed that, between us, it would be one or the other, but not both. If Paul worked extra hours, I made sure I put in at least as many. Whenever there was a tough or odious assignment, and volunteers were requested, our hands shot up in unison. I read his excellent copy with a mixture of admiration and dread, and pushed myself that much harder. At summer’s end, we were shocked to learn that we had
both
been hired. “I just couldn’t choose between you guys,” Bernie explained.
So began my formative years at the
Tribune
, which at the time still represented what was best about the journalism of that era. Though my colleagues were all different, most shared one quality: an unquenchable thirst for a good yarn. They viewed reporting as a calling. As products of one of America’s most competitive newspaper towns, they lived to get it first and to get it right.
Our editors would be as enthusiastic about a good story as their reporters, often sending congratulatory notes and handing out small bonuses for scoops or simply a well-told story. They also were fearless, or so it seemed to me; always willing—maybe even delighting—in taking the high and mighty down a peg when they deserved it.
There were plenty of role models, but none more so than Bernie, the city editor, whose guidance meant everything to a kid still reeling from the loss of his dad and looking to find his way. When I joined the staff, he sat me down and explained the facts of life to a young man in a hurry.
“I know you love politics; that’s what impressed us,” he said. “And the truth is you probably already know more about the committeemen and aldermen and all that jazz than ninety-nine percent of the people in this newsroom. But there’s a lot more to reporting and a lot more to life. So starting next week, you’re on nights, six p.m. to two a.m.”
Bernie was right. I would have loved simply to step into the political beat, but I was twenty-one years old, and a reporter at one of the biggest papers in the country. Who was I to gripe? And as it turned out, that nightside stint was exactly what he promised: another layer of my education. Murder, mayhem, and disasters, both man-made and the natural variety, became my beat, as that’s pretty much the bread and butter of the late-night shift.
The night city editor was a former Green Beret named Frank Blatchford, who loved nothing more than a grisly crime or gruesome catastrophe because they would put him and his team to the test. The more horrific the disaster, the more blissful Frank would become. Around the
Tribune
, such calamities were known as Blatchford Brighteners. I had my share, each a learning experience about large notions such as evil, heroism, and the perils of life in the big city.
I covered an elevated train that overshot the tracks and fell twenty feet to the downtown street below, scattering bodies in its wreckage. Stunned pedestrians ran from person to person, trying to identify the living to offer help.
A massive fire broke out at a Commonwealth Edison facility, where wreckage pinned a fireman to the upper wall of a huge, burning plant. An elderly police surgeon climbed into a cherry picker, rose
Such were my days that summer, a steady and varied diet of challenges, each meant as a test and almost all of them an education. I loved the paper, and like the eight other aspiring reporters who worked as
Tribune
interns that summer, I desperately wanted to stay. History said the
Trib
would keep only a few of us, and I was bound and determined to be among them.
It was a diverse class, and everyone’s assumption was that the paper’s selections would reflect that diversity. So I found myself competing all summer with a bright, young Jewish guy named Paul Weingarten. We each quietly assumed that, between us, it would be one or the other, but not both. If Paul worked extra hours, I made sure I put in at least as many. Whenever there was a tough or odious assignment, and volunteers were requested, our hands shot up in unison. I read his excellent copy with a mixture of admiration and dread, and pushed myself that much harder. At summer’s end, we were shocked to learn that we had
both
been hired. “I just couldn’t choose between you guys,” Bernie explained.
So began my formative years at the
Tribune
, which at the time still represented what was best about the journalism of that era. Though my colleagues were all different, most shared one quality: an unquenchable thirst for a good yarn. They viewed reporting as a calling. As products of one of America’s most competitive newspaper towns, they lived to get it first and to get it right.
Our editors would be as enthusiastic about a good story as their reporters, often sending congratulatory notes and handing out small bonuses for scoops or simply a well-told story. They also were fearless, or so it seemed to me; always willing—maybe even delighting—in taking the high and mighty down a peg when they deserved it.
There were plenty of role models, but none more so than Bernie, the city editor, whose guidance meant everything to a kid still reeling from the loss of his dad and looking to find his way. When I joined the staff, he sat me down and explained the facts of life to a young man in a hurry.
“I know you love politics; that’s what impressed us,” he said. “And the truth is you probably already know more about the committeemen and aldermen and all that jazz than ninety-nine percent of the people in this newsroom. But there’s a lot more to reporting and a lot more to life. So starting next week, you’re on nights, six p.m. to two a.m.”
Bernie was right. I would have loved simply to step into the political beat, but I was twenty-one years old, and a reporter at one of the biggest papers in the country. Who was I to gripe? And as it turned out, that nightside stint was exactly what he promised: another layer of my education. Murder, mayhem, and disasters, both man-made and the natural variety, became my beat, as that’s pretty much the bread and butter of the late-night shift.
The night city editor was a former Green Beret named Frank Blatchford, who loved nothing more than a grisly crime or gruesome catastrophe because they would put him and his team to the test. The more horrific the disaster, the more blissful Frank would become. Around the
Tribune
, such calamities were known as Blatchford Brighteners. I had my share, each a learning experience about large notions such as evil, heroism, and the perils of life in the big city.
I covered an elevated train that overshot the tracks and fell twenty feet to the downtown street below, scattering bodies in its wreckage. Stunned pedestrians ran from person to person, trying to identify the living to offer help.
A massive fire broke out at a Commonwealth Edison facility, where wreckage pinned a fireman to the upper wall of a huge, burning plant. An elderly police surgeon climbed into a cherry picker, rose
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