The Aftermath—Harold Washington Defeats Jane Byrne
On Saturday, June 27, just one week after the Tribune laid out the details of the previously shielded transition report, it was left to the Hot Type section of the Chicago Reader to try to pick up the pieces. [...]
Will She or Won’t She?
At first, this was all taken very seriously. Tribune Managing Editor William Jones said in Monday’s Tribune: There is no vendetta and the mayor knows it. The Tribune will continue to publish the news without first seeking approval from [...]
Rally ‘Round the First Amendment
Sunday morning, husband Jay McMullen spoke to Bob Crawford, longtime City Hall correspondent, on WBBM radio. When Crawford raised the question of the mayor being sued and losing, McMullen opined, “At least we will have made our point.” McMullen [...]
“Innuendo, Lies, Smears, Character Assassinations and Male Chauvinist”
The upshot of this frantic deadline mission was that the early editions of the Sunday Tribune that hit the streets Saturday evening had the story blasted over its front page and spilling into multiple inside pages, and the Sun-Times [...]
Rob Warden
I had met journalist Rob Warden both through my law practice, and separately knew him from frequenting Riccardo’s bar after working hours. Warden was a former foreign correspondent in the Middle East for the Chicago Daily News and had [...]
Mayor Jane Byrne’s Secret Transition Report
Because Byrne had run as a reform candidate, after the primary election she quickly sought advice from a panel of knowledgeable experts pulled together for a transition team headed by a Northwestern University professor, Louis Masotti. Masotti had taken [...]
Mayor Byrne’s 90-Day Report Card
In the 1975 Democratic primary election for mayor, the Chicago Tribune had taken a pass on the endorsement of any of the candidates, saying it was a question of, “whether to stay aboard the rudderless galleon with rotting timbers [...]
The Machine Weakens after Daley’s Death
With the anti-Daley vote thus split, Daley was reelected in the Democratic primary election in February 1975 with 58 percent of the vote. Singer came in second with 29 percent, Newhouse with 8 percent, and Hanrahan 5 percent. In [...]
Jane Byrne’s vs. The Chicago Tribune
In June 1980, as Jane Byrne was starting her second year as Chicago’s first woman mayor, a strange media brouhaha briefly transfixed the city. She had become enraged at a Chicago Tribune story and in a fit of anger [...]
