Ray Hanania's Award Winning Columns Feb. 27, 1999 Go to Part II Return to main Welcome Page

"Forgive but Never Forget" A Former City Hall Reporter Remembers Jane Byrne's Turbulent Administration, 20 Years Later Part I of 3 Parts By Ray Hanania Jane Byrne had a whim of steel that turned Democratic politics upside down and changed Chicago journalism forever. She altered the relationship between reporters and politicians, and how the media defined and reported what was news. During the Byrne administration, reporters came to use terms like "revolving door," "snit," and "gang bang," and their editors pushed them to install computers to maintain their gait with Byrne's frenzied news making style. The basics of news reporting changed, and styles that were characteristic of the old Front Page era days of journalism quickly vanished. Vindictiveness, vengeance, personalities, and retribution were all evident but played down by the media during the administrations of her predecessors. But they became staple lexicon of the media reporting during Byrne's four years in office. Old traditions of aldermen giving reporters envelopes of cash, booze and other gratuities came to an abrupt end in the face of reform. And the oldest tradition of journalism, that reporters remained uninvolved in the news they covered, also changed. During the Byrne administration, it was common for reporters to interview each other about what Byrne had said and also what she had done. City Hall became the hottest beat in town. And City Hall reporters suddenly found themselves thrust into their own spotlight. In the Old Days Harry Golden sat at his Underwood typewriter, rapidly pecking away at its keys with the index fingers of both hands. It was late October, 1978 and Mayor Michael A. Bilandic was about to present his budget for the coming year to the City Council. Mouthing the words as they formed on the paper, Golden, the City Hall Press Room Dean, was planning to break one of his usual budget exclusives. He wasn't about to be bothered by anything else. "Hey. Janie's downstairs." Fran Spielman, WIND Radio's City Hall reporter and one of the best reporters at City Hall, yelled the words in near hysterical titter as she slammed down the telephone. The tip would always come from "Stash," an old Chicago cop whose political clout helped him land the cushy City Hall detail. "Going Harry?" asked Bob Crawford, who had covered City Hall almost as long as Golden. "Fuck her. She's a crazy bitch. I ain't wasting my time," Golden replied in a his graveled Brooklyn accent. His offensive and colorful language was always offered for affect and didn't really reflect his personal feelings. The other reporters scooped up their pens, pencils and microphones, and rushed out the door. It was the start of a new way of covering the news and Golden would have none of it. He sat at his desk refusing to pay homage to the former Consumer Sales commissioner, now the wife of a former newspaperman and colleague, Jay McMullen. Jane Byrne was an oddity. The center stage of a one ring circus. But it wasn't long before Golden would join the rest of the City Hall reporters in chase, analyzing Byrne's every word. For all the reporters, Byrne made great "news." It was something to charge up an otherwise predictable election, and to add a little excitement to the otherwise boring Bilandic administration. In three short months, much had changed. Bilandic was responsible for his own fall as Mayor of Chicago and leader of the powerful Chicago Democratic Machine. But a record-setting snowfall that pounded the city with more than 78 inches of snow from its first big fall on New Year's Eve all the way up until the sun shined bright on Primary Election Day, on February 27, made the implausible Bilandic defeat a certainty. Shaken by the first snowfall of 22 inches on New Year's Eve, Bilandic moved to "take charge," announcing plans to clear streets and warning residents to relocate their cars to nearby school parking lots he said had been cleared of snow. When Bilandic said he had cleared the school lots, everyone in the media believed him and only a vigilant night editor at the Chicago Tribune had decided to send reporters to check the plan. The Tribune discovered that the lots, three days later, were still buried deep in snow mounds. Bilandic's aides believed the problem was with the media coverage, not growing voter anger at the sudden burst of incompetence. A series of columns by Mike Royko that touted Byrne, had later been credited with giving Byrne a 35,000 vote edge to her campaign. Chief of Staff Tom Donovan arranged for Bilandic to tour the snow-smothered city by helicopter. He extended a private invitation to the fulltime City Hall reporters to meet with Bilandic "informally" in his office without all the TV cameras and non-beat press. As we walked into the mayor's private inner office on the 5th floor, we had to restrain our laughter. Sitting under a portrait of the Boss, Bilandic wore a dark blue knit cap on his head, not fully pulled over his cranium, but bunched up and tilting to one side, like he was one of Spanky's Gang. He also wore a long sleeved undershirt pulled over his heavily starched white shirt and blue patterned tie. The beige, bubbled cotton winter shirt appeared too tight, forcing his gold-cuffed linked shirt sleeves to hang out the ends. "You know," Bilandic began, "we tried but it's not our faults. It's the way they are making car locks. You can't get in there with a wire and unlock the locks so we couldn't move the cars. They don't make cars the way they used too." He looked right at Golden and began, "You know, Harry … " Golden nodded as if to get every word down. But I looked at Golden's narrow yellow notepad and saw he was simply sliding his pen back and forth creating dark lines. This went on for an hour. And as we rushed back to our desks, Golden blurted out loud, "I think that Janie Byrnes has driven him nuts. Aaaargh! Aaaargh! Aaaargh!" For seven weeks, controversy followed controversy. News that Bilandic had given his former pal and deputy Mayor Ken Sain a $90,000 contract to write a snow removal report that no one could find, rocked his administration. Trying to appease the city's white voters, Bilandic ordered CTA trains and buses to by-pass inner-city stops for outlying city neighborhoods and the suburbs. Blacks, Hispanics and other residents left standing on the CTA platforms watched helplessly as the trains rushed past. As the snow brought the world's busiest airport to its knees, Bilandic had his socialite wife Heather filming campaign commercials that touted O'Hare Airport's national awards. Meanwhile, passengers remained stranded and their luggage piled up in the airport lobbies like mounds of unplowed snow. Bilandic refused to believe polling that showed his popularity dropping and Byrne's popularity rising. At a luncheon for his top precinct captains, Bilandic explained his troubles by comparing himself to Jesus Christ and the Shah of Iran in a rambling speech that left his supporters dumbfounded. The truth is, Bilandic was a good mayor. He managed the city's Finance Committee under Mayor Daley with finesse and professionalism at a time when the city really worked. Byrne's actions pandered to the media. She shuffled the old rules of political coverage. She helped blur the dividing line between those who covered the news and those who rapidly became news. It was a conscious political strategy orchestrated with her husband's help. The political empire Byrne inherited after her election was mostly a collection of spineless rabble, aldermen conditioned to take orders in the comfort and largesse that drizzled upon them from the Mayor's office. A handful saw Byrne's turbulent style of governing as a cover for their own greed. Soon, aldermen forgot one of the Bosses' cardinal rules: "Don't talk to the press." Aldermen who had previously tip-toed past the Press Room avoiding notice during the Daley/Bilandic years, made themselves at home there during Byrne's first few years in office. These aldermen offered "insight" as reporters wrote their stories, accepted, in turn, reporter's suggestions on what would make good news stories that they quickly introduced to the City Council as laws, and even collected intelligence on our activities dutifully reported back to Byrne. Although Bilandic had never entered the Press Room, located on the second floor between the elevator banks and the City Council chamber, he did pause at the door briefly as he walked to participate in Byrne's inauguration. In contrast, Byrne made the Press Room a frequent stop on her way to Council meetings, at least in the beginning. Her last visit occurred while she defended her actions in the city's first ever fire fighter's strike. As she paused to get a paper cup of water from the city-owned water cooler, she looked up and noticed her picture ringed like a dartboard with large red circles. She crushed the cup and abruptly spun around on her three-inch stiletto heels never to return again. But media manipulation was always a major part of Byrne's strategy and she didn't have to visit the Press Room. The fact was Byrne was a media creature. Most of her top aides were all former journalists. It was choreographed, though maybe poorly, by McMullen, who had spent years in the very same City Hall Press Room. McMullen understood the nature of the beast and believed he could force reporters to bow to his wife's power. In public, they did. But privately, they harbored a deep resentment against Byrne, and rattled off their colorful impiety from behind closed doors. Unlike with prior mayors, reporters developed close personal contacts with Byrne that in turn nurtured deep feelings that were later reflected in their reporting. That affected how Byrne responded. It was a vicious, uncontrollable cycle. Byrne's style of personal, rapid-fire politics tore the scribes from the comforts of their slow-paced Underwoods, and forced editors to install newly emerging high-tech computer systems to rush the news to their editorial offices. Although most of the reporters made the transition, only one reporter, Harry Golden Jr., clung to his traditional methods of Front Page era journalism almost to his death. Golden dictated his "exclusives" with a nasal impertinence by telephone from the confines of a small closet hidden from the Press Room. The sanctity of his scoop was betrayed by his loud, raspy Brooklyn accent that echoed through the halls into the straining ears of newspaper rivals. When he didn't have an exclusive, Golden would ferociously bark into his telephone demanding "rewrite" to take down his words. Byrne gleefully pushed the reporters out from the shadows of the sidelines where they observed in comfort and protection, into the bright spotlight of celebrity and controversy. As one of the seven fulltime reporters stationed at the Press Room when Fighting Jane burst through the barricades and stormed City Hall, I can tell you firsthand that the spotlight burned bright. Jane Byrne's unusual style of "committing news" - a term reporters openly associated with breaking the law - quickly forced the press assigned to the Hall to increase dramatically. We went from seven desks in the Press Room to 18, and from two small rooms to four all in a matter of months. Byrne harbored a hit list of people who ridiculed her during the campaign. She got personally involved in the stories reporters wrote, and took the criticism equally as personal. She tried to ban some reporters from the Press Room and vowed "never ever" to talk to others again, including myself. She relished in humiliating patronage workers who worked against her, transferred police who campaigned for Bilandic to cemetery-shifts in crime-ridden inner city neighborhoods, and punished those she overheard criticizing her looks. Twenty years later, it's hard to imagine that any of this really happened in Chicago. In the Den of the Real Grey Wolves It was Celeste Jurkovich, Bilandic's press secretary, who introduced me to the six full time reporters in the Press Room in October 1978. Few of them took notice of me as they hammered out their stories on old typewriters, provided free of charge by the city's Purchasing Department. In fact, everything in the Press Room had been "donated" by city taxpayers. Telephones, televisions, desks, chairs, water cooler (with hot and cold water spouts for coffee) and filing cabinets. That reflected the media's attitude at the time. Jurkovich turned to Golden, who sat at his typewriter pecking away with his index fingers, always vocalizing the words out loud as he typed. "He's been here 10 years. The Dean," Jurkovich told me with a whisper. Golden glanced at her, annoyed by the intrusion. When she left, I walked up to Golden to introduce myself and tried to break the ice with this question: "Why would anyone want to be in this room for 10 years?" Golden's eyes opened wide and his nostrils flared. He turned from his typewriter and confronted me, yelling in what sounded like a foreign accent at first, "Who da hell arrrre youuuu'd. Youuuuu'd int even know who I am." The tribe went wild. The Tribune's jovial Bob Davis sat back in his chair laughing and WBBM Radio's Bob Crawford covered his mouth. Spielman urged Golden to "Give him hell, 'Arry." And WMAQ Radio's Bill Cameron just shook his head. City News Bureau reporter Joe Kolina simply grabbed my hand and walked me to an abandoned desk and telephone that I later learned had belonged to McMullen. I quickly figured my days were numbered. Jane Byrne was a circus distraction, and real news came only few and far between. When I arrived at City Hall, the big "scoop" was reported by the Tribune's Bob Davis. It was Bilandic's announcement that he would personally run in the 10 K Beverly Marathon. You could set your clock by City Hall news. Fortunately, events outside were changing so fast that Golden never remembered that introduction. He and I became close friends and later colleagues at the same paper. Golden took me by the arm and showed me what he called the most important possession in the Press Room, a small copper key kept in the top drawer of Bob Davis' desk. The key opened the television cabinet door that no one seemed to ever watch and that was always locked. Inside were a dozen bottles of booze and whiskey, stored there from Christmases past. Bagged bottles of Crown Royal. Chevas Regal. Stolichnaya. All brought in and donated to the reporters by members of the City Council. Aldermen would call up and ask how many reporters were in the press room, and Golden would meticulously type up a list that included the seven regulars and about 10 other half-time reporters who wandered in and out during high news days. Roman Pucinski would always come in with six bottles of a Polish made vodka. Golden said no one drank it, but he often used it to clean his winter stained shoes. And on the inside of the cabinet door was a quote from McMullen that read, "You can't walk around City Hall without getting hit by an occasional piece of falling graft." The cabinet represented the old days when booze drove reporter's stories. But some of the "old days" were still around, and booze wasn't all that reporters got. Christmas 1978 was a real sight! Reporters who only came to the Hall for news conference, hung around the press room at Christmas time. I watched as a steady stream of aldermen walked into the Press Room bearing all kinds of gifts, usually bottles of booze. Only Alderman Vito Marzullo, the City Council's Dean, entered with something else. He handed little white envelopes into the hands of two of the reporters. One of the visiting reporters looked at me, and whispered in broken Italian, "omerta," the Mafia's code of silence. I had only been there a few weeks, so who was I to judge? Aldermen brought in scarves, sweaters, and trinkets from their campaigns like buttons, calendars, belts, shirts and jackets with their campaign logos. Every Alderman brought in a calendar. But it was the calendar of First Ward Ald. Fred Roti that was nailed to the wall. During Palmer House renovations, Roti managed to "procure" a color television set that was brought to the Press Room, replacing a broken set. Golden himself had been a longtime alcoholic, boozing it up with former journalist colleagues like McMullen and Ed Schriber. Golden retold the story countless times of how O. W. Wilson had dispatched a police car to pick him and Schriber off the floor of the basement bar at Counsellor's Row across the street from City Hall during a late night drinking binge. The police car drove Golden to his Glen Ellyn home. Later, he broke his alcoholism, drinking a dozen cans of Coca Cola each day and savoring the sweet sounds of Opera. He was so obsessed with drinking Coca Cola that he would leave a can half empty on his desk, and pick up where he left off early the next morning. Bilandic's Press Office had delivered the water cooler to the Press Room in part to let Golden keep his six-packs chilled. At first, Byrne tried to top that gratuity and offered to have a pop Machine installed in the Press Room. Golden objected. He purchased the cans cheaper on his way to the train in the morning. Byrne's people even went as far as to offer cable hook-up, during the early days when media coverage was favorable to her. Byrne's aides handed out to reporters packs of entry tickets and food coupons to the new "Byrne-ized" ChicagoFest celebration in 1979 and 1980. But by December 1980, Christmas for the reporters had all but been cancelled and media coverage of Byrne was no longer favorable. Canceling Christmas seemed odd. But it was ordered by McMullen who was fond of saying, "Christmas is for kids, cops and reporters." ChicagoFest tickets later came quietly and directly into the hands of selected, favored reporters. Maybe that's why many reporters didn't like Jane Byrne. Her promises of "reform" certainly would bring an end to the comforts of the City Hall beat where news came down in the form of poorly written press releases or infrequent whispered telephone calls. A Little Old Lady: Byrne on Campaign I was a neighborhood reporter for the twice weekly Southtown Economist Newspapers when I first met Jane Byrne. The Southtown was a broad sheet that had a long tradition of following Chicago's White community westward. It's main circulation base was the city's Southwest Side and the growing Southwest Suburbs. Byrne had already announced her candidacy for mayor and was familiar with my newspaper. As all first-time candidates do, Byrne focused on the community and weekly press to establish public exposure. Byrne was lobbying the "Bogan Broads," the very vocal anti-segregation school activists, at a meeting at Cezar's Inn in Burbank. Byrne was polite. She wore a dingy light brown pageboy styled wig that seemed to flop to the side as she spoke, and a heavy overcoat coat that looked like it had been yanked from a Salvation Army rack. She clutched a file bursting with press releases, documents and Byzantine scenarios she insisted proved her charges of corruption against Bilandic. She repeated her campaign pledges to open up city government, to focus on the neighborhoods, to emphasize education and to be sensitive to the needs of the "little people." Us. I wasn't sure why she brought that message to the Southwest Side which was considered a strong Bilandic base and Machine enclave. But Jane Byrne took nothing for granted. And she was courageous in her campaigning. She frequently came to City Hall, hoping to create headlines by confronting Bilandic. His deputy chief bodyguard, Mike Marano, was on alert for her presence, and the few times she slipped past his net and got close to the Mayor, Marano shoved her aside forcefully, warning her that she might get arrested. It was Bilandic administration arrogance that gave way to meanness on the part of his supporters. At a 38th Ward rally for Bilandic, that Byrne was not invited to attend, Precinct Spokesman Dick Valentino, introduced the missing Byrne as "mayoral candidate and three martini ding-a-ling." Valentino was set to become the city's new Revenue Director with a fat $10,000 pay hike under Bilandic after the election. Valentino, like many others, was mighty arrogant and fearless in pushing around this little lady who tried to make headlines. Maybe that's why many reporters, like myself, started to feel sorry for her. She sure showed us. Byrne's first official act as mayor was to re-assign Marano to a midnight street shift in a crime plagued ghetto. Her second act as mayor was to fire Valentino. During the campaign, administration loyal police held contests to see who could issue the most parking violations to McMullen's car, which was frequently parked near Byrne's Chestnut Street apartment. After her election victory, many of these same police officers were put on her hit list. Bilandic's aides even called in county allies like Morgan Finley and cautioned them about giving work to McMullen, who had lost his newspaper job. Finley withdrew the job offer to McMullen in the face of Bilandic's demand, a story Byrne often recounted to reporters who didn't listen during the early days of the campaign. The vindictiveness against Byrne was there during the Bilandic administration, but it went unreported. The Southtown decided to open a beat at City Hall in 1978. When I learned no one at the newspaper thought enough of the boring City Hall beat to volunteer, I did. Jane Byrne had peaked my interest. Although I was a long time student of political professor and author Milton Rakove, I was too naïve and I believed that Byrne might shake things up. Go to Part II (Ray Hanania covered City Hall from 1977 until 1992 and is currently a political columnist with the Southwest News-herald Newspaper. The winner of three Society of Professional journalism Lisagor Awards, Hanania was named Best Ethnic American Columnist in America by the New America Media. freelance writer and Chicago author.)   (C) 1999, Hanania Enterprises Ltd., All Rights Reserved PO Box 2127, Orland Park, IL 60462, USA www.RadioChicagoland.com For faster response, email rayhanania@comcast.net

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