Chicago and the Blagojevich Scandal

Talking with Democratic Party strategist Rich Masters was especially fun for me because Rich is from Illinois and I lived in Chicago, where after receiving my master’s degree from the Medill School at Northwestern, worked at my first reporting jobs at the City News Bureau of Chicago and the Chicago’s American. For a young reporter it was like being part of Hecht and MacArthur’s The Front Page. Watching the Mayor Daley machine control everything was awe inspiring. The political power and corruption throughout the city government was a guilty pleasure. In fact, it was rumored that Chicago was so much fun to cover as a reporter, that reporters who were told the newspaper was going to send them to cover Washington, would respond, “What did I do wrong? Why am I being punished?” In any other city in the country, reporters would kill for the opportunity to cover the nation’s capital. Even back to the early years of the 20th Century, Chicago mayors and aldermen were taking bribes and ending up in jail.