Let’s begin with an ending.
It’s my turn now to sign off and call it a day.
Gone are the days of drinking Cuban distilled whiskey in Havana with Fidel Castro, who insisted on yak’s milk at dinner, and hanging out with a down-to-earth Hillary Clinton and talking pantyhose.
It’s been quite a ride; a 56-year career as a Chicago newspaper reporter and columnist navigating the power of the word; the slippery slope of the question; the danger of the answer; and finding the extraordinary exclusive when you least expect it.
Now, after decades of deadlines and monkeyshines, I give thanks for the extraordinary luck of becoming a journalist in 1967 when four city newspapers battled for headlines; and later crossing the street from the old Chicago Tribune building to work at the Sun-Times 20 years later.
I’ve been so lucky.
Leaving a $5,300 a year job as a high school political science teacher to take a $3,600 per annum job as a street reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago in 1967 was the best career decision I ever made.
It was then a world percolating in snail-mail before email, computers and cellphones; editors barking orders amidst the din of telephones ringing; typewriters clacking and the loud sucking sound of pneumatic tubes dispatching newscopy.
If you weren’t on the street, desk reporters were hugging heavy, black desk phones while someone yelled “copy, dammit, copy!”
Where else would you find a powder puffed, white-haired, grizzled old telephone switchboard operator who called herself “Ruby Ryan” doubling as the office manager’s snitch — or your guardian angel.
Where else would you find a manager who sprayed his desk everyday in disinfectant?
It was my new home even though legendary City News editor A. A. Dornfeld’s order to “Check it out!” was sometimes preceded by the words “Girlie” and “Chickie.”
Job No. 2
In early 1969, the Chicago Tribune came calling, introducing me to a new world of “hot” type; galley proofs; page proofs; subheads; four heads; three heads; stories written in takes; a library called a morgue; and editors screaming “hat and coat” — a code signaling a fast-moving story being tossed to a reporter.
Newbie hires Gene Siskel and Clarence Page joined me in the Trib’s neighborhood news section, where we set pica type for our own stories.
Now a top columnist, Page jokingly introduced himself as “Roland J. Pyork,” and showed me the magic of Chicago’s jazz venues.
The tall, gangly Siskel, talked ad-finitem about quirky luck involving a real estate purchase of a tiny slice of land between two buildings in New York he sold for a fortune. No surprise this future movie maven, who would purchase actor John Travolta’s legendary “Saturday Night Fever” film suit, would rent it out worldwide for a fortune.
Back then, it was a newspaper era of getting it first and getting it fast; getting it right before you got it wrong; and hustling before you got busted.
A time when snoops and snitches, scoops and tellers of tall tales lined up over cocktails at the old Riccardo’s restaurant bar or at the Billy Goat Tavern, a convenient short walk from the Tribune and the Sun-Times, to talk about their “scoops.”
Reporters pitched darts and drank beer with a “source” at O’Rouke’s pub in Old Town run by a bartender named “Jay” — a favorite place to spot legendary movie maestro Roger Ebert interviewing celluloid bigshots … or fall off a barstool after one too many drinks … like everyone else back then.
It was a time before the Watergate scandal hit and the rush to become a part of a new breed of advocacy journalists.
Soon, a story I wrote about “Ziggy the Elephant,” inhospitably chained to a stall wall at Brookfield Zoo for decades due to a “bad temper,” went international, and got me a ticket out of the Neighborhood News section and into the main Trib newsroom.
Self-assignment on vacation time could pay off. I traveled to Northern Ireland with my mother, and sent back stories featuring interviews done at the barricades between the Catholic and Protestant sections of war-torn Derry. I remember the smell of rotting flowers still on the graves of those killed on Bloody Sunday — Jan. 30, 1972 — when British soldiers killed unarmed civilians during a protest march.
(The upshot: I was only paid $250 total by the Trib’s foreign desk, but got a byline.)
In 1973, I snuck into Wounded Knee, South Dakota, during the American Indian Movement (A.I.M) occupation where a U.S. marshal had been shot and paralyzed.
It was an international story, but it seemed almost comical at times, including when Brit reporters showed up in Savile Row suits asking to be taken to an AIM leader; when group leader Russell Banks opened his trailer door holding a G.I. Joe comic book; when I was questioned by an armed Native American guard listening to “You’re So Vain” on his walkie talkie; and when watching a Chicago TV cameraman teach a group of them how to butcher a stolen cow. Oh, and there was no food at Wounded Knee.
Pulitzer nominee
There were two Pulitzer Prize nominations, but no cigar.
- Scoop du jour (1978): Finding and interviewing a survivor of the Rev. James Jones “White Night” cult massacre in Jonestown, Guyana, who claimed the event was murder, not suicide, and that many of the victims were led to the cyanide laced vats of Kool-Aid at gunpoint. We found him hiding near a bed in a hotel in the nation’s capital, Georgetown. I was nominated along with colleagues Tim McNulty and Val Mazzenga.
- Scoop du horrible (1977): Going undercover for a year in a child pornography expose in Chicago, which resulted in our testimony before the U.S. House and Senate judiciary committees and early national child porn legislation. A young Ald. Ed Burke, a former cop, then pitched anti-porn legislation in Chicago. I was nominated with Ray Moseley and George Bliss.
Going rogue…
Leaving the Tribune In 1979 to become the press secretary to Mayor Jane Byrne became a crash course in city government. It was short, not sweet being on the other side of the pencil, and I was hired back to the Tribune in 1980.
Going crazy…
In January 1981, I was sent to cover the return of the American hostages taken at the U.S. embassy in Iran years earlier, who eventually wound up at a hospital in Weisbaden, Germany. I had visited the hospital weeks earlier during a false alarm.
To be safe, I palmed a phone booth number on the hospital wing where the hostages would eventually be held. It worked.
Someone eventually answered the phone and later gave me an account of the hostages’ angry response when outgoing President Jimmy Carter, who had failed to rescue them earlier, visited the hospital. We now had a story.
The stink before Inc. …
I had earlier pitched a political tip sheet of news and scoops to the Trib after I left the Byrne administration. Nobody loves politics like Chicagoans, and I now had major City Hall sources.
Instead, in 1981, the Tribune’s new editor James Squires asked me to do the political part of a new column with three bylines including an entertainment reporter and its own editor.
Pissed, I suggested they nickname the column “Inc.”
Enter the Sun-Times…
In late 1986, I became the vanishing ink at the Tribune’s now hugely popular “Inc.” column when new Sun-Times publisher and president Robert “Bob” Page came calling, offering me my own “Sneed” column five days a week that would be a brokerage of political scoops, hard news, royal news, celeb news and a little of, what was everybody up to?
I bit.
Thankfully, Oprah’s show had just begun shooting in Chicago that year and the celebs were sweet fodder for column items as they dined on red sauce at Alex Dana’s Rosebud on Taylor Street or at RL’s eatery quietly in a booth.
It was like catching fish in a bucket of water. When Oprah left town, so did the Tinseltown twaddle.
Movie maestro Roger Ebert, adept at early tech, was rarely in the office, but advised me on help via the entertainment front; Brit author Andrew Morton, the author of Princess Diana’s tell all exclusive, called when in town; and the late Royal Watcher James Whitaker’s wife, Yvonne, was a constant feed.
Covering the royal weddings of Prince Andew (Sarah Ferguson), Prince William (Kate Middleton) and then Prince Charles (Camilla) was fascinating. When Princess Diana died, I was sent to cover her funeral by our Brit editor Nigel Wade, and I watched the flowers grow into decaying mounds outside Kensington Palace from my hotel room. I got sucked into the sorrow along with everyone else.
Bad timing…
Insisting on being the last reporter to interview former U.S.S.R. President Mikhail Gorbachev during his last visit to Chicago in 2012 so I could have more time to ask questions was a bad move.
It was the interview of a lifetime, but he was tired and while telling him I had recently visited the Russian grave of his beloved wife, Raisa, Gorbachev abruptly rose and headed to the bathroom … ending the interview.
Great timing…
After writing a front page column in May 2015 on then presidential wannabe Donald Trump’s huge waitlist for tickets at the City Club of Chicago for an upcoming luncheon, Trump wound up yelling: “Where’s Sneed?” when I didn’t show up.
That “slight” became the beginning of many, many calls with Trump and the reality he was going to make news no matter what he said even when he told me … after a waaaay too long pause … that he would “consider” making a woman his veep — which made national news.
It was also a hoot listening to former Bears coach Mike Ditka and Trump chatting it up on a three-way call. I’ll never tell.
Sneedless to say…
My beloved pals/columnist/reporters Anne Keegan, Dorothy Collin, Carol Ashkinaze, Bobbie Goldblatt, Karen Coughlin, Steve Crews, John R. Thompson and Trib photographer Val Mazzenga, are now gone. I miss them so much.
The love for my former Sun-Times “legmen”/assistants is boundless, including Mary Fuschi, Tammy Bickley, Amanda Beeler, Annie Sweeney, Ben Goldberger, Diana Novak and Francesca Gattuso. I’m especially proud that former assistants Frank Main, a Pulitzer Prize winning crime reporter; Rummana Hussain, a columnist and editorial board member; “My” Mitch Dudek, who has taken over the ever-important profiles/obituaries beat; and Dave Newbart, the managing editor for News, will be ensuring the paper’s future for years to come.
No way to do a daily column of 10 to 13 items plus political scoops without their help and tech skills … and my amazing sources.
The Chicago Sun-Times will always be in my heart … Time to write a book.
But now it’s time for a vodka — on the rocks, in the rocks, around the rocks and under the rocks!
Cheers!