City News Bureau of Chicago has forged the careers of hundreds of America’s best reporters and editors.
That ended Saturday night when the 24-hour-a-day-every-day-of-every-year wire service closed after 115 years of unbroken service to the public. It was a victim of progress.
Two editors of the Chicago Tribune, Clayton Kirkpatrick and Jack Fuller, were City News vets. So was Mike Royko, Seymour Hersh, Kurt Vonnegut and at least eight Pulitzer Prize winners, to point out just a few.
I started there in 1965 and joined the Tribune a year later. My City News “class” that year included Michael McGuire, Michael Kilian, John Maclean, Paul McGrath, Michael Robinson, Thomas Moffett, John McHugh, Bruce Ingersoll, William Currie, Phillip Wattley, Michael Smith and Peter Gorner.
There are two Pulitzer Prize winners in that bunch, which includes 12 Tribune reporters and editors at one time or another.
We were trained by great editors and characters such as Larry Mulay, Arnold Dornfeld, Walter Ryberg, Clarence Jensen, William Garrett, John Noonan, Paul Zimbrakos and Wayne Klatt.
It was Dornfeld who coined the City News motto: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”
Less well-known but equally biting was a second Dornfeld demand: “Don’t tell me what you think, tell me what you know.”
At City News learning the importance of getting facts straight was simply a matter of survival. If you didn’t learn quickly, you were gone.
Wherever reporters gather on big stories, someone there is a former City News “kid.” Like ex-Marines, newsmen and women from CNB never forget where they learned their craft. When they move on from City News, they leave their innocence behind, but they tuck a piece of the place into their hearts ever after.
Future reporters and editors will do just fine presenting the news of the day, but none of them will be from City News and that’s too bad for the public.
