Falling In Love Again with “The Paper?” Amazing Found Hidden Talent Makes Me Want to Believe in Journalism Again
by John Kass
May 29, 2025
I think I know what I sound like when writing about the broken state of journalism in Chicago and nationally:
I sound broken.
And cynical, exhausted, depressed, and battered from having seen too much. Like some old Robert Mitchum channeling Raymond Chandler in a private-eye monologue from a cheap hotel room at three o’clock in the morning.
Downtown police sirens blaring in the hours before dawn. Drunks laughing maniacally. A woman shouting in some hallway.
And I’m using a voice sweetened by Camels and whiskey and one broken heart, because I loved journalism so very much and thought it was so important to all of us.
Then came my decision to liken journos to starving hyenas and boss whores.
I was angry.
Now I’m looking up, smiling at blue skies and sunny days.
Because I’ve just found a new talent at “the paper” hidden in a story by reporter Alice Yin that gives me brand new hope for journalism. It was like the first flower of spring pushing up through the last snow.
Yes. You read that right. I’m really excited by a new talent at “the paper.”
The saga begins with the racism always flowing from the mouth of Mayor Panic Attacks, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who used the Memorial Day weekend to herald Africa Day.
Why? He’s a crafty Marxist who I sometimes refer to as Mayor Black Lenin. And he wants the dim witted among his critics to attack his push for Africa Day, so he can generate black support for himself.
And you thought I’m cynical? But where did I learn it? Forty years covering Chicago politics at “the paper.”
Johnson is in deep political trouble because he can’t manage the city, and because of his awkward handling of a series of issues–from Chicago violent crime to his spending precious city resources on Joe Biden’s illegal migrants, to his kneeling before his bosses at the Chicago Teacher’s Union. All this has cratered his public support, which now stands between 6 and 14 percent.
But he’s found an answer.
Everything is black in Johnson’s political world. He brags about using race as criterion for hiring and promoting at City Hall.
Most people who aren’t blind Jacobins or Preckwinkle commies can see this for what it is: pure racism.
And now that he’s panicking with a tiny approval rating, he’s decided to play his blacker than black card by violating the federal Civil Rights Act.
Like a black George Wallace. But now Johnson’s big fat mouth has put him in a federal investigation.
“There are some detractors that will push back on me and say, ‘The only thing that the mayor talks about is the hiring of Black people,’” he said. “No. What I’m saying is, when you hire our people, we always look out for everybody else.”
Now let me get to the point of all this, the reason why I’m rethinking the animosity I once held for ‘the paper.’
It was the gem hidden in this story by Alice Yin:
“Why wouldn’t I speak to Black Chicago? Why wouldn’t I?” the mayor challenged reporters when asked about the DOJ probe last week. “It would be shameful if I were to repeat the sins of those who have been in this position before because they did not speak enough to Black Chicago.”
You might be forgiven for thinking this was just another leftist screed by a demonstrably left-wing paper, slavishly determined to cover for Johnson.
But then I got to the point of Ms. Yin’s story that gave me hope for Chicago journalism.
It was a passage involving the notorious 10th Ward Chicago Ald. Fast Eddie Vrdolyak.
And I thought in a sea of racial politics and left-wing race baiters, this was truth.
In the city of lies comes a truth?
From the Trib story:
Former Ald. Ed Vrdolyak, a ringleader of the white opposition to Mayor Harold Washington in the 1980s, once laid out Chicago’s ethnic political principles in stark terms, as an outsider taking stock of the Daley clan’s decades of iron control of the city’s levers of power.
“You’ve got to understand something about the Irish, the Daley Irish,” Vrdolyak told the Tribune in 1996. “It’s the Irish first, and everybody else is a Polack. Everybody. I’m Croatian, and to them I was a Polack. The Blacks are Polacks. Latinos, everybody … are Polacks. That’s how they are.”
Ald. Walter Burnett, 27th, the most veteran sitting member of the City Council, chuckled recently when he heard the quote. “Isn’t that something? This is real talk in Chicago.”
“We keep going through this evolution of who gets the short end of the stick,” said Burnett, who is Black. “And when you have been oppressed and neglected for such a long time, you know you are going to continue to try and get more. It’s just a natural reaction.”
During the 20th century, European immigrants came to Chicago in waves, with each group starting from scratch when it came to amassing economic and political might. Longtime white Chicagoans often didn’t accept the newcomers at first, but eventually the burgeoning populations of Irish, Italians, Polish and others established their own unique enclaves across the city.
That is an amazing quote, isn’t it?
That Vrdolyank quote about the Daley Irish on one side and the Polaks on the other and Ald. Burnett saying, “This is real talk in Chicago.”
That is real talk.
But the story does veer into what the left calls “context” but what the rest of us call “excuses for idiots.”
The idiot is the George Wallace of mayors, Brandon Johnson.
Yes, Chicago has had black mayors. Harold Washingon, Eugene Sawyer, Lori Lightfoot and now, Johnson.
The mayor is black, the president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners is black, the chief judge is black, the police chief and the powerful teacher union president. The CTA boss who wouldn’t use the CTA was black. There are no excuses anymore.
But yes indeed, Ald. Burnett, that quote is real Chicago talking.
Why hide it? It speaks to a truth that all Chicago can feel in its bones.
But who found it?
The reporter who wrote it down has an ear for truth, and when I read it, I just knew that whoever it was must have a bright future in the business. And I would like to support that reporter, come hell or high water.
We need some real truth telling around here.
But who quoted Vrdolyak?
The Tribune didn’t say who developed that quote, who found it gleaming in the ground, like a diamond.
And here I am—stupid me, trying to fall back in love with the paper again—but the paper wouldn’t tell me.
Why so secret?
The mysterious quote was linked to another piece that used the same Vrdolyak quote by a WBEZ reporter, but like the Alice Yin story, the WBEZ reporter wouldn’t tell readers about the original, authentic source.
Why?
And I wanted to get to the original authentic source, the way I was taught to do many years ago at the Tribune. You get to the bottom of things before you begin to make judgements for the reader.
I wanted to get to the bottom of it. I imagined the reporter was wise enough to shut up and listen. And full of curiosity. So many journos don’t want to listen and have lost curiosity and replaced that with the critical newsroom survival skill leftist dogma that lectures their readers and turns them off.
And I imagined that reporter as having wise eyes, but also sensitive enough to convey a sense of curiosity while wondering at the full tapestry of American politics.
And finally, after days of searching, I found the original source. ‘The paper’ had hidden it away. Why? Ask them. They don’t talk to me.
But that killer quote about politics in Chicago–and politics everywhere–comes from a 1996 Tribune magazine piece titled “The Boss.”
It was about the (then) New Mayor Daley about to host the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and redeem the city’s name and his family’s name.
It began with an anecdote about Rich Daley when he was Cook County State’s Attorney, then suffering from the flu and fever. He left work but never came home to his wife Maggie. She panicked.
And finally, Maggie—who had called his office and all friends, and they didn’t know–gave up and ran to her mother-in-law’s bungalow.
“Where’s Rich?” Maggie breathlessly asked Eleanor “Sis” Daley, widow of Mayor Richard J. Daley and mother of then Mayor Richard M. Daley.
In his bedroom, Sis said.
Rich was in his boyhood bedroom, in his pajamas, in bed, with the flu. There was a cup of soup on the nightstand, the mayor smelling slightly of Vicks VapoRub.
“Hi, honey,” said Chicago’s boss.
“Her husband was sick. He was in his father’s house. He was home.”
Reading that magazine piece, and in it the petty cruelties of Chicago politics, and how Rich Daley could love Chicago but was also a clannish and selfish one-way street, I found that Ed Vrdolyak quote about the Bridgeport Irish, that true quote about politics in that city by the lake.
But the original quote wasn’t truncated by Alice Yin or by the WBEZ reporter. Here is the full quote:
“You’ve got to understand something about the Irish, the Daley Irish,” Vrdolyak says, the grandfather in him fading, the Fast Eddie coming out. “It’s the Irish first, and everybody else is a Polack. Everybody.
“I’m Croatian and to them I was a Polack. The blacks are Polaks. Latinos, everybody. Lechowicz and Wojcik are Polaks. That’s how they are.
“The Irish are a minority, but they have all the jobs, the political jobs, the political spots. Why? They play divide-and-conquer. It’s smart politics. But it’s more than that with them. They’re the Daleys, inside and everybody else is outside, all Polacks.”
What happened to that young reporter at “the paper,” the kid so full of curiosity, the young man who wanted to listen, the one who rejected leftist newsroom dogma?
You might have figured it out.
He’d like to thank “the paper” for reminding him of that reporter. And in the hiding the origins of the quote, “the paper” reminded him of something: It reminded him of what he loved about journalism and opened a door revealing the importance of the curiosity that good newspapering demands.
Now that they’re using his quotes–though they’re avoiding using his name–what’s next?
He said once a few years ago that like old Laertes in his garden, he still has some spears to throw. He was in his garden just after Wednesday’s cold spring rain. He was stretching out the arm, sharpening those spears.
He’s ready.
-30-
About the author: John Kass spent decades as a political writer and news columnist in Chicago working at a major metropolitan newspaper. He is co-host of The Chicago Way podcast. And he just loves his “No Chumbolone” hat, because johnkassnews.com is a “No Chumbolone” Zone where you can always get a cup of common sense.
Merchandise Now Available: If you’re looking for a gift for that hard-to-buy for special someone who has everything, just click on the link to the johnkassnews.com store.
Where else would you find a No Chumbolone™ cap or a Chicago Way™ coffee cup?
Because I know this about you: You’re not a Chumbolone.