By Michael Miner
The news was sort of interesting, so she took a journalism course at Western Michigan University. “This teacher was a dyed-in-the-wool journalism guy, and he lit a fire.” Life happened, and there she was at the age of 44, an editorial writer and columnist at the Sun-Times. A success. But not a perfectly happy one, which is why she went to see Frank Tobin, who’s over on Pershing Road.
“They burst into applause,” she said. “I didn’t want to do some weenie thing like E-mail everybody or post something. So I stood up on the desk and said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I want you all to know I’m leaving the paper to become a schoolteacher.’ A couple of them smiled, and I realized they didn’t believe me. I said, ‘It’s true. I’m leaving.’ Larry Finley was walking to the printer and I had the pleasure of saying, ‘Larry, please return to your seat.’ Then they all clapped.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Tobin said his interns leave many fields behind, but he couldn’t think of anyone else who’d left journalism. Not that there aren’t plenty of old reporters in classrooms–but look for them at Medill. “No!” Baldacci shouted. “I would never, ever teach college journalism. I don’t know whether it’s a larger waste of my time or theirs, quite frankly. What a bunch of bullshit that is!”
Journalism is also a vocation to a lot of the people in it. I asked why journalism didn’t do it for her anymore.
Picture This
Fortunately, creating an archive of images that will sate the curiosity of a civilization we can’t begin to imagine is only the more poetic half of Cahan’s new job. “There are really two components,” he says. “The other is providing Chicago with a mirror of itself that’s fun and exciting. If all of this is just for the future, nobody’s really going to get excited about it.”
