By Michael Miner
I’ve quarreled with Byrne over things he’s said and how he’s said them, but I’ve never doubted that he writes what he believes. Though he retired last year from the Sun-Times editorial board, he still freelances a couple of columns a week for the paper–and I’m sure he expects his readers to take them seriously. “I’m a commentator,” he tells me, “not a reporter.” But a commentator is a journalist who asks you to trust his convictions as well as his facts.
He says he now has 20 clients–corporations, not-for-profits, some “governmental stuff”–and he doesn’t write columns on any of them. The Sun-Times hasn’t asked him for a client list, taking him at his word that he’ll avoid all issues that make money for Dennis Byrne Ltd. If the client list keeps growing, “there may get to be a time I have to say good-bye to the column.”
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When you start hiding things from your column the friendship’s over. And readers aren’t dumb. They can tell when something’s going on.
“No, they’re not apt to do that,” Ward acknowledges. “That’s right. I don’t think people understand their right to information as ordinary citizens.”
He told me he’d heard “through the rumor mill” that Lyons had been charged with DUI, but the Herald hadn’t written a word. He said Lyons covered the cops and county court and wrote a law-and-order column, and he described him as “the self-appointed conscience of the community.”
