Many of you know Andy Shaw from his long TV reporting career and now his watchdog work at the Better Government Association. But you probably don't know that someone who was near and dear to us at the Windy City Times, Ron Dorfman, gave Andy a big break when he was just starting out in journalism. Here's a column Andy wrote for us in Ron's memory:
Successful careers are often facilitated by strokes of luck—connected friends or family members who open doors, or fortuitous moments when you're simply in the right place at the right time to catch a break.
It's true you have to bring more to the table than a letter of recommendation, but a lot of people have ability, so a bit of luck is often the difference between those who get a chance to take their game to the next level, and those who don't.
My luckiest break came in 1974, when I was a young reporter at City News, the iconic Chicago wire service that, in the days before college j-school programs, gave generations of aspiring journalists on-the-job training while they were covering the gritty local news.
Distinguished alums include Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur, Carl Sandburg, Kurt Vonnegut and Mike Royko.
The challenge back then was to "graduate" from City News to one of the daily newspapers—there were four in those days—so you had to get the attention of their editors.
That was hard because City News didn't print anything or put reporter by-lines on stories—it simply fed information to the papers.
As a result, we toiled in relative anonymity.
So I started writing freelance pieces for community newspapers and small magazines to get a little visibility, but I needed a "game-changer."
It came when I was assigned to cover the Criminal Courts building at 26th & California, where the regular beat reporters for the newspapers were colorful competitors in the swashbuckling "Front Page" tradition, the cops who hung out with us in the pressroom cynical jokesters, and the cases in the courtrooms grisly urban dramas.
The beat was a story begging to be told, so I took copious notes, banged out a draft, and submitted it to the Chicago Journalism Review ( CJR ), our answer to New York's prestigious Columbia Journalism Review.
From its inception in the wake of the controversial media coverage that surrounded the violence outside Chicago's 1968 Democratic Convention, until it folded a decade later, CJR critiqued local media content.
So my article—a tongue-in-cheek send-up of life at 26th and Cal—was a good fit.
The "kiss and tell" aspect bothered some folks, including the cops and beat reporters I lampooned, but it caught the attention of newspaper editors, including those at the Sun-Times, and a few months later they hired me.
From there, thanks to smaller bits of luck, I went on to NBC 5, then ABC 7, and now the Better Government Association, the anti-corruption watchdog organization that shines a light on government and holds public officials accountable.
So why am I taking this trip down Memory Lane?
Because the CJR editor who encouraged me to write the story, and helped me massage it into printable shape, was renowned editor/activist Ron Dorfman, who died recently after a long battle with AIDS.
Ron was an intense, diminutive bundle of energy who co-founded the CJR, and his editing skill turned a kid reporter's very rough draft into a smooth enough piece of journalism to impress the right people.
Over the years Ron held many journalism jobs and supported numerous progressive causes, including gay rights. In December he married his longtime partner Ken Ilio, a talented photographer, academic and techie.
We were all part of a crowd of aging journalists, artists and activists who gathered most Friday evenings at Phil Stefani's 437, which replaced the old Ricardo's at the same Rush and Hubbard location.
The conversation, as you might imagine, is voluble, with enough old war stories to encourage an occasional retelling of my history with Ron.
The last time I saw him was a Friday night in January, when his medical prognosis had worsened, and many of us realized we were seeing him for one of the last times.
Sadly, we were.
Ron died quietly at home on Feb. 10.
He was lucky to live many more years than his early diagnosis predicted, thanks to experimental AIDS "cocktails" and a fierce determination that enabled him to ward off the ravages of HIV for two decades
But really, I was the lucky one—in the right place at the right time, when Ron was editing a publication that wanted a story I needed to write to advance my career.
You can't hear me Ron, but let me say thank you one more time.
I will always be grateful, and I'll continue to recount this episode to remind people about the value of lucky breaks, the importance of remembering the people who opened those doors, and the obligation to do the same for others.
Because, as poet Robert Frost said in "The Road Not Taken," it makes all the difference.
Andy Shaw was a political correspondent at ABC-7 for 26 years before becoming President & CEO of the Better Government Association in 2009. Email: ashaw@bettergov.org . Twitter: @andyshawbga.
See related coverage at the link: www.windycitymediagroup.com/lgbt/SNAPSHOTS-OF-LOVE-Ron-Dorfman-and-Ken-Ilio-/46180.html .
