Behind a hot story, there’s a lot of fire you don’t see

For several years, we used to publish in a monthly rotation thumbnail profiles of individual members of our newsroom staff. The short stories provided a reporter or editor’s background, education and personal interests in an effort to give you a more intimate look at the people who bring you the news. To an extent, these profiles served their purpose.

But they barely began to show you the drive and determination our staff members bring to their work. From time to time, circumstances bring these qualities to a pulsing, feverish glow. The end of a General Assembly session is such a time, and when that is coupled with the outcome of the biggest suburban story of the past five years, it produces a kind of fire that you see only in embers, in the stories and pictures and headlines that surge onto the web and into print. I want to show you today some of the flame.

It begins with the effort of staff writer Christopher Placek. Based on work throughout the week, Chris provided a front-page preview for Saturday’s paper of the challenge facing lawmakers. Then, he started Saturday morning with the 3 hours-plus trip to Springfield in order to arrive in time to get a lay of the Capitol landscape before the Senate gaveled into session at 1 p.m. For the next two days, he would work nearly round the clock until late Monday evening monitoring a series of twists and turns that needed to reported online in real time and wrapped up in print reports on tight deadlines.

By the first of those, around 10 p.m. Saturday night for Sunday’s paper, anticipated Senate action on a Bears proposal still had not come, and Chris had to satisfy himself with a story explaining the ominous implications — and a photo that he took Not long after that deadline, though, Chicago Democratic Sen. Bill Cunningham, the chamber’s lead negotiator, emerged from a meeting room to tell reporters the bombshell news that the Senate would not have the votes to pass a Bears megaproject property-tax plan that had been approved by the House.

Chris quickly had to write a story with the new information to go online. Then, after midnight he had time, as he told me later, to find a “greasy spoon still open a few blocks away to get their specialty gyro burger and fries” before returning to a hotel room to get a few winks of sleep.

He spent much of Sunday staking out meeting rooms with other reporters, trying to find whatever news could be dug up. By the early evening, he was able to report for the Monday print edition only that the megaproject bill appeared to be dead, but senators were trying to work on something else. He returned to his hotel for a quick dinner of the leftovers of his early-morning gyro then headed back to the Senate floor to monitor developments as the deadline clock for a deal clicked toward midnight.

At 11 p.m., Cunningham presented his 145-page Senate alternative bill. It wouldn’t get a vote until after 3:45 a.m. Monday — and Democratic House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch wouldn’t drop the new bombshell informing reporters that his chamber would not vote on the Senate bill, effectively killing the Bears proposal, until an hour later. Chris continued working until we had a story posted online at 7 a.m. And, then, after in his words “crushing a bottle of Pepsi for breakfast,” he headed to an 11 a.m. press conference in the governor’s office, got fresh reactions from Gov. JB Pritzker, Democratic Senate President Don Harmon and Welch and put in a call to Arlington Heights Mayor Jim Tinaglia, updating the web story further and preparing the story for Tuesday’s paper. He finished at 7 p.m. Monday from a room at the Lincoln Library in Springfield.

And there is more. Throughout all of this time, various editors, copy editors and page designers — including Susan Klovstad, Bob Beamesderfer and Kelly Vold — adapted page designs and posted stories. Chris’s boss, Deputy Managing Editor Charles Keeshan, monitored and edited much of the work and even wrote a breaking story Monday morning featuring the reaction of Tinaglia and other sources who have been active in trying to secure an agreement with the Bears.

It all was an impressive effort on many fronts. And as proud of it as we all are, I must add this important note: It happens all the time, in myriad ways from all our staff. Perhaps not always to this extreme, but consistently with this kind of commitment. You generally see only the results. It is also useful to know what it can take to get them.

• Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is managing editor for opinion at the Daily Herald. Follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jim.slusher1 and on X at @JimSlusher. His book “To Nudge The World: Conversations, community and the role of the local newspaper” is available at eckhartzpress.com.