ROGER SIMON COLUMN
DECEMBER 5, 2005
WASHINGTON - - City News of Chicago, successor to the famed City News Bureau, is shutting down on Dec. 31. Together, they lasted for more than a century.
I wrote this for a special anniversary edition the City News Bureau put out years ago:
I was 22 and just out of college when I started at City News. It was a place with a lot of famous alumni such as Kurt Vonnegut and Mike Royko and Seymour Hersh.
It also was a place that specialized in tragedy.
Every day I would go to a different police station and
do stories on murders, rapes and armed robberies. I
would report on human misery. In other words, the kind
of thing that fills newspapers.
One of my jobs at City News was to check out coroner's
cases. Anybody who was not in a doctor's care when he
died was a coroner's case.
The desk at City News would get a report from the
coroner, it would be passed along to me and I would
call the survivors to find out about the dead person.
What I was really trying to find out was whether the
person was worth an obituary or not. Whether, in other
words, he was a somebody or a nobody.
If he was a nobody then I would, in a journalistic
phrase I have never forgotten, "cheap him out" to the
desk and no story would be done.
The first think you had to do was find out what the
person did for a living, which, in America, is a
pretty good guide to whether he is a somebody or a
nobody.
"Mr. Smith was a bricklayer?" you would say to widow.
"A very good bricklayer? Yes, I see. I'm sure he was.
And you are? A housewife? Very good."
And then you would call back to the desk and tell them
they wouldn't have to worry about Mr. Smith. He was
just another of God's creatures. And his passing was
nothing we had to be concerned about. Or even take
notice of.
There was a whole list of facts to check first, of
course. Not just the deceased's job, but whether he
was a member of any civic organization or fraternal
lodge. And - - my personal favorite - - whether he had
been awarded any significant military decorations. For
if he had been fortunate enough to have killed the
requisite number of human beings in some past
conflict, he might be elevated in death from obscurity
to 10 lines of type in a newspaper.
Every day I would call the grief stricken. The
shattered widows, sobbing widowers, stunned children,
speechless parents. I had my spiel down.
First, you tried to sound official so that they would
talk to you. You'd say something like, "This is Roger
Simon and I'm calling about a case from the Coroner's
Office."
You said the first part quickly, but said "Coroner's
Office" very slowly and dramatically and most people
would assume you were from the Coroner's Office and
that they had to talk to you.
I was always amazed that it worked. The grieving would
tell me whatever I asked. They would rummage through
the dusty drawers of their lives for a stranger on a
telephone.
And then, one day, a woman laughed. This was a first
for me.
I had heard choked sobs, angry silences, and once, a
scream. But never a laugh.
"That's my husband's name, all right," the woman said.
"But he isn't dead. He's fine. At least last I looked.
He went out for a paper." She laughed again.
I laughed with her and apologized. Then I called back
the desk and told them there had been a mistake.
"No, wait, can't be," the desk guy said. There was a
riffle of papers. "Must be a fresh one. She must not
know yet."
And so I knew what she did not. I knew that her
husband was not coming back with that paper. That he
was in a sliding drawer at the Cook County morgue with
a tag on his big toe.
So what am I supposed to do now? I asked the desk guy,
already knowing what his answer would be.
At this point, when I tell this story among friends, I
usually pause and wait. And if the people around me
are not newspaper people, they always ask the same
thing.
"So what did you do? You didn't really call her back,
did you? I mean not really."
If they are newspaper people, however, they never ask.
They know I called her back.
And told her I was calling about this case from the
Coroner's Office and I said that last part very slowly
and dramatically. I told her that her husband was
indeed dead and I needed to check some facts, such as
the deceased's profession and his civic organizations
and whether he had been awarded any significant
military decorations.
He had not, by the way.
I cheaped him out.