Mike Royko
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Michael "Mike" Royko (September 19, 1932 – April 29, 1997) was a newspaper columnist in Chicago, Illinois, who won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. Over his thirty year career, he wrote over 7,500 daily columns for three newspapers, the Chicago Daily News, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Chicago Tribune.
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[edit] Young reporter
Mike Royko grew up in Chicago, living in an apartment above a bar. His mother was Polish and his father Ukrainian. [1] On becoming a columnist, he drew experiences from his childhood, becoming the voice of the Everyman Chicago. Although caustically sarcastic, he never condescended to his readers, he always remembered he was one of them.
Royko began his newsman's career as a columnist for the Naval Air Station Glenview newspaper and the City News Bureau of Chicago before working at the Chicago Daily News as a political reporter, becoming an irritant to the City's Democratic Machine politicians with penetrating and skeptical questions and reports.
[edit] Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and best-selling author
Reporter Mike Royko covered Cook County politics and government in a weekly political column, soon supplemented with a second, weekly column reporting about Chicago's folk music scene. The success of those columns earned him regular writing about all topics for the Daily News, a liberal afternoon newspaper. In 1972, Royko received the Pulitzer Prize for commentary as a Daily News man.
When the Daily News closed, Royko worked for its allied morning newspaper, the Chicago Sun-Times. In 1984, when Rupert Murdoch bought the Sun-Times, for whom he said he would never work: No self-respecting fish would be wrapped in a Murdoch paper and that, His goal is not quality journalism. His goal is vast power for Rupert Murdoch, political power. Mike Royko then worked for the rival Chicago Tribune. For a period after the takeover, the Sun-Times reprinted Royko's columns, while new columns appeared in the Tribune.[1]
He died of a brain aneurysm at age sixty-four. His columns were syndicated country-wide in more than 600 newspapers, more than 7,500 columns in a four-decade career. He also wrote or compiled dozens of "That's Outrageous!" columns for Reader's Digest.
Many columns are collected in books; yet, his most famous book remains his unauthorized biography of Richard J. Daley, Boss, the best-selling non-fiction book portrait of Daley as corrupt and racist; it is a principal book about Mayor Daley and the City of Chicago under his mayoralty. On its publishing, the Mayor of Chicago forced 200 Chicago private bookstores to not stock Boss, but public demand for the book over-rode the Mayor, and book stores sold Boss, later, the Mayor's wife was caught vandalizing copies.
Like many columnists, Mike Royko created fictitious mouthpieces with whom he could "converse"; the most famous being Slats Grobnik, the epitome working class Polish-Chicagoan. Generally, the Slats Grobnik columns were two men discussing a current event in a Polish neighborhood bar. In 1973, Royko collected several columns as Slats Grobnik and Other Friends. Another of Royko's characters was his pseudo-psychiatrist Dr. I.M. Kookie (eponymous protagonist of Dr. Kookie, You're Right! [1989]). Dr. Kookie, purportedly founder of the Asylumism religion, according to which Earth was settled by a higher civilisation's rejected insane people, satirize pop culture and pop psychology.
[edit] 16-inch softball and the Cubs
Royko was a lifelong fan and critic of the Chicago Cubs. Just prior to the 1990 World Series he wrote about the findings of another fan, Ron Berler, who had discovered a seemingly spurious correlation called the "Ex-Cubs Factor". He predicted that the heavily-favored Oakland Athletics would lose the Series to the Cincinnati Reds. The accuracy of that unlikely prediction, in stunning fashion (four game sweep) propelled the Ex-Cubs Factor theory into the spotlight.
The book Carl Erskine's Tales from the Dodgers Dugout: Extra Innings (2004) includes short stories from former Dodger pitcher Carl Erskine. Royko is prominent in many of these stories.
He was also fervently devoted to 16-inch softball and was inducted into the Chicago 16-inch Softball Hall of Fame shortly after his death, an honor Royko's family insists he would have considered as meaningful as his Pulitzer.
[edit] Honors and final resting place
To follow up on his 1972 Pulitzer Prize, Royko won the National Press Club Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990 and the Damon Runyon Award in 1995.
The "Royko Two Arrival" is an IFR arrival procedure at O'Hare International Airport.
Mike Royko is entombed in Acacia Mausoleum, Acacia Park Cemetery, Chicago.
[edit] Trivia
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Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones. |
- In the film Continental Divide (1981), John Belushi, filmed in the Chicago Sun-Times building, plays "Ernie Souchak" a loose interpretation of Mike Royko; Contrary to popular belief, Belushi was not his godson.
- Royko coined Governor Moonbeam, the derisively-accurate nickname for the California Governor Jerry Brown. The 1978 nickname derives from Gov. Brown proposing that California own a communications satellite for handling emergency communications in the state, Royko named him "Governor Moonbeam", a characterization that follows Jerry Brown.
- After his second marriage and subsequent move to the posh North Shore suburbs of Chicago, he joined the Sunset Ridge Country Club, and, after his death, the bartenders, waiters, and waitresses of the Club fondly remembered Mike Royko as one of the few members who never condescended to them, and was always a generous tipper.
[edit] Books by Mike Royko
- Royko, Mike. (1972) Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago. Plume reprint edition (1988). ISBN 0-452-26167-8.
- Royko, Mike. (1973) Slats Grobnik and Some Other Friends. Popular Library. ISBN 9780525204954.
- Royko, Mike. (1983) Sez Who? Sez Me. Warner Books reprint. ISBN 0-446-30896-X.
- Royko, Mike. (1985) Like I Was Sayin. Jove Books reprint. ISBN 0-515-08416-6.
- Royko, Mike. (1989) Dr. Kookie, You're Right. EP Dutton. ISBN 0-525-24813-7.
- Royko, Mike. (2000) One More Time: The Best of Mike Royko. (Published posthumously, with a foreword by Studs Terkel) University Of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-73073-5.
- Royko, Mike. (2001) For the Love of Mike: More of the Best of Mike Royko. (Published posthumously, with a foreword by Roger Ebert) University Of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-73073-5.
[edit] References
- Ciccone, F. Richard. (2003) Royko: A Life in Print Public Affairs ISBN 1-58648-172-X
- Crimmins, Jerry (April 30, 1997). Mike Royko 1932-1997: Newspaper legend Mike Royko dies. Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist was the voice of Chicago for more than 30 years. Chicago Tribune
- Moe, Doug. (1999) The World of Mike Royko University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0-299-16540-X
- Slate (book review)
- Terry, Don (April 30, 1997). Mike Royko, the Voice of the Working Class, Dies at 64. New York Times
