The wire services and state news THROUGH much of its history, the Republican party of Illinois was on intimate terms with many of the state's most influential publishers and editors. The Smalls of Kankakee, for example, were both newspaper owners and political leaders, an arrangement that existed in many communities big and small. Until recently, the wire services satisfied their diverse clientele (which did include some Democratic editors) by cautiously dishing up only bland, unassailable state news of public affairs. This sufficed until the age of television. Newspaper readers are harder to please now. The leading wire service, the Associated Press (AP), is owned by its customers, the member news organizations that buy the service. Early in the 70's, the committees of Illinois editors who second-guess AP's state operation began demanding that Springfield news be more searching, more interpretive, more digestible, more interesting. Under Tom Dygard, the bureau chief Chicago, and Lee Hughes in Springfield, AP's shift to hard-hitting investigative journalism has been completed. Springfield bureau chief Hughes is a gruff, no-nonsense type, a genuine skeptic who accepts nothing at face value. The "press room" in the Statehouse is more than a workshop; it is a community of professionals with common interests. The three AP reporters take no part in the group socializing that goes on when the pace of activity slows. Shortly after Hughes' arrival two years ago, AP "exposed" the cost of expanding the press facilities in the Capitol. The treatment by both wire services of Gov. James R. Thompson's western Illinois trip just after the candidacy announcement of his Democratic opponent last October was even more of a departure from the past. AP and its competitor, United Press International (UPI), both started their stories by pointing out that the taxpayers would be "footing the bills" for the excursion. Bill Densmore, the AP reporter, noted that the trip was similar to one Thompson took while campaigning for governor the previous year. Tom Laue, UPI bureau chief, observed in his lead that the itinerary included no "state business." Densmore went along on the trip for AP. But, the governor's press secretary David Gilbert complained later that he reported "not the state problems that the governor heard about, but rather, to prove his point, he asked the same inane question of people along the way, namely whether they thought it was a political trip. Of course everything a governor does is political in one sense or another." An important wire service mission, in the view of Hughes and his superiors, is "to serve as a check on the abuses of government." AP devotes less time to committee hearings and other routine legislative coverage now. Legislative news is more selective, less ponderous. Reporters are turned loose on lengthy investigations, something unheard of in the old days. "We're trying to make state government something that people will read about," Dygard explains. "We want to explain what really goes on without all the jargon and cliches." Densmore says Dygard's understanding of politics makes it possible for the Springfield bureau to "be more aggressive and go for the jugular a little more." Hughes is nonpartisan. He disbelieves Democrats as readily as Republicans. During the 1976 campaign, Michael J. Howlett (playfully?) threatened to break his arm if he asked a certain unanswered question one more time. UPI's Laue is more congenial but equally enterprising and just as hardhitting when the occasion demands. If there is a difference in the two bureaus, it is that UPI's legislative report is more analytical and perhaps more thorough, whereas AP is into muckraking in a bigger way. Whether "going for the jugular" is what wire services ought to be doing with their limited staff resources is far from a settled question among editors. Both deserve praise for their aggressive reporting and for trying to make state news more understandable. Last year's series by Mike Robinson, the Chicago-based AP state editor, on the insurance industry's stranglehold over insurance regulation in Illinois was worthy of the highest prizes journalism can bestow. But the line between the healthy operation of the adversary relationship between reporter and public official and "advocacy" reporting is a thin one — especially for wire services that feed media of many different types, sizes, regions and editorial persuasions. One of these days the same managing editors who encouraged the innovations in Illinois may be blowing the whistle. (Note: A paragraph was inadvertently dropped from the December media column which described how the Alton Telegraph was the first Illinois newspaper to retain the Capitol Hill News Service Washington coverage at the time of the Lock and Dam 26 controversy.)
33/ February 1978/ Illinois Issues
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