Mike Royko
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Mike Royko (September 19, 1932 – April 29, 1997) was a long-running newspaper columnist in Chicago, Illinois.
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[edit] Young reporter
Royko grew up in Chicago living in an apartment above a bar. His mother was of Polish descent and his father was of Ukrainian origins. [1] Once he became a columnist, he drew upon his childhood experiences to become the voice of the everyman Chicagoan. Although he could use biting sarcasm, he never spoke down to his readers, always remembering that he was one of them.
Royko began his career as a columnist for the Glenview Naval Air Base newspaper and the City News Bureau of Chicago before moving to the Chicago Daily News. He worked for the Daily News as a political reporter and was an irritant to the city's machine politicians with his penetrating and skeptical questions and reports.
[edit] Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist
He covered Cook County politics and government and wrote a daily political column. He soon supplemented that with another weekly column on Chicago's active folk music scene. These columns were successful, and soon he was given a regular slot writing on all topics for the Daily News, an afternoon paper with a strong liberal slant. Royko was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary while with the Daily News in 1972.
When the Daily News shut its doors, Royko moved to its allied morning newspaper, the Chicago Sun-Times. In 1984, however, he left the Sun-Times after it was sold to a group headed by Rupert Murdoch, for whom Royko said he would never work. He famously claimed, "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." He quickly found employment writing his column at the rival Chicago Tribune, where he wrote until his death at 64, which was caused by a brain aneurysm. Royko's columns were syndicated in more than 600 newspapers across the country, and he wrote more than 7500 columns over a four-decade career.
As with many columnists, Royko created several fictitious mouthpieces with whom he could hold "conversations." Perhaps the most famous of these was Slats Grobnik, the epitome of a working class Polish-Chicagoan. Royko's Grobnik columns generally took the form of the two men discussing a current issue in a neighborhood Polish bar. In 1973, Royko collected several columns in the book Slats Grobnik and Other Friends. Another one of Royko's characters was his pseudo-psychiatrist Dr. I.M. Kookie (title character of the collection Dr. Kookie, You're Right!, 1989). Kookie was used to satirize both 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. Many of his columns were collected in book form, although his most famous book remains the 1971 unauthorized biography of Richard J. Daley, Boss. In the book, Royko portrays Daley as corrupt and racist; it has become one of the principal books regarding the lifetime of Mayor Daley and Chicago under his administration. Mayor Daley forced 200 Chicago bookstores to stop stocking the book, but demand from the public forced them to start stocking them again, after which Mayor Daley's wife was caught vandalizing copies.
Mike Royko is entombed in Acacia Mausoleum, Acacia Park Cemetery, Chicago.
[edit] Books by Mike Royko
- Royko, Mike. (1968) I May Be Wrong, But I Doubt It. H. Regnery. ASIN: B0006BWB0A.
- Royko, Mike. (1971) Up Against It. H. Regnery. ASIN: B00070TJIC.
- Royko, Mike. (1972) Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago. Plume reprint edition (1988). ISBN 0-452-26167-8.
- Royko, Mike. (1976) Slats Grobnik and Some Other Friends. Popular Library. ASIN: B0006WQLLO
- 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) 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
