Personeau Remembers: Half-Century Ago, Statehouse Pressroom Was Hive Of Activity With Scribes

SPRINGFIELD - Today, the pressroom of the Illinois State Capitol is a barren place, with few reporters and minimal coverage of the important workings of state government. A half-century ago, it was a far different story.

The Statehouse pressroom of the 1960s and 1970s was a hive of activity, a smoke-filled room full of scribes clicking away on ink-ribbon typewriters, while nursing cups of lukewarm coffee.

With little money and even less sleep, everyone was stretched to their limits, going to any length to scoop the competition. News was breaking all the time, and there were always stories to be found – many that shaped the course of Illinois politics.

It was the wild and wacky world of the Statehouse pressroom in the era, which produced some of the best journalism and investigative reporting in Illinois history. For Taylor Pensoneau, it is a time of pride and wonder.

“Those years were just remarkable,” said Pensoneau, a political writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and a part of that pressroom from 1965-78, in an exclusive interview. “There was so much talent in that room, and the competition was unbelievable. There was a level of investigative reporting that hasn’t been seen in the capitol before, or since.

“So many big stories came out of that pressroom,” remarked Pensoneau. “Virtually every example of political wrongdoing at the time was uncovered by a Statehouse scribe. If not, the press corps did the heavyweight reporting to ensure the scandal would be on the map.”

Now 82, Pensoneau shakes his head and smiles at the memories. “I could go on forever about that time in the Statehouse pressroom,” he said. “It was a place like no other.”

*****

Today, some say that true journalism is a dying art. But in the Statehouse pressroom of the 1960s and 1970s, journalism was at its finest.

“Getting out the information the people of Illinois needed to know, or trying to alert the public to what was going on, was what we were all about,” said Pensoneau. “That was considered a sacred duty by the journalists in the Statehouse press corps, which included not only the newspaper reporters, but also the radio and television people.”

Pensoneau and his peers managed to balance a seemingly innocent view of their world with the hustle of hard-hitting investigative reporting.

“With few exceptions, we all had one thing in common,” reflected Pensoneau. “And that was idealism. We viewed journalism as a high calling, an opportunity to do something to make the world better.

“We were convinced that one avenue toward that goal was to inform Illinoisans about what their state government was doing,” remarked Pensoneau. “We sure weren’t doing it for the money. Except for some of the Chicago political editors, most of us in the pressroom never made that much.”

*****

“Rough-and-tumble” is among the nicer adjectives used to describe Illinois politics. Similarly, daily life in the Statehouse press room was no-holds barred.

It was an era of hyper-competitive journalism, and the best example came from Chicago. There were four major dailies in the city through the late 1970s – the Tribune, the Sun-Times, and two that are now defunct, the Daily News and the American. Each had highly active bureaus in the state capitol, staffed with some of the current, and future, stars of American journalism.

“The Chicago papers were cutthroat,” said Pensoneau. “They were always going after each other for daily scoops. And they weren’t the only ones, believe me.”

Pensoneau’s Post-Dispatch was locked in battle with the other major daily of St. Louis, the Globe-Democrat. On any given day, reporters from Bloomington, Peoria, Rockford, Waukegan, and others were also in the pressroom.

The wire services, the Associated Press and the now-obsolete United Press International, each had a Capitol bureau chief and one or two other staffers. Journalism on radio was defined by the late Bill Miller, a pioneer with his news feeds on state government to outlets statewide.

The Copley News Service also maintained a full-time Capitol bureau, led by Ray Serati, a southern Illinois native who skillfully held the position from 1965 until his retirement in 1998. Another bureau was maintained by the Chamberlain-Loftus News Service. Before their merger in 1974, the two dailies of Springfield, the Illinois State Journal and Illinois State Register, also had bureaus in the capitol.

Another presence in downstate journalism were the correspondents for the Lindsay-Schaub chain of papers, which included Decatur, Carbondale, and elsewhere.

“A decent share of the major disclosures of official wrongdoing were attributed to downstate scribes,” said Pensoneau. “Those papers often had staffers with strong investigative skills.”

Normally, twenty reporters filled the room, though the number swelled during the legislative sessions or a major news event.

“It was not only wild, but at times it was also crazy,” said Pensoneau. “The competition on a daily basis was just unbelievable. But the reporters in that room accomplished some pretty amazing things.”

*****

The veteran writers of the Statehouse pressroom were some of the best political writers in the nation. There were also plenty of young reporters like Pensoneau, who was just shy of his 25th birthday when he arrived in October 1965.

The most well-respected bureau chief was Robert P. Howard of the Chicago Tribune, who was considered the dean of the Statehouse press corps and, in the words of one legislator, was “painstaking in his search for truth and accuracy.”

As his time in Springfield progressed, he developed a deep interest in Illinois history, and amassed an impressive library of state history books. Howard left the Tribune in 1970 and, two years later, authored one of the best histories of Illinois to date. He later served as President of the Illinois State Historical Society before his death in 1989.

The Sun-Times bureau was staffed by a young Morton Kondracke, who was destined for greater things. Now 83, he became a longtime member of the panel on The McLaughlin Group and, later, a Fox News co-host and contributor. For twenty years, he was the executive editor of the Capitol Hill newspaper, Roll Call.

Kondracke was joined by Burnell Heinecke, who was driven to obtain every last detail for his stories. Heinecke later became a fixture in the Springfield theater scene, a contrast to the relentless approach in the Statehouse.

Many credit Heinecke with establishing the old “gridiron dinners” when the journalists joked and mocked the officials to raucous laughter. Full of humor and satire, the dinners, which started under the administration of Gov. Richard Ogilvie, were one of the rare times that the harried pressroom journalists relaxed for a while.

Heinecke mentored several young writers, such as Charlie Wheeler, who joined the Sun-Times’ Capitol bureau in 1971.

Wheeler, who hailed from a family with a long journalistic tradition, later managed the widely acclaimed Public Affairs Reporting program at the University of Illinois-Springfield. He paid tribute with a touching op-ed when Heinecke passed away in 2018.

*****

The bureau of the Chicago Daily News featured Henry Hanson, who had helped that paper win a Pulitzer for public service in 1963 for an in-depth look at the availability of birth control in Illinois.

“He was the most colorful of the Chicago bureau people,” laughed Pensoneau. “He mixed heavy drinking and fine writing with plenty of mischief. He might pilfer a suspicious voucher or record from a closed file when a bureaucrat had his back turned. But it was impossible not to like Henry.” Hanson, who wrote for the Daily News for 23 years, died in 1995.

For the Chicago American, there was Malden Jones, whose full-speed-ahead approach kept his paper in line with the competition. Jones was a scholar of Illinois journalism history, and like the others in the Statehouse press room, took great pride in the role of the press in Illinois government.

Jones’ classic Smith-Corona typewriter, on which so many outstanding stories had been clicked, became an icon of the pressroom. He died in 1990.

The Chicago bureaus worked in tandem with some powerhouse writers and editors in their home offices. The Daily News had Mike Royko, one of the most recognizable of all Chicago newsmen. Royko won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1972. At the Tribune, George Tagge was the political editor from 1943-72.

Tagge’s counterpart at the Sun-Times was John Dreiske, a part of that paper from 1934-72. One peer from Chicago admiringly said that Dreiske and Tagge “made political reporting a full-time, 365-day-a-year job.”

“The tempo of the pressroom was set by the Chicago dailies and their Capitol bureaus,” remarked Pensoneau. “They set a pace that was nothing if not crazy. They scrambled everyday to outdo the others, whether in scoring a beat on a news story or in uncovering dirt on politicians.”

With competition at a fever pitch, no place in the Statehouse was safe. Once, a Sun-Times staffer had a scoop on a political scam in Chicago, and the story was set to run on a Sunday. Late on a Friday, though, the staffer just couldn’t help himself.

As he sat on a toilet in the pressroom’s lavatory, he bragged of his exclusive to a buddy, sitting in an adjoining stall. While he boasted, he was unaware that a Tribune reporter had just stepped into the bathroom to wash out his coffee cup.

The Tribune man listened intently to all the details coming out of the stall, and moved quickly. On Saturday, his paper broke the scam, neutralizing the Sun-Times’ feature the next day. Indeed, nothing was off-limits in the Statehouse pressroom.

*****

From downstate, there was William O’Connell, a lifelong employee of the Peoria Journal-Star who sort of looked and acted like a leprechaun, with good reason. He helped found the St. Patrick’s Society of Peoria and the local chapter of the Ancient Order of the Hibernians. O’Connell died in 2012.

North of Chicago, Edward Nash handled the Statehouse for most of his 22 years with the Waukegan Sun. A Navy veteran who later switched sides and worked for the state of Illinois, he died in 2006.

An up-and-comer in public radio in the pressroom was a young Peggy Boyer Long, who later carved a highly respected career as executive editor of Illinois Issues.

Then there was Edward Pound, who was on the cusp of one of the great investigative reporting careers in the nation. Starting in 1963, Pound was a young bulldog reporter for the Alton Telegraph, one of the more aggressive papers in the state. He later moved on to the Chicago Sun-Times and continued his ferocious investigations.

“We bonded right away,” said Pensoneau. “Ed was a confidant, and even though we were different personalities with different approaches, we saw things the same way.”

In 1972, Pensoneau and Pound joined forces on an investigation into illegal stock sales that originated from the securities division of the Secretary of State’s office. The sales were ultimately tied to fundraising for the campaign of Gov. Richard Ogilvie – without his knowledge.

The two reporters crisscrossed Illinois for research and interviews before confronting top officials back in Springfield. “Ed and I came at people from different angles,” chuckled Pensoneau. “He was always aggressive, always pressing for answers. Someone called me the ‘velvet glove’ because I came at them from a softer side.”

The story was front-page news in both Pensoneau’s Post-Dispatch and Pound’s Sun-Times. Their skill and tenacity earned both a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize for best local investigative reporting, another mark of excellence from the Statehouse press corps.

*****

Within a few years, Pound was known by many as the best investigative journalist in the country. In 1977, he moved on to the nation’s capital with the Washington Star and, as Pensoneau says, “the fertile hunting ground” for corruption on a national level.

Two years later, he joined the Washington bureau of the New York Times, followed by a distinguished stint at the Wall Street Journal from 1982-93. From there, he continued at U.S. News and World Report, USA Today, and the National Journal.

“Every time I picked up a U.S. News or USA Today, a Pound article jumped out at me,” said Pensoneau. “He was truly at the top of his profession.” Plenty of others agreed, including Brian Duffy, the former top editor of U.S. News, who simply said that Pound “was certainly the best investigative reporter I ever knew, or worked with. He saw things that offended him ethically or morally, and was driven to clean up the mess of the world.”

Duffy’s words sound like a throwback to Pound’s days in the idealistic world of the Statehouse pressroom. Ed Pound died at his home in Maryland in July 2021.

Even the Statehouse photographer was a star. John Filo had been a photo-illustration student at Kent State on May 4, 1970, the day of the deadly clash on the campus between student protestors and the Ohio National Guard.

Filo, then 21, snapped the iconic photo of the screaming teenage girl, kneeling over the dead protestor. The image captured the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography, and has become a symbol of the unrest of the period.

Within a couple of years, the unassuming Filo was assigned by the Associated Press to its Illinois Capitol bureau, where some never knew he was the man behind the famous Kent State photo. Today, Filo is the director of photography for CBS News.

*****

A diverse array of skills were needed to thrive in the pressroom, including a thorough understanding of Illinois government. The reporters knew how the system worked, as well as the power struggles and the personality conflicts, even better than the officials they were covering.

Armed with this intimate knowledge of government, many pressroom staffers ended up working for governors and other officials. One was Gene Callahan, the outstanding columnist for the Illinois State Register, who became a top aide to both Paul Simon and Alan Dixon.

Another was Chris Vlahoplus, a UPI bureau staffer who became one of the most trusted assistants to Gov. Otto Kerner. Tom Drennan, a Chicago political reporter known to most in the pressroom even though he was not a regular, became a top confidant to Gov. Ogilvie.

But the best example was Mike Lawrence, who excelled as a Statehouse reporter for the present-day Quad City Times before joining the staff of Jim Edgar, then Secretary of State. Lawrence then was the press secretary, and a senior advisor, to Edgar as governor.

Lawrence went on to a well-regarded stint as director of the Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University, another measure of his brilliant understanding of state government that had its roots in the Statehouse pressroom.

*****

Journalists in the Statehouse had closer access to governors and other top officials than the overwhelming majority of the general population, including the thousands of state employees. Though it was exciting, particularly for younger reporters, there were pros and cons.

High government officials were frequently interviewed one-on-one, in addition to the back-and-forth of a normal press conference. That access was a source of great pride, and inflated egos, among the pressroom corps.

“Small egos were not a characteristic of many in the pressroom,” laughed Pensoneau. “There were plenty of opportunities for those egos to be fanned.”

The proximity of officials and journalists led to regular fraternizing, particularly with top officials (though rarely with governors) and state legislators. The politicians and writers were frequently seen at popular Springfield hangouts, like Norb Andy’s and the Black Angus, and the officials often picked up the check. Other officials found time to hang out in the pressroom, even playing cards with the reporters.

Of course, there was a reason. Legislators and officials knew that it was difficult for the reporters to write negatively about a social friend or drinking buddy.

The Christmas season was a bonanza for the journalists, who were showered with fine gifts from top officials. “Reporters would get lots of liquor, food items, big hams, and so on,” chuckled Pensoneau. “I’m not saying that was ethical. But those gifts were from the governor on down,

“In each of my first two years in the pressroom, I carted out enough liquor to stock a cocktail bar in my apartment in Springfield,” chuckled Pensoneau. “There were plenty of other memorable gifts, too.”

Over time, Pensoneau stopped accepting the gifts, as he began to witness a radical change in the pressroom. A muckraking attitude was taking over by the late 1960s, and the competition between the Chicago papers, and among the other papers themselves, was never higher. This change in tone would be responsible for the revelation of numerous scandals in Illinois government by the pressroom corps.

Pensoneau has kept only one of those gifts today. “It’s a red tie from Paul Powell,” Pensoneau said, referring to the infamous Secretary of State best known for his shoebox full of cash. “Spiffy, very stylish for the mid-1960s. It’s a really good-looking tie.”

*****

The 1960s and 1970s were a time of soaring growth in Illinois government, and a sizable amount of corruption came with that growth. Powell’s legendary cash hoard of $800,000, stuffed in a shoebox and other containers, that was found in the Secretary’s room at the St. Nicholas Hotel is the prime example, though hardly the only one.

There was also plenty of unrest outside the walls of the Capitol. The state and nation seemed to be wracked with protests of the Vietnam war, assassinations of key figures, and a generation gap that no one seemed to truly understand.

It was a fiery time, and state corruption seemed to be everywhere. Without question, the investigative reporting of the Statehouse pressroom in that era made Illinois government better. The impact of the journalists is seen in a myriad of scandals that were uncovered.

During Pensoneau’s years of 1965-78, investigations by one or more Statehouse reporters resulted in the ouster of two Illinois Supreme Court justices for illegal stock deals; a disclosure of corruption within the Illinois State Fair; the uncovering of hidden, unethical financial dealings between major Illinois politicians and the horse racing industry; revelations of ghost payroll members in state agencies; and the uncovering of shady political contributions by recipients, or would-be recipients, of state contracts.

The biggest story of all, though, was investigative scrutiny of Powell’s shoebox, uncovered after his death in October 1970. The Powell incident has become symbolic of the sordid political history of Illinois.

“It was one of the three biggest stories I ever covered,” remarked Pensoneau. “I rank it just below the Watergate hearings, which I covered in Washington in 1974. The frenzy that followed the disclosure of Powell’s money was just enormous. Those of us in the press corps didn’t get much sleep for about two months after that.”

*****

Today, the pressroom is a shell of those heady days of the 1960s and 1970s. Virtually no papers maintain a Capitol bureau these days, and the Associated Press only has a single Statehouse correspondent. Radio and television reporting now is a tiny fraction of past Statehouse coverage.

Some of the void has been filled by Capitol News Illinois, a nonprofit news service established by the Illinois Press Foundation (IPF) to offset the dwindling Statehouse press corps. The service is funded by the IPF and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

Even with the best efforts of the service, the pressroom pales to the hard-hitting, hammer-down days of a half-century ago. “Life in the pressroom has not been that way since,” remarked Pensoneau, “nor, frankly, was it before. It’s a skeleton of what it was.

“And that is truly a shame for the people of Illinois,” continued Pensoneau, “because who’s going to watch the politicians, and what they’re doing? Look at the scandals that were investigated by the journalists of the pressroom. You don’t have that today.”

Like many others in the pressroom, Pensoneau went on to success in other avenues. He later served as president of the Illinois Coal Association before producing several wildly successful histories of southern Illinois gangsters. He is also an accomplished writer of fiction.

“For me, it all started in the pressroom,” reflected Pensoneau. “I learned so much in there. I think we all did.

“The Statehouse pressroom was some of the best that journalism and investigative reporting had to offer,” he concluded. “And we were all proud to be a part of it.”

Tom Emery is a freelance writer and historical researcher from Carlinville, Ill. He may be reached at 217-710-8392 or ilcivilwar@yahoo.com.

More like this: