Chicago Daily News, by Mike Royko

Mike Royko, columnist for the Chicago Daily News, is as much a fixture in Chicago as the Art Institute’s bronze lions, the Cubs baseball team or, for that matter, Mayor Daley.

He writes about the city the way its people like to think of themselves: tough, cynical, humorous and with compassion for the little guy.

When Royko began writing his column, which is now distributed nationally, his editors introduced him with the comment: “Mike Royko reports in the great tradition of Chicago newspapering. He thinks, talks and writes in Chicagoese.”

He joined the staff of the Daily News in 1959 as a general assignment reporter. He later became a rewrite man and in 1962 was assigned a once-a-week column, “County Beat,” on county government and politics. His present column began in September 1963 on a twice-weekly basis, but it soon became a daily column.

Before coming to the Daily News, Royko spent two and a half years as a night editor for the City News Bureau, a traditional training ground for young Chicago reporters. He had previously worked for the Lerner neighborhood weekly newspapers in Chicago.

A native of the city’s Near Northwest Side, Royko was born Sept. 19, 1932. He attended Wright Junior College, the University of Illinois and Northwestern University.

He then served four years with the U.S. Air Force, including time as a radioman in the Korean War. He was later transferred to O’Hare Field in Chicago, where they didn’t need radiomen. To escape becoming an MP or a cook, he talked his way into editing the base newspaper and into the start of a career.

His writing has won numerous awards, including the 1971 National Headliner Award for the outstanding general interest column. In 1968 he received the Heywood Broun Award of the National Newspaper Guild for his coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. In 1968 he was named Chicago Communicator of the Year by the Chicago Jaycees and that same year he was given the Service to the Community Award by the Chicago Newspaper Guild.

In 1966 Royko received his paper’s Marshall Field Award for “the outstanding contribution made by his column to the editorial excellence of the Chicago Daily News.” He has also won three Chicago Newspaper Guild Stick-O-Type awards for the best sustaining feature.

In 1971 his book Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago was published by E.P. Dutton and became a bestseller. His columns have served as the basis for two books, Up Against It in 1967 and I May Be Wrong, But I Doubt It in 1968, both published by Regnery.

Royko and his wife Carol have two sons, David and Robert. Royko continues to live on the city’s Northwest Side. He feels he has no right to cover and criticize the city and the way it’s run unless he lives in it and helps support it.