By Rick Kaempfer
CHICAGO'S MORNING NEWS LEGEND
H
ow long has Pat Cassidy been deliver-
ing us the news on the radio by “the
dawn’s early light?”
“The alarm clock has gone off at 2:30 am
for over 40 years,” he says with a laugh. “I go
to bed early. The bottom line is that I start
going to bed around 6:30 or seven at night. I
read. I have the double dark curtains and the
white noise machine, but you gotta get your
six or seven hours of sleep if you want to do a
good job.”
It’s probably one of the reasons why Pat is one
of the most trusted news voices in Chicago.
He’s our modern-day Walter Cronkite. “Oh, I
wouldn’t go that far,” he says humbly. “John
Hultman, who preceded me in this job, is one
of my heroes. He’s anchor emeritus at this sta-
You should see their room back there. They
have screens and cameras all over the place,
and they take it very seriously. Traffic is an
inexact science because it changes so quickly,
but they work hard at making sure they have
the best information – and the most recent
information available. It’s a team thing. Felicia
and I are the final editors and make the final
decisions, but there are so many others that are
part of this.”
In this era of “fake news” and “opinion
journalism” and social media memes, it’s diffi-
cult for the consumers to find an outlet they
can trust. Pat Cassidy sympathizes, but his
consumption of news hasn’t changed too
much over the years, despite the many
changes in the media landscape.
Pat Cassidy
tion, and I’ve worked with him a number of
times. Hard to find a more trusted voice than
his. Bill Cameron at WLS is someone I really
admire. He’s a reporter, not an anchor, but he’s
really good. There are a lot of others. The
reporters and anchors here—my co-workers
are top-notch; [like] my fellow-anchor Felicia
Middlebrooks. This whole staff is excellent. It’s
nice of you to say that, but I’m certainly not the
only one. I’ve just been around for a long
time.”
One of the reasons that WBBM is so trust-
ed is because 'it takes a village' to put on every
show every day, and the morning show staff is
large and dedicated. “Zach Weber is our
morning editor,” Cassidy says, giving us a ver-
bal tour of the newsroom, “and he took over
from the legendary Jim Benes a few years ago,
and those are big shoes to fill. He’s a young
guy, but he’s a quick study, bright, creative,
and works very hard. He’s really the last per-
son to get the information to us. There are our
reporters out on the street in the morning like
Bernie Tafoya and Mike Krauser and various
others. We have news writers—Ken Kosek
and Joe Bartosch are the primary ones. There’s
quite a conversation off-air – it’s a lively news-
room—and we have occasional disputes
about stories, and where they should go, or if
we should do them at all. We’ve got desk assis-
tants taking the feeds. They’ll do phone calls to
double-check with the fire department and
police to double-check – they follow up news
leads. We always verify. And some individuals
specialize. Len Walter is our business anchor,
and he has his own sources. Josh Liss is the
one who handles sports. Beau Duran is our
traffic reporter in the morning, and he has a
producer Dan Frank, and they work amazing-
ly hard.
16 illinoisentertainer.com march 2020
“I think the traditional mainstream sources are
still the most trusted, and they should be. For
me, they are still the best way to get informa-
tion: News radio, television networks, the big
newspapers, the places that have staff vetting,
and following up to get the stories as right as
they can be. Twitter and Facebook don’t vet.
You’re really taking your chances getting
information from these other sources. That’s
not to say that it’s all untrue – because it’s not.
But you just don’t know. Rumors get started,
stories get spread, and some of them turn out
to be flatly untrue. As a news consumer, I tend
to stick to more conventional sources. I’m on
Twitter, and I do follow it, but again I look at
the original source and use that as a guide. Is
the public better served by having all these
sources out there? Probably. But buyer beware.
It’s still the wild, wild west on the internet.
Consumers need to be vigilant that they are
getting information from reliable sources.”
Pat has been doing this job for a long time
but has also done just about everything else in
radio. He has worked all kinds of formats,
including some that seem like strange detours.
He was with WMAQ for twenty-five years
through several formats and worked with the
likes of Mort Downey Jr., Chet Coppock, Tim
Weigel, and Jerry Taft. He met one of his best
friends, Mitch Michaels when he worked with
him at WKQX. Pat was the best man at Mitch’s
wedding. Cassidy was also the only white on-
air employee of WBMX during the early part
of his career. He even had a stint as part of
Mancow’s show at WLS about a decade ago.
“That was my career midlife crisis,” he
now says. “I scratched the itch and then
returned. “
We’re lucky he did. Pat Cassidy gives Chicago
the news every morning on News Radio
WBBM 780 AM and 105.9 FM.