By Rick Kaempfer
O'DONNELL'S BACK ON THE BEAT
J
im O’Donnell has been off and on the
media beat for Chicago area newspapers
for four decades. As of a few months
ago, he’s back on, and he’s landed at a
familiar place, The Daily Herald. “That’s
where my career started,” he says, “and
now
I’m doing a sports and media column
thanks to a quartet of superb professionals
beginning with publisher Doug Ray, editor-
in-chief John Lampinen, managing editor
Jim Baumann, and Mike Smith, who has
been sports editor since last fall. The full run
began at The Daily Herald in 1981 when I
nailed an improbable home run with a
breakaway about Harry Caray getting set to
leave the White Sox for the Cubs. I wound
up doing seven years
of media column for
The Herald, moved to
Frank Deford’s National
Sports Daily in 1990 and
came back to the game
thanks to Bill Adee at
The Sun-Times in 1997.
There was a short-lived
redux at The Sun-Times
in 2009-2010, but the
paper was falling apart
financially and at the
supervisory level...”
Anyone who reads
O’Donnell’s work and
has been around a
while shouldn’t be too
surprised to discover
that former Sun-Times
writer Gary Deeb was
one of his idols. “Deeb, in his newspaper
years (1973-83), was a staggering force of
innovation,” O’Donnell asserts. “A 28-year-
old kid from Buffalo came to Chicago in
1973 and completely invented a new school
of how media could be covered. He was
bold, funny and remarkably well-resourced.
He also did national and local media, which
no one since has ever matched. During one
of my frequent fall-outs with Steve Dahl,
Dahl once said on the air, ‘Oh, is O’Donnell
out there trying to write like Gary Deeb
again?’ To me, that was like saying, ‘Oh, is
O’Donnell out there trying to play basket-
ball like Michael Jordan again?’ In both
cases, I was clearly not worthy.”
Like Deeb before him, O’Donnell ruffled
a few feathers in his day. I wondered if he
had any regrets. “My biggest regrets have
always been brutally professional, like
when I didn’t take an extra look at a word,
phrase or sentence to make a line payoff
with greater zing. Some great editors have
told me I’m way too hard on myself. As far
as being an outright nitwit, I took a round-
house at Oprah just as she was on the
threshold of being syndicated that was
plumb dumb. Years later, she and Jeff Jacobs
did me an enormous favor that reeked of
overwhelming graciousness.”
The Daily Herald now has two people
covering the media beat--renowned long-
time media writer Robert Feder also writes
for the suburban newspaper. That’s a pretty
high-powered media-writing duo. Do their
paths ever cross?
“Rob and I have known each other since
1981,” O’Donnell says, by way of explana-
tion. “We didn’t have much interface at The
Sun-Times when we were both columning
there, and we don’t at The Daily Herald. He
sticks to local media material and is very
much a "just-the-facts-ma’am" sort of writer.
16 illinoisentertainer.com may
2019
I stretch out a bit more and try to mine some
fun and irony out of both sports and sports
media. I’d say he’s Joe Friday to my Jim
Rockford.”
As a keen observer of Chicago radio and
television over the past four decades, does
O’Donnell have any favorites he has cov-
ered? “On TV, Tim Weigel and Johnny
Morris were transcendent talents and com-
petitors. No one has managed his career
better than Mark Giangreco. Jack
Brickhouse’s versatility was amazing. The
two best play-by-play teams have been Jim
Durham and Johnny Kerr with the Bulls,
and Jimmy Piersall and Harry Caray with
Bill Veeck’s White Sox. Currently, Jeff Joniak
and Tom Thayer are excellent. Of current
sports talkers, Tom Waddle (ESPN-AM
1000) is insightful and refreshingly
restrained. I love the way Jim Rose has
evolved as a professional. As far as radio
reporters, I guess I’m a classicist because my
winning trifecta would be Cheryl Raye-
Stout (WBEZ), George Ofman (WBBM) and
David Schuster (WSCR). Also, every sports
talker should have an encyclopedic nerd
like Les Grobstein (WSCR). And, without
question, the most impacting Chicago
sportswriter of the past quarter century has
been Jay Mariotti. We were slow to warm to
each other at The Sun-Times, but his devo-
tion to his craft was staggering. He refused
to settle, was unbelievably competitive and
sold a lot of newspapers. I love working
with guys who ‘get it’ and make me try to
reach even higher.”
In the early ‘80s two of the guys he
worked with were Steve Dahl & Garry
Meier. O’Donnell appeared regularly as the
host of their Celebrity Jeopardy segment
when they were on WLS-AM 890.
“Let me just say the classic Dahl-Meier
“Celebrity Jeopardy!” years (1981-83) were
magical. They were the hottest and hippest
young radio personalities in America, and
they trusted some kookie suburban night
owl to come down every few weeks and
work unrehearsed alongside people like
John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Ozzy
Osbourne, Rick Moranis, Dave Thomas and
even the great Art Fleming himself.
Jeopardy! was dead and buried as a TV fran-
chise when we started that bit in September
1981, and three years later, the grand run of
Alex Trebek’s Jeopardy! began. We saved
Jeopardy!’”
Here’s to hoping he also saves media
writing. A few of us have a vested interest in
the subject.