Entertainment Blogs

Posts Tagged ‘Journalist’

1936 - June 23, 2009

Legendary Chicago journalist John Callaway passed away Tuedsay evening July 23 in Racine Wisconsin.  Wife Sandra says John died of a heart attack after feeling faint in a Racine store.

John Callaway was 72.

Callaway founded and was the host of WTTW-11’s Chicago Tonight for 15 years until his retirement in 1999, and wasn’t out of the limelight long before he returned to WTTW’s airwaves a year later as host of the Chicago Stories documentary series, later hosting Friday Night, a segment of Chicago Tonight that featured in-depth interviews with people in the news.

He Hailed from New Martinsville, West Virginia where he lived with his parents and sister.  His father was editor of the town’s newspaper, a boozer who couldn’t hold a job, and the family was poor for most of John’s early years according to a 2001 Chicago Tribune story about his one-man-show, “John Callaway Tonight.” After arriving in Chicago as a college dropout — with, as he often said, 71 cents in his pockets — Callaway began his journalism career at the City News Bureau of Chicago and soon rose to radio and television eminence, the story said.

Callaway later was news director at WBBM-780 AM and in 1968 helped change the station to its current all-news format. According to his biography on the WTTW website, he was named CBS Radio’s vice president for development of all-news stations around the country.He returned to Chicago a few years later and joined WTTW in 1974 as the station’s news director.

“It has been said that John Callaway, who has won more than 60 awards, including seven Chicago Emmys, is the best interviewer on television,” according to a 1994 Tribune article. “He can be tough, like when he told Sen. Paul Simon he hadn’t mastered his own campaign material. He can be sensitive, like when he delicately asked director Gordon Parks about the death of his son. He can elicit quotable sound bites. Mike Ditka, when he was Bears coach: ‘My motives are right, even if my methods stink.’ Rich Daley, when he was state’s attorney: ‘I could subpoena you overnight if you became my enemy.’ He made the Frugal Gourmet cry. When Johnny Carson asked William Buckley who was the best interviewer, Buckley answered, ‘That chubby fellow in Chicago.’ “

Callaway is survived by his wife Sandra, two daughters, Liz Foster Callaway and Ann Hampton Callaway (both of whom are singers and actresses), from a previous marriage, and four stepchildren of Sandra’s

The City of Chicago, and maybe even the world,  has lost a great journalist.

Rest In Peace Mr. Callaway

Until Next Time

Michael Queenstown