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Windy City Watchdog Robert Wiedrich Dies
Friends of Ours ^ | 04/21/12 | Friends of Ours

Posted on 04/21/2012 3:59:47 AM PDT by AtlasStalled

Robert Wiedrich, "one of the original watchdog reporters who went after Chicago's corrupt politicians and mobsters," died at the age of 85 last Saturday as reported by Erin Meyer for the Chicago Tribune.

Wiedrich was born to investigate wise guys and dirty cops.

The veteran reporter from The Chicago Tribune recently published his memoir Windy City Watchdog, and his nose for news was evident even as a boy growing up during the depression on the Near North Side when Al Capone still ruled the town.

He recounts as a kid watching a steady parade of men using a back staircase to an office over a neighborhood restaurant, and no longer able to contain his curiosity one day endeavored to get to the bottom of the mystery:

[A] couple of us kids snuck up the stairs and heard a man's voice calling out names and numbers over a loud speaker. We peeked into the large room, which covered the entire second floor, and saw a lot of men milling around exchanging green backs with other men who appeared to be clerks.

The juvie snoops dutifully told the neighborhood beat cop of their discovery -- an operation Wiedrich understood only years later as a book-making parlor -- who snapped back "mind your own business, you little bastards."

The reporter-in-the-making had his Chicagoland baptism, and the relationship between organized crime and public corruption would become a regular theme in his stories for the Tribune.

(Excerpt) Read more at bitterqueen.typepad.com ...


TOPICS: Books/Literature; Government; History; Society
KEYWORDS: chicago; chicagoway; illinois

1 posted on 04/21/2012 3:59:56 AM PDT by AtlasStalled
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To: AtlasStalled
Mr. Wiedrich was an honorable man and a great reporter for a once great newspaper which has become nothing more than another liberal Democrat, left-wing rag.

Sadly, the only conservative left now at the Chicago Tribune is John Kass.

"This review is from: Windy City Watchdog (Hardcover) Author grew up in Chicago and was a News reporter for many years for the Chicago Tribune. Great artifactual information about Chicago landmarks and news events, but also about several national or world events that the author wrote about, including numerous encounters with the Mafia, national and local politicians, Afganistan drug smuggling, and the RFK assassination in Los Angeles. Book contains wit, humor, humility, pathos, and deadly facts."

2 posted on 04/21/2012 5:24:29 AM PDT by KeyLargo
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To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Berosus; bigheadfred; Bockscar; ColdOne; Convert from ECUSA; ...

Thanks AtlasStalled.
...the relationship between organized crime and public corruption would become a regular theme in his stories for the Tribune.
That hasn't exactly been mined out.


3 posted on 04/21/2012 5:30:28 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (FReepathon 2Q time -- https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: KeyLargo

The Trib has gone downhill since Colonel Robert McCormick left,


4 posted on 04/21/2012 6:28:13 AM PDT by reg45 (Barack 0bama: Implementing class warfare by having no class!)
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To: KeyLargo

Wiedrich bounced around before the he landed at the “Trub” and worked for the Hearst Chicago’s Hearld American. At the time he was a butt kisser of Richard J. While there he was covering an election of LU 2 Chicago Firefighters union and called me some names because I was representing a reform faction of that union which damm near got elected.


5 posted on 04/21/2012 8:06:24 AM PDT by mosesdapoet (The best way to punish a - country is let professors run it. Fredrick the Great p/p)
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To: AtlasStalled

RIP.


6 posted on 04/21/2012 9:06:09 AM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (If you like lying Socialist dirtbags, you'll love Slick Willard)
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