Phil Kadner, second from the right, at a 2013 Pat Quinn press conference.
Ten years ago Phil Kadner gave a young colleague a piece of advice. Linda Lutton, then a reporter for the Daily Southtown, had the goods on a suburban school official who’d been stealing thousands of dollars from his district. Lutton was feeling triumphant—maybe even a little too excited for her own good. Kadner, the Southtown’s veteran news columnist, set her straight.
“It was Phil Kadner who really pulled me back, who told me, ‘You don’t get to feel like that,’” Lutton told me later. “‘You do your job and put down what you find and that’s all you get. You don’t gloat.’ He made me realize this is part of your job—just to report this out and be as measured about it as possible. And he told me, ‘You’ll write a million more stories that aren’t exciting like this. And that’s our bread and butter. And you’ve got to figure out how to keep moving forward. And keep writing day to day.'”
Lutton soon moved downtown to WBEZ. Kadner stayed where he was at the Southtown, writing his column and working the rich soil of the southern suburbs…Please click here to read Michael Miner’s story in the Reader.