CWJHOF.ORG - Key Persons
Chicago Tribune features columnist Ellen Warren has been a local, national political, congressional, U.S. Supreme Court, foreign and war correspondent. She's also been a Tribune metro and magazine columnist and, early in her career, was the first woman legman for Chicago columnist Mike Royko.
Warren has covered politics at every level from Chicago City Hall to the White House, as well as war in the Middle East, six presidential campaigns, the Super Bowl and opening day at Wrigley Field. She is a member of the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame (the youngest inductee) who started her career as a police reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago, the famed boot camp for reporters known for its slogan, "If your mother says she loves you, check it out."
Warren has a B.A. with honors in English literature from Penn State and was awarded the University's alumni fellow designation, the highest liberal arts college honor. She also holds a diploma from the Sorbonne, University of Paris and an honorary doctorate from Barat College. She has never taken a journalism course although she has taught them at Northwestern University and Loyola (Chicago) University.
Actor Jimmy Stewart once picked her up off the floor. And she is believed to be the only reporter former President George W. Bush ever (at least publicly)told, "F- you!"
Born in White Fish Bay, Wisconsin, Darrow was a journalism graduate from Marquette University and later in life received her master's degree in Interdisciplinary Arts from Columbia College, where she also taught journalism courses part-time over the years and served as associate director of public relations in 1984-87.
From 1962-65, Darrow was managing editor of a suburban Chicago newspaper chain. She worked as an urban affairs reporter for the Chicago Tribune from 1965-1970, and in 1970 received a Harvard University/Urban America City Planning Fellowship for a housing survey of Russia, Finland, Scandinavia, France, England and the U.S.. Darrow also was editor of an award-winning book by Dempsey Travis ( An Autobiography of Black Chicago ) , and she worked with Travis on many projects. As a journalist, she covered many historic events, including the Selma to Montgomery civil-rights march and the 1968 Democratic National Convention. She was communications director of the United Mortgage Bankers of America from 1972-74, and was a lobbyist for several Black professional groups in Washington, D.C.
Darrow was managing editor of the Chicago Defender, the country's only Black daily newspaper, from 1972-1984. She was a press aide to both mayors Jane Byrne and Harold Washington (1983-84). In her later years, she was a freelance photojournalist and a real estate agent at Century 21 in Hyde Park.
Darrow served on the 1974 Governor's Blue Ribbon Commission on Red-Lining and Fair Housing, and received the University of Missouri Journalism School Unity Award for Race Relations in 1976. Her Defender series ‘Black Chicago: How It Works,' won a Stick O'Type Award in 1976, the same year she won a United Press International Award for Investigative Journalism.
Job Titles:
- Chicago Sun - Times Columnist
Laura S. Washington is a Chicago Sun-Times columnist and political analyst for ABC 7, Chicago's ABC-owned station. She served as a 2015 Visiting Fellow at the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics.
Washington brings more than two award-winning decades of experience as a non-profit professional and multi-media journalist. She specializes in African-American affairs, local and national politics, race and racism, and social justice. From 2003 to 2009 she served as the Ida B. Wells-Barnett University Professor at DePaul University and fellow at the DePaul Humanities Center.
From 1990 to 2002, Washington served as editor and publisher of The Chicago Reporter, a nationally recognized investigative monthly specializing in racial issues and urban affairs.
Her column has been published by the Chicago Sun-Times since 2001. She is a commentator on National Public Radio and Chicago Public Radio. In 1985 Washington was appointed deputy press secretary to Mayor Harold Washington, Chicago's first African American mayor. She also served as a producer for the investigative unit at CBS-2/Chicago, correspondent for "Chicago Tonight" on WTTW-TV and has written an op-ed column for the Chicago Tribune.
Washington earned bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism from The Medill School at Northwestern University, where she has also taught and lectured.
Her work has been honored with dozens of local and national awards, including two Chicago Emmys, the Peter Lisagor Award, and the Studs Terkel Award for Community Journalism and the Racial Justice Award from the YWCA. Washington is a founding inductee to the Medill School of Journalism Hall of Achievement. The Chicago Community Trust awarded her a Community Service Fellowship, for "exemplary service, commitment and leadership in individuals from the nonprofit sector."
Newsweek magazine named Washington one of the nation's "100 People to Watch" in the 21st Century. Newsweek said: "her style of investigative journalism has made (the Reporter) a powerful and award-winning voice."
Washington is widely quoted and featured in the national media, including Time Magazine, the Associated Press, New York Times, NBC Nightly News, MSNBC, PBS News Hour and the BBC. She is a frequent lecturer and moderator before local and national audiences.
Her civic activities include serving on the boards of Global Girl Media, The Field Museum, The Arts Club of Chicago, and Block Club Chicago.
Job Titles:
- Publisher and Executive Editor at Windy City Times
Tracy Baim is publisher and executive editor at Windy City Times, a weekly LGBTQ newspaper which she co-founded in 1985. Baim received the 2013 Chicago Headline Club Lifetime Achievement Award for her 30 years in journalism. In 2014, she was inducted into the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association Hall of Fame. Robert Feder named her to his Top 20 women in Chicago journalism list. She has won numerous LGBTQ community and journalism honors, including the Community Media Workshop's Studs Terkel Award in 2005 and several Peter Lisagor journalism awards. Baim has written and/or edited 12 books. Her most recent book is Barbara Gittings: Gay Pioneer. Her other books include Gay Press, Gay Power: The Growth of LGBT Community Newspapers in America; Obama and the Gays: A Political Marriage; and Out and Proud in Chicago. Baim was executive producer of the lesbian film Hannah Free, starring Sharon Gless, and Scrooge & Marley. She directed and produced e. nina jay's Body of Rooms film. She is creator of That's So Gay!, an LGBT trivia game. Baim is the founder of the Pride Action Tank. She was also co-vice chair of Gay Games VII in Chicago, and in 2013 was founder of the March on Springfield for Marriage Equality.
She received the American Institute of Architects-Chicago Presidential Citation Award in 2016 for her work on tiny homes for the homeless. Additional awards include those from the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, the LGBT Chamber of Commerce of Illinois, and Unity Parenting.