Zay N. Smith, who gained lasting fame with his reporting of the Better Government Association/ Sun-Times Mirage Tavern investigation, passed away last night at the age of 71.
Smith later became the host and moderator of the Quick Takes column at the Sun-Times. Like everything else at that paper, "Quick Takes" shrank, to "QT", before being jettisoned, along with Smith, from the Sun-Times in 2008.
Smith continued the QT column on various websites that I've linked to over the years.
The Mirage Tavern stories were riveting stuff for Phil Zukowsky and me back in 1978, when we were students at Loyola Law School. We did a long 'think piece' about the ethics of reporters inserting themselves into a story as Smith, Pam Zekman, and the rest of the BGA/Sun-Times team had done. Assessing our chances of getting our story into the Columbia Journalism Review as non-existent, we settled for publication in Blackacre, then the student newspaper at the Loyola School of Law.
Thankfully, our article seems to be lost to history.
But I do recall quite clearly that, since Loyola had no journalism school, Phil and I thought we should seek a comment for our story from the Dean of Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism.
Somehow we got the good man on the phone. We explained our quest -- and he responded: "I don't talk to student reporters." This had to make it difficult to conduct classes.
The linked obituary notes that Smith also taught at Medill. He apparently did speak to student reporters.
2 days ago
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Liked your link to QT so much that I added it to my favorites. I noticed over the last few months new posts were few and far between and was saddened to read about Zay Smith's death. Loyola may not have had a journalism school, but when I attended they had the best journalism professor, the late, great Edmund J. Rooney of the late, great Chicago Daily News. I took the two courses he taught in my senior year. His son, the late John Flynn Rooney was a reporter for the Law Bulletin. During the '68 Democratic Convention I ran into Ed Rooney and he introduced me to Jimmy Breslin, another great writer. Hopefully you at least have a copy of the story you wrote. Is the snooty Northwestern Dean still around, or at least around when you began your blog, so you could remind him of the call he didn't take from you?
I never took Ed Rooney's course. John Flynn Rooney was a rough contemporary of mine, and we had a number of mutual friends from undergraduate days, but I could claim no real acquaintance with him.
When I was there, in addition to Rooney's course (which may have been discontinued during my time there), Loyola offered a Journalism 101 course taught by a Tribune copy editor, Al Gray. I took that one. I remember a headline-writing exercise. We were to assume that six shipwreck survivors, clinging to a refrigerator, were attacked by a shark. What would be the headline? I suggested "Shark takes 6-pack from fridge." Gray liked that one, he said. "I'd fire you on the spot, though," he added.
I'm googling high and low for the name of the dean who was the dean in 1977. And I am having no luck. Do you remember? I am really surprised that googling dean of Medill in 1977 doesn't bring up a thing. Nor does a search for a list of all the deans of Medill in history.... If you can remember let us know! Paul began teaching there in the early 80s, but the dean he worked for came about the same time or shortly after, so.... I have hit a dead end....
Ira B. "Bill" Cole.
PS. In my haste to unmask the dean in 1977, i forgot to mention Zay! Loved the guy. He taught with Paul at Medill, of all places. And they'd known each other at the Suntimes when they both worked there, as well. When Zay married Susy, it was another nice connection because Susy and I had worked at the City News Bureau at the same time--and we'd remained friends. And so, during those marriages (both ended in divorce after many years, children and careers, etc.), Paul and me and Susy and Zay spent time together. And as I told Susy a few days ago in a note, Zay always exuded goodness. He was a very good man in every way. And he has gone down in history for The Mirage, and for QT....
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