MIKE ROYKO
Name: Mike Royko
Born: 19 September 1932
Died: 29 April 1997
Michael "Mike" Royko (September 19, 1932 - April 29, 1997) was a longtime
newspaper columnist in Chicago, Illinois.
Royko grew up in Chicago living in an apartment above a bar. His mother was of
Polish descent and his father was of Ukrainian origins. Once he became a
columnist, he drew upon his childhood experiences to become the voice of the
everyman Chicagoan. Although he could use biting sarcasm, he never spoke down to
his readers, always remembering that he was one of them.
Royko began his career as a columnist for the Naval Air Station Glenview
newspaper and the City News Bureau of Chicago before moving to the Chicago Daily
News. He worked for the Daily News as a political reporter and was an irritant
to the city's machine politicians with his penetrating and skeptical questions
and reports.
He covered Cook County politics and government and wrote a weekly political
column. He soon supplemented that with another weekly column on Chicago's active
folk music scene. These columns were successful, and soon he was given a regular
slot writing on all topics for the Daily News, an afternoon paper with a strong
liberal slant. Royko was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary while with
the Daily News in 1972.
Boss (1971), Royko's unauthorized biography of Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley
spent 26 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list.
When the Daily News shut its doors, Royko moved to its allied morning newspaper,
the Chicago Sun-Times. In 1984, however, he left the Sun-Times after it was sold
to a group headed by Rupert Murdoch, for whom Royko said he would never work. He
famously claimed, "No self-respecting fish would be wrapped in a Murdoch paper"
and that, "His goal is not quality journalism. His goal is vast power for Rupert
Murdoch, political power." He quickly found employment writing his column at the
rival Chicago Tribune, where he wrote until his death of a brain aneurysm at 64
. Royko's columns were syndicated in more than 600 newspapers across the country,
and he wrote more than 7500 columns over a four-decade career. He also wrote or
compiled dozens of "That's Outrageous!" columns for Reader's Digest.
Many of his columns were collected in book form, although his most famous book
remains the best-selling 1971 unauthorized biography of Richard J. Daley, Boss.
In the book, Royko portrays Daley as corrupt and racist; it has become one of
the principal books regarding the lifetime of Mayor Daley and Chicago under his
administration. Mayor Daley forced 200 Chicago bookstores to stop stocking the
book, but demand from the public forced them to start stocking them again, after
which Mayor Daley's wife was caught vandalizing copies.
As with many columnists, Royko created several fictitious mouthpieces with whom
he could hold "conversations." Perhaps the most famous of these was Slats
Grobnik, the epitome of a working class Polish-Chicagoan. Royko's Grobnik
columns generally took the form of the two men discussing a current issue in a
neighborhood Polish bar. In 1973, Royko collected several columns in the book
Slats Grobnik and Other Friends. Another of Royko's characters was his pseudo-psychiatrist
Dr. I.M. Kookie (title character of the collection Dr. Kookie, You're Right!,
1989). Kookie, purportedly the founder of the religion of Asylumism, according
to which Earth was settled by mentally insane individuals rejected by a higher
civilization, was used to satirize both pop culture and pop psychology.
Name: Mike Royko
Born: 19 September 1932
Died: 29 April 1997
Michael "Mike" Royko (September 19, 1932 - April 29, 1997) was a longtime
newspaper columnist in Chicago, Illinois.
Royko grew up in Chicago living in an apartment above a bar. His mother was of
Polish descent and his father was of Ukrainian origins. Once he became a
columnist, he drew upon his childhood experiences to become the voice of the
everyman Chicagoan. Although he could use biting sarcasm, he never spoke down to
his readers, always remembering that he was one of them.
Royko began his career as a columnist for the Naval Air Station Glenview
newspaper and the City News Bureau of Chicago before moving to the Chicago Daily
News. He worked for the Daily News as a political reporter and was an irritant
to the city's machine politicians with his penetrating and skeptical questions
and reports.
He covered Cook County politics and government and wrote a weekly political
column. He soon supplemented that with another weekly column on Chicago's active
folk music scene. These columns were successful, and soon he was given a regular
slot writing on all topics for the Daily News, an afternoon paper with a strong
liberal slant. Royko was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary while with
the Daily News in 1972.
Boss (1971), Royko's unauthorized biography of Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley
spent 26 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list.
When the Daily News shut its doors, Royko moved to its allied morning newspaper,
the Chicago Sun-Times. In 1984, however, he left the Sun-Times after it was sold
to a group headed by Rupert Murdoch, for whom Royko said he would never work. He
famously claimed, "No self-respecting fish would be wrapped in a Murdoch paper"
and that, "His goal is not quality journalism. His goal is vast power for Rupert
Murdoch, political power." He quickly found employment writing his column at the
rival Chicago Tribune, where he wrote until his death of a brain aneurysm at 64
. Royko's columns were syndicated in more than 600 newspapers across the country,
and he wrote more than 7500 columns over a four-decade career. He also wrote or
compiled dozens of "That's Outrageous!" columns for Reader's Digest.
Many of his columns were collected in book form, although his most famous book
remains the best-selling 1971 unauthorized biography of Richard J. Daley, Boss.
In the book, Royko portrays Daley as corrupt and racist; it has become one of
the principal books regarding the lifetime of Mayor Daley and Chicago under his
administration. Mayor Daley forced 200 Chicago bookstores to stop stocking the
book, but demand from the public forced them to start stocking them again, after
which Mayor Daley's wife was caught vandalizing copies.
As with many columnists, Royko created several fictitious mouthpieces with whom
he could hold "conversations." Perhaps the most famous of these was Slats
Grobnik, the epitome of a working class Polish-Chicagoan. Royko's Grobnik
columns generally took the form of the two men discussing a current issue in a
neighborhood Polish bar. In 1973, Royko collected several columns in the book
Slats Grobnik and Other Friends. Another of Royko's characters was his pseudo-psychiatrist
Dr. I.M. Kookie (title character of the collection Dr. Kookie, You're Right!,
1989). Kookie, purportedly the founder of the religion of Asylumism, according
to which Earth was settled by mentally insane individuals rejected by a higher
civilization, was used to satirize both pop culture and pop psychology.