JAMES WARREN
James Warren is a news columnist for the Chicago News Cooperative. He formerly was managing editor and Washington bureau chief of the Chicago Tribune and the publisher of the Chicago Reader. The veteran journalist is also a political analyst for MSNBC and a contributor to The Atlantic.
Jim came to Chicago in 1977 to join the financial section of the Chicago Sun-Times, where he worked as a general-assignment reporter and wrote about business, legal affairs and labor issues. In 1984, he moved to the Chicago Tribune as its labor and legal affairs writer. He later became the paper’s media writer and editor of its Tempo lifestyle section.
Recent Contributions
by JAMES WARREN | Apr 20, 2011
A Jehovah’s Witness approached me on State Street last week, gave me a leaflet and said she had “The Answer” to all our problems. Not all. It offered no insight into resolving the corruption-filled mess titled, Michael L. Shakman and Paul M. Lurie, et al., v. Democratic Organization of Cook County, et al. Otherwise, the
by JAMES WARREN | Apr 16, 2011
Ravenswood Elementary is up the block from the North Side home that Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel is still renting to the Tenant From Hell. By 3 p.m. Thursday, the school was virtually empty, the day done, with a few children and moms hanging out on its austere concrete playground.
by JAMES WARREN | Apr 14, 2011
Just as dairy cows, oxen and horses once called a 19th-century northwest suburban barn home, an assuredly more fleeting but vocal species found comfort there Monday evening: a Tea Party congressman and his partisans.
by JAMES WARREN | Apr 9, 2011
David Axelrod concedes that he has a touch of Potomac fever, a malady in which the victim struggles with the notion that there’s life beyond the nation’s capital.
by JAMES WARREN | Apr 7, 2011
Jeffrey Colman, a Chicago lawyer, got a collect call Tuesday from a convicted murderer at Menard Correctional Facility in downstate Chester.
by JAMES WARREN | Apr 2, 2011
Tuesday elections in Chicago and Cook County will inspire dismal turnouts, perhaps 25 percent countywide. But there’s a potential remedy: discount coupons for rock climbing.
by JAMES WARREN | Mar 31, 2011
Cook County has more units of government (945) than the state of Illinois has licensed acupuncturists (700), licensed auctioneers (682), collection agencies (935), alarm contractors (708) or detective agencies (582).
by JAMES WARREN | Mar 26, 2011
Terry Mazany, interim chief of Chicago Public Schools, was like a baseball manager beckoning a star relief pitcher an inning early to hold a lead. Rather than Mariano Rivera, he waved in Kate Maehr to last week’s Board of Education meeting.
by JAMES WARREN | Mar 24, 2011
A news conference had petered out on a misty, chilly Tuesday when an officer stopped his squad car upon spotting me and a news media colleague. “What’s up?” he asked as he entered the lot at 19th District police headquarters at Belmont and Western Avenues.
by JAMES WARREN and MERIBAH KNIGHT | Mar 23, 2011
After serving Mayor Daley for 22 years, longer than any cabinet member, as head of the Department of Cultural Affairs, Lois Weisberg abruptly left her influential post in January. In a two-story package produced in collaboration with Time Out Chicago, The Chicago News Cooperative’s assessed the legacy of the city’s former culture queen and what
