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 | Dec 4, 2009
A private security guard ambles across a health clinic’s crowded waiting area toward the bathroom. A 3-year-old boy, seeing him wearing the same blue shirt as a Chicago police officer and heading the child’s way, fearfully shouts, “No! No!” His mother reassures him, “He’s not coming for you,” and he calms down. It’s just one
by JAMES WARREN | Nov 26, 2009
Being violated comes in many forms. When the congregation of All Saints’ Episcopal Church on Chicago’s North Side convened for the early worship service on Sunday, photocopies of a column I had written, about a weekly food pantry at the church, were placed on an entryway table. In the back of the sanctuary were a
by JAMES WARREN | Nov 21, 2009
In a Loop restaurant, David Axelrod smiles when shown a photo of the two of us as long-haired reporters hovering near a fur-coated female who resembles a polar bear with blond hair during a rough Chicago winter. “Jane Byrne. The 1979 mayoral campaign,” he says, examining the shot like a surprised anthropologist. “I was pulled
by JAMES WARREN | Nov 20, 2009
You can drive past the lovely North Side house of Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, and smack into Chicago’s invisible poor. One block, two blocks, three blocks and there, at the corner of Wilson and Hermitage, is the Tuesday night line of the beleaguered and unlucky, seemingly bending to the horizon. Whatever
