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 | Oct 9, 2011
If we could have exhumed Richard J. Daley, the iconic big-city mayor, and taken him to a plumbers union basement on the near West Side last week, he would have been revived and content. Forget the mostly reformist doings of Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Some grand and caricatured political traditions remain intact — like Cook County
by JAMES WARREN | Oct 7, 2011
A cultural anthropologist should stick inside a vault the tape of Forrest Claypool, head of the Chicago Transit Authority, addressing a sea of dark suits at the City Club of Chicago breakfast on Tuesday. Claypool offered what the French call a tour d’horizon of a decaying transit system. In 25 years, researchers can find a
by JAMES WARREN | Oct 2, 2011
Gov. Pat Quinn, a White Sox diehard, is on strategic common ground with the Cubs: Each is striking while the iron is cold. After a painful year, the Cubs are asking season ticket holders to send in their money months earlier than usual. Meanwhile, the governor is seeking to exploit his disaster by shutting down
by JAMES WARREN | Sep 30, 2011
It’s a function of fiscal dehydration and desperation that Mayor Rahm Emanuel is drooling over the prospect of casino revenues. The Missile thus might find that a Northwestern University professor is underscoring the obvious in a study, “A Mouth-Watering Prospect: Salivation to Material Reward,” because it links a vivid physiological response to the mere thought
by JAMES WARREN | Sep 25, 2011
Mike Quigley knows about cheap shots on ice. Now he’s an expert on being blindsided on the internet and cable TV. Quigley, a Democratic Chicago congressman, had a relatively light Saturday recently. He played ice hockey in the morning, did a beach cleanup with the Sierra Club and hit four block parties in the 32nd,
by JAMES WARREN | Sep 23, 2011
The growing army of hidden hungry is such that you may miss them, indistinguishable from other commuters on a well-lit el platform. I thought about that after Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Forrest Claypool, head of the Chicago Transit Authority, on Tuesday unveiled a $25 million touch-up to improve the look, feel and safety of stations
by JAMES WARREN | Sep 18, 2011
Alberto Coll fought fire with ice last week as he confronted provacative actions of former President George W. Bush’s war on terror. Thursday night, Coll, a DePaul University law professor, engaged in a formal debate in Chicago over presidential powers with John Yoo, a controversial and fearless University of California law professor. As a Justice
by JAMES WARREN | Sep 16, 2011
If Mayor Rahm Emanuel can generate jobs as well as he creates solicitous publicity, work-hungry citizens will be hitchhiking to Chicago from San Diego. If only it were that easy. The Missile announced a plan Tuesday to help small businesses via a Goldman Sachs partnership with City Colleges of Chicago. The formal announcement asserted that
by JAMES WARREN | Sep 12, 2011
If you associate the University of Chicago with impenetrable polysyllabic papers whose footnotes bend to the horizon, please inspect, “Why Do Consumers Think Hard-to-Get-Babes and Products Are Worth the Extra Effort?” A perfect-for-drive-time-radio subject is found in the new edition of The Journal of Consumer Research. It is the handiwork of a professor and a
by JAMES WARREN | Sep 9, 2011
Given the well-orchestrated hoopla over how they circumvented their union and voted for a longer school day, you might think that teachers at STEM Magnet Academy were Chicago’s version of the workers at the shipyards in Gdansk, Poland, who fought Communism 30 years ago. The Gdansk workers inspired the Solidarity movement, led by Lech Walesa,
