Local investigative TV reporter shows why he never made it in print

Andy Shaw was a good enough local TV news political reporter for so many years in Chicago that some of us media watchers idly wondered: Why wouldn't this guy want to work for a newspaper? But then he retired in January and, as with all TV news people, we all forgot about him immediately.

Now, Shaw has been named as the new head of the Better Government Association—in Chicago, a busy job indeed. And today Shaw trumpets his own appointment, on the Huffington Post. And he does so with a series of clichés so thick that his prose parodies itself:

For more than 25 years, as the main political reporter at ABC 7 in Chicago, I asked politicians ... the tough questions about how they ... spent your hard-earned tax dollars. I held their feet to the fire. And now, after a short break to recharge my batteries, I'm back on the case. ... So let's get it on! So it's with a deep sense of responsibility and a keen knowledge of history that I become its new executive director, the keeper of an idealistic flame ... The BGA speaks truth to power--no small claim in these shark-infested political waters--and never wavers from its mission ...  That mission is more important than ever today. Because even though the BGA's flame still burns brightly, 86 years later, the challenge is as daunting as it was back then. ... The BGA ... keeps proposing reforms that entrenched political power-brokers, the guardians of the "business as usual" status quo, keep watering down or ignoring altogether. ... The timing is perfect on this, the 100th anniversary of Daniel Burnham's visionary plan to preserve Chicago's lakefront. Burnham, who admonished us to "make no small plans" because "they have no magic to stir one's blood."

Well, at least we don't have to waste any more spare energy wondering why Andy's print career never went anywhere.

Comments

[Kristen]

At least there's no mention of "strategy" or "Shifting paradigms"

Let us be grateful for the small mercies!!

[David Murray]

Wait until he's at the BGA a year or two.