Posted by chicagomedia.org on January 18, 2009 at 15:26:01:
Channel 7 political reporter Andy Shaw didn't anticipate change of heart when it comes to retirement
By Phil Rosenthal | Chicago Tribune
January 18, 2009
No matter how hard WLS-Ch. 7 political reporter Andy Shaw usually works to sniff out the next big news story, there were at least a few he didn't quite anticipate this summer when he told station management he wanted to retire after the election.
So here Shaw is set to get into his SUV with his wife and set off for a stretch in warmer climes after his last inauguration reports from Washington this week, not at all certain he wants to put his 35 years in Chicago TV and print forever in the rearview mirror.
"I don't think I understood the visceral impact of [Barack Obama's] election," said Shaw, 60, who joined WLS in 1983 after stints at WMAQ-Ch. 5, the Chicago Sun-Times and City News. "Secondly, who ever anticipated the governor being raided by the FBI? It recharged my batteries in a way I hadn't expected."
Batteries aside, the real jolt to his plan for retirement was the jolt to his retirement plan when the economy hit the skids. Plus the housing slump made it harder for him and wife, Mary, to cash out of their North Side home, which doubles as a bed-and-breakfast. Suddenly, their golden years looked brass at best.
"The worst hits on everyone's 401(k) came in that two-month period in the fall when all of a sudden you saw 30 percent of your assets disappear," he said. "So you see your assets disappear, you see Obama win and you see [Gov. Rod] Blagojevich raided by the FBI, and you're thinking it's the perfect storm of factors to undo a plan. But the plan was too far along."
Like a politician's gaffe caught on tape, Shaw's decision took on a momentum all its own. More than a year of back-and-forth concerning his future with Emily Barr, Channel 7's president and general manager, and Jennifer Graves, its vice president and news director, lurched irretrievably forth.
"The station needed to know at the end of the summer what I was going to do because they couldn't have their political reporter making a decision like that after the election when his contract was up at the end of that month," Shaw said. "They said they presumed I wanted to stay through the inauguration, and I said, 'Of course.'
"They had already been interviewing replacements and tentatively picked Charles Thomas. They were looking to a new budget year where my salary would be a savings. . . . At the end of the day, it's a business decision on their part and a personal decision on mine that in a perfect world would have been delayed a year or two."
WLS last month formally announced Shaw's retirement and named general assignment veteran Thomas his successor. It threw a farewell party for him last week before he left for D.C.
"We have not closed the door at Channel 7 on a continuing role, but I think Emily and Jennifer and Andy Shaw, we went through a lot of back-and-forth on this," Shaw said. "They have suffered my Hamlet-esque ambivalence about: Am I staying, am I going, blah, blah, blah. All of us need a break from that. . . . Then after I'm gone a few weeks, when I come back [from Florida and Colombia], who knows where everybody will be?"
Barr called Shaw knowledgeable, tireless and well-connected. "So the sky's the limit for him," she said. "I wouldn't be surprised to see Andy consulting, teaching, writing a book or all of the aboveā��and I wouldn't be surprised to see Andy making occasional appearances on TV or radio."
Shaw's wife wants him to write a book on Mayor Richard M. Daley, which is "an intriguing possibility, having been there for every minute of Rich Daley's professional career and having provoked some of his best sound bites with my own prodding," Shaw said. "But it's also a daunting prospect to sit and actually start researching a book."
Another possibility is a strategic communications job like the one former WLS colleague Mary Ann Childers, cut by WBBM-Ch. 2 in a budget purge, just landed with the Chicago-based Res Publica Group.
"My specialty over all these years has been message management," Shaw said. "I assess the messages of politicians and then I send a message every day to my viewers. So I know sound bites. I know strategies. I know how things work. So part of me has always wanted to be on the other side."
But whatever he winds up doing, where and when, the reporter in him has to appreciate the symmetry of his 25 years or so at WLS.
"I started here with the Harold Washington years, the first black mayor of Chicago, and 15,000 stories later, I end with the inauguration of the first African-American president in Barack Obama," Shaw said. "But I'm not leaving for lack of energy, lack of zeal, lack of enthusiasm or poor health.
"It's like an out-of-body experience. There's this guy, Andy Shaw, who's supposedly leaving Channel 7 but that's not me. It couldn't really be me after 25 years. I don't do stuff like that."