OKAY, SO WE MADE A FEW CHANGES…
EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO, I GRADUATED with a degree in history from the University of Illinois. I had vague notions of becoming a college professor, maybe a writer. The joke among history majors was that you became a teacher or unemployed. I fell into the latter category. Because I wanted to move out of my parents’ house, I compiled my clippings from the college newspaper and got a job at a local paper in the Chicago suburbs, the Journal & Topics. I would be a cub reporter. The editor was and remains a guy named Todd Wessell, one of the unsung heroes of local journalism. Todd taught me how to be a reporter—importantly, a reporter, a title he preferred to journalist. He also worked my ass off. No job was too small.…
