Anne Keegan ain’t into thumbsucking in public. She thinks the reader wants to know the news, not her great thoughts on the matter. So in her writing, as in her book On the Street Doing Life, she
doesn't once let the first person slip into her text. In her view, journalism is a "feeble attempt to find the truth," and the truth is "what happened, and that's all."
She continues, "I made no judgments on anyone. None. Zero. Nor did I say, 'I stood there, and gee whiz, I'm so scared.' And 'Gee whiz, I felt so sorry for that lady, and I cried when she said, "I don't want to be arrested."' I'm not a Gen Xer boring everybody with what I think. I wasn't part of the show."
This lady is this blog’s idea of professional. Even as a columnist, for Chi Trib in the 80s, she never wrote about herself, even when her editors said she “didn't write enough silly stuff about [her] kids' diapers. Or about [her] twins. Or [her] psychiatrist. Or how [she] found a coyote in [her] yard.”
Didn’t work for her genius editors, who put her on women’s news in ‘97, precipitating her departure. She went home and wrote about Cronin, the legendary cop who left a foot back in Viet Nam and got on the force because Mayordaley I spoke up for him.
The book, self-published, is based on her joining Cronin in his midnight rides in Drug Land, as in the now-gone Rockwell Gardens on Western Avenue, where she found herself once alone in a dark hallway with three big guys. She ordered them against the wall, bluffing until he returned. This time she had to tell about herself — or did she? Michael Miner in The Chicago Reader quotes her husband.
Is it in the book? One way to find out: buy it here for $13.50.
Later: Newspaper reader, of course, is what’s meant. For thoughtful, reflective stuff there are usually better places to go.
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