Former Chicago Reporter is Dead
Robert Feder says they don’t make reporters like Hugh Hill anymore.
A giant of Chicago journalism for 43 years, he practically invented the role of political reporter on local television news and played it longer and with more gusto than anyone.
Hill, who died Friday at 89, interviewed every U.S. president from Truman to Clinton and covered every Chicago mayor from Daley to Daley. His in-your-face style of interrogation and remarkable institutional memory made him a legend.
“When he talked, politicians listened,” veteran reporter Chuck Goudie recalled on Facebook Friday. “Hugh taught me this: at any news conference ask the first question, make it the only question that matters — and ask it loud enough that it has to be answered.”