Stanley: Lessons learned from John Whiteside

I think it was my third day at The Herald-News when I was introduced to John Whiteside.

He looked at me and scoffed, “I don’t think we’ve ever had a male secretary in the newsroom.”

I knew the columnist had his picture on the front page three days a week. I knew other reporters referred to him as “The Franchise” and I’m certain management would’ve sided with him in any dispute with a scraggly-looking temp employee. But I impulsively ignored all that and responded with something unprintable.

Whiteside chuckled and shook my hand. We weren’t close, but we’d get along fine until his death from cancer Jan. 22, 2005, at the age of 61.

A native of downstate Vienna, Whiteside enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and trained as an aircraft controller and radar operator. He came to The Herald-News in 1971 after graduating from Northern Illinois University.

“From the time I was old enough to dream, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a storyteller,” Whiteside wrote in a column that ran the day after his death.

Whiteside started with “the best beat in the newsroom” – covering police activity in Will County. Two months into the job, Whiteside learned about a farmer who’d gotten arrested for firing a gun at the trespassers who kept stealing his corn. The story of the victim being punished more than the criminals caused outrage and became national news.

The charges were dropped.

After a decade as a reporter, Whiteside became The Herald-News columnist and never wrote less than three columns each week for the next 24 years. He wrote about other crime victims, criminals, police officers, lawyers, judges, witnesses. He wrote about local Civil War soldiers he’d researched and local veterans he’d spend hours swapping stories with.

He wrote about George Chase – the first man hanged at the Will County jail; Elsie – the infamous madame of the 1940s; Molly Zelko – the newspaper editor who disappeared; and Dollor – the horse John Wayne rode in several films.

“First, write about people. Not things, people. That’s where the stories are,” John told me when I began writing for the paper.

While there were occasional exceptions (like the horse), John’s philosophy was spot-on, as was his second piece of advice.

“Always tell a positive story when you can. The paper’s going to be filled with bad news, but if you can get people to smile or laugh or even cry a little bit, they’ll read you first. Do the negative stories when you have to, but never turn down a positive story,” he told me.

Whiteside considered the positive community impact his writing sparked as his biggest accomplishments. He used his column to lead efforts establishing an honor guard at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery, getting cameras installed in police cars to record drunk driving arrests and building a law enforcement memorial at the courthouse.

The cemetery guard, the military gallery at the Joliet Area Historical Museum, the Will County sheriff’s civilian appreciation award and the post office on McDonough Street are all named for him.

“Everyone has a story to tell if you just listen,” John told me, and hundreds of other people, over the years.

He was right. It’s advice for journalists, but it holds value for everyone reading this.

Thanks, John.

• Brian Stanley is a senior reporter for The Herald-News.