Basil Talbott Jr., Chicago Sun-Times political editor and journalist, dies at 89

Politicians usually preferred that Basil Talbott Jr. covered a different beat.

The fair-minded, truth-seeking Chicago Sun-Times political journalist would never indulge in their emoluments, like a free lunch at a fine restaurant.

“Basil would have nothing of that. Absolutely nothing. He insisted that what he would tell the public would be what he believed without any editing or constraint because he was in bed or in debt to somebody,” said Ron Grossman, a retired Chicago Tribune columnist and longtime friend of Mr. Talbott.

He would still befriend sources, such as political consultant Don Rose, who worked with former mayors Harold Washington and Jane Bryne and was the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s press secretary. Even so, Mr. Talbott stayed honest.

“We had this dual relationship where he was periodically covering what I was doing, but at the same time, we had developed this friendship, but he was pretty straight about it,” Rose said. “If he had to tick me off, he did.”

Mr. Talbott, 89, died Wednesday. He was living with his wife, Susan Talbott, in Santa Monica, California, after the two traversed the country — from Washington to North Carolina, Iowa, Connecticut and Philadelphia — during their 29 years of marriage.

He was born Nov. 8, 1936, in Chicago to Basil Talbott Sr., a journalist, and Mae Talbott. Mr. Talbott grew up in the Marshall Field Garden Apartments and stayed in the Old Town neighborhood for most of his years at the Sun-Times. His father, who also was a boxer and vaudeville performer, had been among the last of the Front Page Era of Chicago newspapering with Ben Hecht, Harry Romanoff and Buddy McHugh.

Susan Talbott described her husband as erudite, a “true intellectual” who was always reading, learning, debating. He believed in hearing every viewpoint.

At the time of his death, Mr. Talbott was reading “The Power Broker,” historian Robert Caro's 1,200-page biography of New York builder Robert Moses. He still read the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, The Atlantic, The Economist, New York Review of Books, New York Times and Los Angeles Times.

“He always wanted to listen and to learn, and if he ran into someone with the opposite personal point of view, because he was retired for so long he was allowed to have a personal point of view. He still, even years after retirement, always wanted to hear what people had to say, no matter what position they took,” Susan Talbott said.

Rose added: “I don’t think he’s got an enemy in the world, even people who disagree with him.”

After graduating with a philosophy degree from the University of Chicago, Mr. Talbott began his journalism career during the heart of the Civil Rights Movement.

He joined the Sun-Times in 1962 as a general assignment reporter following a year at the City News Bureau. He covered King’s Chicago housing movement in 1966, when King moved into a dilapidated North Lawndale apartment to highlight the squalid living conditions in Black neighborhoods.

Throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, Mr. Talbott was a political writer and eventually became the paper’s political editor and chief political columnist, covering the last hurrah of Mayor Richard J. Daley, the election of Chicago’s first woman mayor, Byrne, and the city’s first Black mayor, Washington.

It was as if Mr. Talbott and the news were fused as one. His send-off party Nov. 23, 1987, for when he became the Sun-Times’ Washington Bureau Chief, turned out to be Harold Washington’s last public appearance. Washington died the next day.

During his time as the Sun-Times Washington Bureau Chief, between 1988 and 1998, Mr. Talbott covered the Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations. He wrote front-page news stories about the downfall of House Speaker Jim Wright, the rise and fall of Speaker Newt Gingrich and the buildup to the Clinton impeachment hearings. And he documented the lead-ups to the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns.

Mr. Talbott often consulted Grossman, the Tribune columnist, about stories he was working on — typically about Chicago history. But he’d only ask about the background of stories, never Grossman’s opinion.

“He wanted to make that judgment solely for himself,” Grossman said. “That is extremely unusual, but that was the way he worked from the beginning to the end.”

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., was another familiar politician to Mr. Talbott.

“Basil Talbott covered me in Springfield, Chicago, and Washington,” Durbin said in a statement to the Sun-Times. “I considered him a friend until he turned on his tape recorder and then he was a professional news man who was all business. Basil was always fair, well-informed, and accurate.”

His former colleagues described him as among the best in the business at cutting through deception and sifting out the truth.

A 1998 Chicago Tribune article about retiring U.S. Rep. Sidney Yates used Mr. Talbott as an example of relations frequently turning contentious between reporters “and the often thin-skinned politicians they cover.”

"And it often must have been so in the career of the Sun-Times’ Basil Talbott, the paper’s longtime chief Chicago political writer before he was dispatched to Washington,” the article reads. “As he did in Chicago, he plows through interviews and press conferences here like a bulldozer, at times bluntly challenging obfuscation and cutting off the long-winded in mid-sentence."

While moving around the country with his wife, an art museum director, Mr. Talbott took a keen interest in the arts and also lectured about politics at an annual summer art program in Maine. During their time in Iowa, he was the George Gallup visiting professor at the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

He held that mentorship persona at the Sun-Times, too.

"I am a graduate of the Basil Talbott school of covering politics," said Lynn Sweet, the Sun-Times former chief political reporter and ex-Washington Bureau Chief. "I came up as a political reporter in Chicago watching and learning from Basil. He was impervious to spin and plowed through BS to find the real story of what was happening, whether in Chicago's precincts, Springfield, the Capitol or the White House.”

Sweet, now a Sun-Times special correspondent, and other friends of Mr. Talbott, described him as a “witty raconteur” and television personality. For years, he was a fixture on WTTW’s “Week in Review.” He also made regular panel appearances on WBEZ, ABC, NBC and CBS.

Mr. Talbott was inducted into the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame in 2002.

Former Sun-Times reporter and managing editor Mary Dedinsky, who worked with Mr. Talbott from 1974 to 1992, said Chicago is losing a great resource for its history.

“I always felt I could call him, reach out to him for a wise perspective on something because of his deep knowledge of Chicago and its journalism,” Dedinsky said. “And I just knew it would be a really robust and excellent finding from him or observation from him.”

Dedinsky was 23 when she started at the Sun-Times, and she quickly observed Mr. Talbott’s presence.

“He made the newsroom a humming, exciting place,” Dedinsky said. “But he was tough. When I was an editor, we would get into difficult conversations, maybe arguments, about the way a story was going to be fashioned. But he was always, always sticking to the facts.”

Mr. Talbott was beloved and widely recognized around the city and in Washington.

“We would walk down the street and people would come over and say, ‘Oh, hey, Basil, it’s great to see you back in Washington,’ and they would chat,” Susan Talbott said. “And I would say, ‘Basil, you didn’t introduce me. Who was that?’ And he’d say, ‘Damned if I know.’”

In addition to his wife, Mr. Talbott's survivors include his stepdaughter, Maggie Mackay; two grandchildren; and a brother, Dennis. A memorial service in Chicago is planned in the coming months.