Hard-nosed Editor Judge Now a Hall-of-famer
As an editor, Bernard M. Judge has edited projects that have won Pulitzer Prizes. He recently was among the judges that selected this year's Pulitzer Prize winners.
Judge, 60, editor of the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin and Chicago Lawyer magazine, has been an impact player in the newspaper game for more than a quarter century.
As the metropolitan editor and associate editor of the Chicago Sun-Times in the middle 1980s, he directed series and projects that won more than 20 local and national awards. He edited the series by Charles Nicodemus that killed a plan to establish a new central library in an old department store and that set the stage for the construction of the Harold Washington Library.
In another milestone, Judge will be inducted next week into the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame. He was nominated for this honor by Mark Brown and Chuck Neubauer of the Sun-Times, who credited Judge with providing leadership for some of this town's most notable investigative journalism.
Judge, who grew up in an Irish-American neighborhood on the South Side, is a James T. Farrell character sprung to life. As a youngster, he came of age in the neighborhoods that were the setting for Farrell's Studs Lonigan trilogy. Judge, like Lonigan, is tough and hard-nosed with a sharp Irish wit.
He has a national reputation. When the actor Edward Asner was playing city editor Lou Grant in the TV series of the same name, he sought Judge's advice about the nuances of running a newsroom.
In looking back on his long career, Judge said that the best advice he ever got was from a crusty old editor at the City News Bureau of Chicago. He told Judge: "If your mother says she loves you, check it out."
That advice is framed and prominently displayed on Judge's office wall on the second floor of the Law Bulletin building on North State Street. Judge has a couple of other pieces of advice for journalistic colleagues. "When in doubt, don't," is second among Judge's maxims. The third is: "If you can't prove it, don't print it."
One of the reasons why Judge is a great editor is that he's worked stories as a beat reporter. Early in his career, he covered the criminal courts, state government and local politics.
Judge was a top editor at the Tribune for a decade, then served as the editor and general manager of the City News Bureau of Chicago, a wire service that formerly was owned by the Sun-Times and the Tribune.
At the Sun-Times, Judge was in charge of series on the late Mayors Richard J. Daley and Harold Washington that made extensive use of oral histories and are regarded by politicians and political scholars as definitive treatments of these major historical figures. Though the first Mayor Daley and Washington were sometimes embarrassed by exposes of their administrations that were directed by Judge, they respected him as tough but fair.
Judge, who is active in the Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago, is a staunch defender of the First Amendment and isn't intimidated by the powerful. A prosecutor once issued subpoenas for notes of several of Judge's reporters for writing articles that he didn't like. "He thought our reporters worked for him. They didn't," Judge said. He took on the prosecutor in court and won.
More than two decades ago, Illinois Attorney General William Scott showed up at Judge's desk and refused to leave without an apology for a critical story that Judge had edited. Judge turned him down cold. Scott later was convicted of playing loose with his personal finances and went to prison.
"Many times in my career, stories of government corruption and vile conduct have been printed as a result of some government official who could no longer stomach the evil," Judge once said.
In 1995, Judge published a comprehensive history of the Operation Greylord scandals in which 15 judges and 49 lawyers went to prison. Most of the stories were written by Abdon M. Pallasch, who now works for the Sun-Times. When word got out that Judge was revisiting the Greylord scandal, several prominent lawyers suggested that it would be too painful to the local judiciary. But Judge published the series because it was in the public interest.
More recently, Judge published a terrific history of the law in 20th century Chicago.
Along with Judge, several other newsmen will be inducted into the Hall of Fame this week: former Sun-Times financial editor Ed Darby, former Sun-Times deputy editorial page editor Ed Gilbreth and former Sun-Times copy editor Dan Sullivan.
By Steve Neal, originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times, April 1, 2000
Last updated: January 2, 2002
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