Remembering the political insights of a journalism giant
August 2025
Say the name “Conaty,” and a singular image comes to mind: Jack at his desk in the WFLD-TV Fox News Chicago newsroom, leaning back in his chair, coat off, surveying the activity around him—just waiting for the next person to come by and pick his brain about the latest political chatter.
Jack never seemed too busy to share his insights about the mayor or the Illinois governor, about city aldermen shenanigans or White House policy. He was cynical, sarcastic, witty, funny and always informed. His on-air reports reflected only the latter, as you’d expect from good journalism. But the truly juicy stuff came from Jack, in his chair, at his desk.
Jack passed away one year ago, on August 28, after a short illness. He was 77. And this tribute to my friend is long overdue.
I worked with Jack at WFLD for 16 years, from 1994 to 2009. When I formed The Reporters Inc. in 2011, he was one of the first I asked to come aboard as a member of our advisory committee. He said yes without hesitation.
Jack Conaty, at his desk in the WFLD-TV Fox News Chicago newsroom in the mid 2000s.
Jack was a sounding board for many an important decision. Never one to hold back an opinion, Jack always gave me his unfiltered, unsweetened, invaluable takes.
Jack grew up in Connecticut and was an English teacher before turning to journalism. He moved to Chicago in 1987 to help launch Fox’s first-ever news operation in the third-largest media market, after working at TV news stations in Florida, New Jersey and Washington D.C.
Jack with President-elect Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention in 2008 in Denver, Colorado.
Anne Kavanagh, another former Fox Chicago reporter, was hired at the same time as Jack. “We all called him, with deep affection, ‘the old man,’” she says. “Not because he was so old—he wasn’t. It’s just that we were all so young at the time and he had much more experience. Jack was more than willing to share that experience and wisdom with all of us, and we lapped it up because we craved the guidance.”
“I will always remember him not only as a consummate journalist who asked the tough questions,” remembers Kathy Minnis, a Fox Chicago producer in the late 1990s and early 2000s (and a Reporters Inc. Board Member), “but also as a kind and patient person who always taught me to persist for the truth and not take an answer at face value.”
During the course of his career, Jack interviewed everyone from Nelson Mandela to Fidel Castro, covered seven presidential conventions, and earned Emmy awards, a Peabody, and more.
Jack with Anne Kavanagh and Lilia Chacon in 2017.
At WFLD he was the chief (and only) political reporter, and hosted a weekly show devoted to the subject.
“If you were to cast a political reporter in a movie,” says Kavanagh, “you would want the actor to look just like Jack Conaty—handsome in a very dashing and seasoned way. He looked the part but even more importantly, he had substance.”
“I always thought of him as ‘Gentleman Jack’ because he was articulate and elegant in his manner and dress,” says Rhonda Guess, a reporter at Fox Chicago in the late 1990s (and a Reporters Inc. Board Member). “Jack brought class and gravitas to WFLD.”
Lilia Chacon, another long-time Fox Chicago reporter, was one of Conaty’s best friends and favorite sparring partners. “He was such a gifted writer and relentless questioner,” she says. “He was just not intimidated by the politics and personalities we covered.”
Some of the articles written about Jack immediately after his death cracked me up. Not because they weren’t adequately reverential, but because many of the people interviewed (unlike those quoted in this story) were folks that I know Jack simply couldn’t stand. He didn’t like suck-ups or people who hadn’t earned their position. And TV news is full of them.
Jack would have smiled knowing that these folks spoke so kindly about him and his talents, and then quietly chortled.
When I first started at WFLD, I sat directly across from Jack. The newsroom then had just been “modernized” and was adorned in sleek black and silvery metallic décor. It kind of looked like an industrial warehouse that had been converted into a cool nightclub. A round porthole-like window of sorts, with grating across it, separated Jack and me. But we could still basically hear everything the other said. Jack was in the midst of a very contentious divorce at the time and I recall several very heated phone conversations he had with his soon-to-be-ex-wife. He was angry. He was hurt. And his voice almost reverberated through the metal grates. He would hang up, seething.
I pressed my face to the porthole, after one of those calls, and sarcastically said, “That couldn’t have gone better.” The “old man” smiled. He thought I was funny, too.
Yet in all the years I worked with Jack, I never saw him lose his cool when it came to the work. Unlike some of us, he worked fast and efficiently. His news writing was stylishly sparse. He conveyed deep meaning with few words.
Nancy Pender, a Reporters Inc. advisory committee member and another of Jack’s reporter/anchor co-workers at WFLD, says, “Jack could quickly and brilliantly hammer out a story. It seemed he knew the political players better than they knew themselves. He knew their backstories, what motivated them, and the pressures they faced.”
Jack was quick with a compliment, and a correction. He would often stop me in the hall and tell me how much he liked a report of mine. Once, when I’d been fill-in anchoring, he took me aside afterwards and quietly told me I’d mispronounced the African country of Tanzania. Instead of saying “Tan-zuh-NEE-uh,” I called it “Tan-ZANE-ee-uh,” as if it rhymed with the Australian island state of Tasmania. (Oops.)
One remembers these gestures of kindness because, trust me, many of my co-workers offered nothing of the sort. TV newsrooms are populated with cut-throat egos.
Jack was Fox News Chicago’s sole political reporter during his 22-year tenure at the station.
When Jack’s contract at WFLD wasn’t renewed in 2009, he became the first of nearly two dozen on-air reporters and writers whose contracts the station chose not to renew (including mine a year later). Corporate hatchets were brought in and they decided anyone making decent money had to go.
At the same time, the station started looking and acting much like the odious Fox “News” Network, something WFLD had always tried to distance itself from—despite the dreaded Fox affiliation.
Jack’s awful replacement was a crony of the wholly incompetent new WFLD news director. One of his first reports was on the new, so-called “Tea Party movement” that was grabbing political attention. These were troubling, stressful times.
Jack was no right-wing aficionado, but he wasn’t a liberal softie either. In the years before his death, he griped to me about the causes of crime in Chicago and even articulated what might be considered anti-DEI viewpoints. But he was always fair. After some of our conversations I’d wonder what side he actually came down on, because he could eloquently argue both.
Kavanagh says, “Jack didn’t buy into ‘conventional wisdom’ or the ‘party line.’ He was an independent thinker. Over the years I saw him evolve. He kept the best of the “old school” mentality but also opened his mind to new ideas and pathways.”
Jack presciently wrote about the first Trump presidency for The Reporters Inc. in 2017. Here’s a portion: “Trump ran as a populist but governs as an elitist. This administration shows a dangerous penchant for authoritarian government and is guided by a philosophy that plays, first and foremost, to fear. It thrives on pitting Americans against each other and much of the rest of the world.”
My very favorite memory of Jack isn’t meant to be shared with those prone to making complaints to their workplace human resources department about “inappropriate comments.” But back in the mid 1990s, this little anecdote was funny. Still is.
Jack walked up to me one day, shortly after I’d started at the station, to give me a little pep talk after some newsroom mishap I’d been involved in. I think I said something to somebody about something that I shouldn’t have. I was 27 at the time. Jack, two decades my senior, looked me in the eye and said, “Kid, you’re young, you’re dumb, you’re full of…” You (probably) can fill in the rest. Then, in his inimitable Jack Conaty style, he paused, his eyes twinkling in delight, before letting out a mumbly, snickering, snorting giggle. I laughed with him. How could I not? Nothing Jack ever said or did was rooted in malice. Usually just in humor, and always in truth. Sigh.
“He was the first one to lend you a hand or offer words of encouragement,” Kavanagh says. “But when you were up, he liked to yank your chain a bit so you didn’t get too big headed.”
Chacon says, “He could be warm and funny, and leave me laughing even when I was the target of his jokes. He’d raise his hand in the air, pretending to hold an imaginary tray, and say to me, ‘You’ll be back waitressing in no time, kid.’”
Pender says it’s Jack’s “wicked sense of humor, and that sinister laugh” that she remembers most. “That laugh made me laugh in and of itself. God, he was funny. He had a take on people that only his delightfully twisted mind could conjure, and I adored him for it.”
After leaving WFLD, Jack essentially retired. He re-married and moved to Tucson, Arizona. I visited him there in February 2023, the last time I would see him. He seemed noticeably frail to me, and didn’t move from his chair by a fireplace for most of our visit. But he was as insightful and opinionated as ever, as we chatted about the state of the country and the state of journalism—and gossiped about our friends, foes and frenemies.
Jack is survived by his wife, Tinsley Deibel, his two daughters, Eliza and KC, and everyone else who adored him.
Mark Saxenmeyer with Jack at his home in Tucson, Arizona, February 2023.
Jack’s wife, Tinsley Deibel, his daughter Eliza, and his daughter KC at Eliza’s graduation from medical school in May 2024.
“The ‘old man’ was a legend and a dear, gracious man with a sensitive heart beneath the tough exterior. He was loved,” says Kavanagh.
“In today’s tumultuous political climate we need more journalists like Jack Conaty,” says Minnis.
“Smoking, drinking coffee, and rocking in a chair that wasn’t meant to rock. Funny, sarcastic, provocative and complex, we became ride-or-die friends for more than 40 years,” says Chacon.
I think about Jack often. About what he’d say or think about the increasingly disturbing headlines coming out of Washington D.C. About the career trajectories and accomplishments of our former co-workers. About The Reporters Inc.’s newest projects and articles.
I can hear the oh-so-serious tone of his voice, the one he used when the subject was indeed serious. And I can hear the devilish school boy giggle, when the subject was most definitely not.
In the next life, Jack, I’ll be looking for your desk first thing.
We’ve got so much more to discuss.
Mark Saxenmeyer is the Executive Director of The Reporters Inc. You can read more about him here on our Team page. He can be reached at msax06@mac.com.
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