Chicago City Wire

A Chicago Tribune political reporter, once accused of writing favorable stories about former Illinois Gov. George Ryan in exchange for a state job for his wife, has received a "Lifetime Achievement Award" from the Chicago Headline Club.

Rick Pearson, 64, of Naperville, received the award Friday, May 12 at the "Peter Lisagor Award Banquet," held at Chicago's Union League Club. The event attracted "more than 200 members of the local media community," according to the club.

Pearson, who joined the Tribune in 1988, was included on a "Favors List"-- a list of people who had requested state patronage jobs-- maintained by Ryan and his chief of staff. The list was introduced during Ryan's federal trial on criminal corruption charges in 2003.

Former U.S. Rep. Glenn Poshard (D-Marion), who ran against Ryan for governor in 1998, said the fact that Ryan felt Pearson owed him favors "might have surprised many, but not him."

"The Chicago Tribune assigned Rick Pearson to the campaign (when) we knew his wife, Margaret, worked as a state employee for George Ryan," said Glenn Poshard, former Democrat congressman and Ryan's opponent, in a 2003 interview with the Southern Illinoisan. "We complained to the Tribune and to Pearson personally."

Poshard said he asked the Tribune to remove Pearson from the beat, but its editors refused.

"When we were doing our bus trip around Illinois, we were in central Illinois this particular day, and before we got on the bus, we confronted (Pearson) about the appearance of impropriety," Poshard said. "We told him we felt his writing was slanted toward Ryan. We told him that and we told the Tribune that. They knew his wife worked for Ryan, and yet they left him on the campaign."

In response to Poshard's criticism, then-Tribune Political Editor Bob Secter called Poshard "pathetic" and blamed his campaign loss to Ryan on his positions on "abortion, gun control and gay rights" that, Secter said, "weren't winning arguments."

The Tribune would endorse Ryan, calling Poshard's "record on environmental protection and gun control.. at best, inconsistent."

"It didn't hurt to have the name Pearson"

Tribune Editor Don Wycliff defended Pearson at the time, writing that "no one has adduced any evidence" that his reporting was biased in favor of Ryan. 

Wycliff called Pearson "scrupulous in informing his bosses in advance of any potential conflict of interest, especially those involving his wife's employment."

But sources told the Chicago Sun-Times that Paul Lis, a longtime adviser to Ryan and close friend of Pearson, had indeed approached Ryan on Pearson's behalf to request the job for his wife in the Illinois Secretary of State's office.

"Former Gov. George Ryan's longtime adviser, a close friend of the Chicago Tribune's chief political writer, approached Ryan for help in getting the journalist's wife a state job," wrote Sun-Times reporters Steve Warmbir and Dave McKinney.

Ryan himself told the Sun-Times he "recalled speaking with Lis about Pearson's wife" and how she wanted a state job.

"I'm sure that Paul Lis told me that Pearson's wife was looking for a job," Ryan told the Sun-Times. "It didn't hurt to have the name Pearson."

Ryan served as Illinois Secretary of State from 1991 to 1998.

Margaret Pearson was hired for a job there in Feb. 1996, leaving in June 1998, after Ryan announced his campaign for governor.

She earned $42,180 in her position, or $78,502 in today's dollars.

In 2002, Margaret Pearson received a contract from Democrat Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White to "do grant writing applications and to speak to groups in the western suburbs about organ donations, the Sun-Times reported. The contract paid $40 per hour, or $67.25 per hour in 2023 dollars.

Pearson has been arrested twice for drunken driving, in 2011 and 2013, both times in Springfield.

In the 2013 arrest, a report published in the Chicago Tribune said Pearson was "observed going the wrong way on a one-way street."

Lisagor, the award's namesake, served as Washington Bureau Chief of the Chicago Daily News from 1959 to 1976, when he died of cancer at age 61.

A Chicago Marshall graduate, Lisagor played baseball for the University of Michigan the 1930s and traveled with the Chicago White Sox as a baseball writer for the Daily News before becoming managing editor of the Stars and Stripes, based in London.

He returned to the Daily News after World War II.

The Chicago Headline club is a chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.