Former Chicago Tribune investigative reporter William Gaines was one of the newspaper’s most decorated journalists, with a list of awards that includes two Pulitzer Prizes.
Gaines, who spent 38 years at the Tribune, was an expert with records and had a flair for unknotting dense government documents. Colleagues remember him as a soft-spoken and unassuming reporter who found humor in complicated situations.
“For all his accomplishments and awards and brilliance, he was so nonchalant, so unpretentious. People underestimated him,” said Howard Reich, a Tribune critic who with Gaines co-authored “Jelly’s Blues: The Life, Music and Redemption of Jelly Roll Morton.”
“How much of a threat can he be?” targets of his investigations might think.
“You have no idea,” Reich said.
Gaines, 82, died July 20 while in hospice care in Munster, according to his daughter, Michelle. A resident of Munster, he had been dealing with Parkinson’s disease for 15 years, she said.
Born in Indianapolis, Gaines graduated from Arsenal Technical High School and went on to Butler University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in broadcasting in 1956. He spent two years in the Army, working for the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service in Germany, his daughter said.
After working in broadcast networks in Michigan and Indiana, Gaines joined the Tribune in 1963. He became an investigative reporter in 1974.
In 1976, he won his first Pulitzer Prize as a member of a team that uncovered widespread abuse in federal housing programs in Chicago, and which exposed shocking conditions at two private Chicago hospitals. As part of the reporting, Gaines went undercover as a janitor at a South Side hospital.
While he was hired to mop, sweep and throw out garbage, he was also called on to assist nurses and doctors in surgery — while still in his janitor’s uniform.
“The experience was frightening to me; it was depressing, for I knew that it was not just a fluke that I, a janitor, had been called on to do the work of trained orderlies and nurses’ aides,” Gaines wrote in a 1975 column.
Gaines won his second Pulitzer Prize in 1988, along with Dean Baquet, now executive editor of the New York Times, and Ann Marie Lipinski, now the curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. The series explored self-interest and waste in the Chicago City Council.
“He had this incredible curiosity and this expansive mind,” said Lipinski, a former editor-in-chief of the Tribune. “Everything was of interest to him. Figuring things out and piecing it together however he needed to is really what distinguished him.”
Colleagues remember Gaines as someone who was always eager to help less-experienced reporters and willing to drop everything to assist them with their stories. Reich said he was in awe of Gaines’ investigative skills and document-assisted reporting.
“Those years with him made so many stories and projects possible for me. His lessons have resonated in my work ever since,” Reich said. “What’s important is not only the groundbreaking work he did but the generations of journalists he trained. His impact and legacy ripples throughout all of our work.”
Gaines retired from the Tribune in 2001, and went on to teach at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he became the Knight Chair in Journalism, his daughter said. During his time as a professor, Gaines led a study with his students to determine the identity of the Watergate informant known only as “Deep Throat.” The investigation incorrectly concluded that “Deep Throat” was Fred F. Fielding, a former associate counsel to President Richard Nixon, before the actual informant, W. Mark Felt, the second in command at the FBI under Nixon, acknowledged his identity in 2005.
Gaines retired from U. of I. in 2006.
Michelle Gaines described her father as an “average guy” whose main hobby was his work. In his free time, he wrote a book about reporting, she said with a chuckle.
Gaines’ textbook is titled “Investigative Reporting for Print and Broadcast,” and was published in 1994. Michelle Gaines said the textbook is used in more than 60 journalism programs.
Gaines is also survived by his wife, Nellie; and two sons, Michael and Matthew.
A memorial service will be held at 6 p.m. July 24 at Smits Funeral Homes in Dyer.
