


Of all the interviews I’ve conducted, none have influenced my career more than this 1996 sit-down with Aaron Barnhart, whose Late Show News newsletter pioneered the email news biz.
Listen to us discuss his model for how, in my words, “a lot of us in this profession will … do our work in the future” and you’ll hear the siren call that two years later would draw me from radio to the internet—and, not much later, to lead the Chicago Tribune’s email program.
Decades later, Barnhart’s work inspired the launch of Chicago Public Square.
First aired June 23, 1996, this show remains great and relevant listening, and it spotlights Aaron as one of the internet’s early visionaries.
Also: A cool time-capsule about the state of late-night TV in 1996.
Listen here.
Prepping to watch The Trial of the Chicago 7 on Netflix, I revisited my Sept. 16, 1994, interview with The 7’s defense lawyer, William Kunstler, who told me then that the trial “changed me totally. …
“I never knew what it was to really fight until I watched Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Dave Dellinger, Hayden and so on fight in a courtroom—do things that would make the jury understand that they were being persecuted: Bringing in a birthday cake for Bobby Seale, a Viet Cong flag on their table, standing out and protesting the binding and gagging of Bobby Seale in the courtroom.
“There were so many things they did that showed they were fighting—they weren’t gonna sit there like bumps on a log and be railroaded.
“And the net result was they won.”
I realized I never shared this file to this blog and the accompanying podcast series. So here you go.