Joe Distelheim presided over the Northern Star's rapid evolution from a small-time weekly paper to a big-time near-daily. And, it all played out so quickly that he scarcely remembers leading the effort. Others do, though.
"Aside from the faculty, Joe to me was the real guide for the paper," said Star friend Jerry DiPego, now a noted author and Hollywood screenwriter. "I could sense a real dedication to journalism, to getting it right. And that came real quietly with Joe. He was not a firebrand - just a quietly dedicated young man."
Joe wrote his first sports story for the Star before he attended his first class. "My transcript would show that pretty well set the tone for my priorities at Northern," he joked. He would ascend to editor for his junior and senior years - raking in a cool $27 a week.
As the new journalism department, the Star covered more and more news on a rapidly growing campus. Soon, it published twice a week, then three times, then four.
And, predictably, administrators grew nervous about the amount of news coverage the campus was getting. "Those were times when the university leaned on us," DiPego said, recalling several times when administrators confronted Joe about Star stories they didn't like. "Joe, in his quiet way, really stood up," DiPego said. "He was a good example to us all."
When he graduated in 1965, Joe took a reporting job at the Wilmington
(Del.) News-Journal, where several of his Star friends had found jobs, too.
This was an era when newspapers scoured the country for reporters, and an
up-and-coming journalism school was prime recruiting ground.
In 1973, Joe moved south, to the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer, where he'd stay
as an editor until 1980. "I thought I'd died and gone to heaven,"
he said. "I said I was never living above the Mason-Dixon Line again."
That was before an opportunity opened in Detroit: sports editor at one of the nation's largest, most respected newspapers. He stayed 10 years - longer than he ever thought he would, but always with an eye toward returning south.
The chance came in 1990, to be executive editor at the Anniston (Ala.) Star. And four years later, he jumped to the 60,000-circulation Huntsville (Ala.) Times as editor - a career stop he says will be the last for he and his wife, Dottie.
Having seen the big-city side of journalism, Joe's happy to lead a paper where decisions don't require 14 committees and stockholder approval. Kind of like the Northern Star, come to think of it.
"Those wonderful years had a huge impact on my life," he said of his time in DeKalb, "affirming my love of journalism, teaching me skills and values and responsibility, exposing me to faculty members and fellow students who would have a lasting influence.
"On the other hand, it was too damn cold."
- Jim Killam
For all of the reporting that shook NIU to its very foundations, some of Jerry Huston's best memories of his Northern Star days involve Harry Caray and Tom & Jerry.
As editor, Jerry and then-newsroom supervisor Phil Luciano would go to Twin Taverns for lunch and beers. In the springtime, that usually meant staying until mid-afternoon to watch a few innings of that day's Cubs game before coming back to the Star for the daily news-budget meeting.
"You'd just get into that habit," Jerry said. "No matter how stressful it got at the Star, you would have that decompression time."
There certainly was stress. As editor in chief in 1986, Jerry oversaw an investigation into the spending habits of new NIU president Clyde Wingfield that resulted first in the firing of adviser Jerry Thompson, and ultimately in Thompson's reinstatement and the firing of Wingfield.
"I can't even remember going to class during that period of my life," Jerry said. "It's on my transcript, so I must have. But everything was arranged around my schedule at the Star. That was the most fun I ever had as a reporter, because I was around a bunch of people who were really into it. It didn't matter that we were making what amounted to about 85 cents an hour."
Luciano - now a columnist for the Peoria Journal Star - recalls being
the Star's version of Oscar Madison to Jerry's Felix Unger. Jerry always
wore button-down shirts, nice trousers (never jeans) and had a "60ish
comb-over," Phil remembers. The first time the two went out for drinks
after work, Phil ordered an Old Style. To Phil's horror, Jerry ordered a
banana daiquiri.
"I didn't think newspapermen, even college newspapermen, drank fruity
drinks," Phil said. "I said something like, 'What the hell are
you doing? Bartender, get him a beer.'"
Jerry got his daiquiri, and also the beer. He'd eventually give up the
former for the latter.
"Somehow, " Phil said, "I like to think I made Huston's life
better - or, at least, a little less dorky."
Jerry admits that was no small task. He remembers himself and reporter Chris Rosche (now press secretary for Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch) being quintessential "journalism geeks," eating Tom & Jerry's gyros late at night while listening to the newsroom police scanner.
After NIU and a stint as a Chicago Tribune intern while in the University of Illinois-Springfield master's program, Jerry worked as a reporter for the Memphis Commercial Appeal, covering the Arkansas statehouse and Gov. Bill Clinton.
In 1994, Jerry returned to NIU as a law student. By 1997, he'd graduated Magna Cum Laude and joined the Chicago firm of Lord, Bissell & Brook. He continues to help the Star with occasional legal counsel.
- Jim Killam
At 3 a.m. one night in 1982, Tom McNamee realized he'd made it in journalism.
He'd been with the Chicago Sun-Times about two months as a general assignment reporter. This night, he'd drawn the overnight shift in the press room at police headquarters, "basically baby-sitting in case the world fell apart before morning."
The phone rang. It was fellow Northern Star alum Mark Brown, also brand-new with the paper. Brown was baby-sitting the city desk, alone in an otherwise-empty newsroom.
"Tommy?" Brown said into the phone, almost in a whisper. "It's just you and me. We ARE the Chicago Sun-Times."
Tom's first stint at the paper lasted until 1997 and included "fires and murders, awful crashes and absurd City Council meetings." He followed Cardinal Joseph Bernardin's final days, climbed in the rubble of a massive earthquake in Mexico City, talked in Louisville, Ky., to the recipient of the world's first artificial heart and in Germany to a Chicago man who had been held hostage by terrorist hijackers.
All of which could be traced to the Northern Star, where Tom fell in love with journalism. He remembers struggling with his first story, about an alternative school for small children. "I had to talk to strangers and I had to write stuff down in a little notebook while standing up and I had to turn in my story that very same day and, hell, I could barely even type," he said. "By dinnertime, I was exhausted.
"But what I remember really more than the stories I wrote are the people I worked with and the spirit we shared. The great excitement for all us, I think, flowed from this wonderful realization that we could do something important with our lives. That's what Jerry Thompson told us. It's what we told ourselves. And it was true."
Tom left the Sun-Times in 1997 to become editor of North Shore Magazine, where he helped mix serious journalism with fashion spreads and restaurant stories. But he missed newspapers - so much so that he returned to the Sun-Times in 2000 to be Sunday editor.
Along the way, Tom and fellow reporter Don Hayner have written three books about Chicago and co-hosted a Saturday morning radio talk show on WLS.
Tom's wife, Deborah Wood, is a free-lance writer and former Chicago Tribune copy editor and writer. They live in Skokie and have three children: Caitlin, 15, Jared, 14, and Graham, 11.
- Jim Killam
Take every media image of college students in the late 1960s, and think "opposite." That was Gene Mustain as the Northern Star sports editor. Few of Gene's friends back then would have predicted he'd become one of the nation's best investigative reporters and a best-selling author. They had him tagged for management.
"Jimi Hendrix he was not," said Star cohort Ray Gibson. "His wardrobe came complete with the blue blazer and penny loafer shoes."
Gary Stein, Gene's assistant sports editor at the Star and a longtime columnist at the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, also remembers him as an impeccably dressed, well-groomed fraternity boy.
"But damn if he didn't get down and dirty with the best of 'em when it came to reporting and writing," Stein said. "Even back in college, his stuff just sang. He had the kind of writing style where you could tell it was Gene's story, even if you didn't see his name. It was that distinctive, that colorful."
Gene left the Star after his junior year to work for Bud Nangle in NIU Sports Information. He might still be writing sports today had not Professor Hallie Hamilton pulled him aside one day and said, "Have you ever thought about news? Why limit yourself?" The thought resonated, and a news internship with his hometown Waukegan News-Sun confirmed it. When Gene graduated in 1969, he left his sports writing career in DeKalb.
Today, Gene is best-known for his books about "some of the worst people in the world" - the New York mafia. His 1988 best seller about John Gotti, "Mob Star," was followed by "Murder Machine" and "Gotti: Rise and Fall." The latter became a highly-rated HBO movie.
Gibson points to Gene's earlier work as a defining moment. As a Chicago Sun-Times reporter in the early 1980s, Gene's reporting about a potential scandal involving Cardinal Cody touched off a newspaper war.
"It was Tribune vs. Sun Times," Gibson said, "with the Tribune coming to the Cardinal's defense … and the Sun Times blasting away with headlines that all but said the Cardinal had stolen funds from the church and had a girlfriend."
In 1986, Gene moved to the New York Daily News, where he'd stay until 1999, first as a general-assignment reporter and then as a special projects writer, covering major stories around the world.
Today, Gene teaches journalism half a world away, at the University of Hong Kong … and draws on his Northern Star memories.
"I try to get them excited and passionate about journalism and the journalist's mission in the ways I was, when I was at the Northern Star," he said. "And one thing I always tell them is, don't limit yourselves."
- Jim Killam
Bud Nangle, patriarch of the NIU Office of Sports Information, shares two things with many members of the Northern Star Hall of Fame.
He's an NIU graduate - class of 1949 - and a sportswriter and editor whose resume includes stints at the DeKalb Daily Chronicle, the Chicago Daily News, the Toledo Blade and the Toledo Times.
"Simply put, Bud taught more young reporters about journalism than any journalism class ever could," said Gary Stein, a columnist for the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. "And he did it with passion. He had time for every reporter who showed that they wanted to learn."
"It's a great honor, totally unexpected," Bud said of the hall-of-fame news. "The relationship we had with the Star at the sports information office was always very cordial, not unprofessional. If the reporters felt there was something to be exposed, they did it, and I understood it."
Bud's long association with NIU began about 1940 after he earned numerous letters in basketball, track and softball at Palatine High School. He played basketball and baseball here before enlisting in the U.S. Navy to serve during World War II.
After the war, and while still an undergraduate, he became NIU's first sports information director and produced the first football media guide in 1948. Following nearly two decades of newspaper work, he returned in 1967 as the athletic program adjusted to Division I status.
With no money for assistants, Bud brokered a deal with the Star. "They would be sports editor of the Northern Star in their junior year and then come to our office for their senior year," Nangle said. "A lot of them found out what the real world was like."
In 1974, Bud wrote the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) Code of Ethics, which remains the standard for the profession. In 1978, he added coverage of women's athletics to his office's work.
Bud, 82, lives in Vista, Calif., with his wife, Joyce.
He is now a member of four halls of fame, including the CoSIDA Hall of Fame, the media wing of the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame and the NIU Intercollegiate Athletics Hall of Fame he created. This fall, he will enter a fifth: the Palatine High School Hall of Fame.
- Mark McGowan
After Linda (Germann) Ringstrand spoke in her COMS 100 class of career plans in advertising, her professor pointed her to Campbell Hall.
Little did she realize she would leave more than she would take.
During her two years at the Star, Linda consistently exceeded quotas and earned the top sales award. It was a blueprint for the next decade, when she shattered expectations and secured new and important clients.
"It was my first real sales situation," said Linda, who during high school and college typed ad copy at the Chicago Tribune. "We had such a good time. It was the best money you could make on campus, an awesome group of people and it was a like a real job."
Linda also forged the bond between the Star and the Tribune, which created one of the country's best training programs for college newspapers. She volunteered Rich Schovanec, her boss at the Trib, to address a seminar for Star advertising staff. Schovanec, a 2001 Hall of Fame inductee, has mentored Star ad reps since.
"She was a delight to work with back then, and her work ethic just got better as she became more professional," Schovanec said. "She was good people."
Tim O'Malley, who worked with Linda at the Star, called her "instrumental in bringing the advertising department of the Star to another level. Due in large part to Linda's influence, the Star has consistently produced some of the best-prepared, top-performing reps in the advertising sales industry."
Linda began at the Daily Herald shortly after graduation, selling ads in Buffalo Grove before being promoted to Schaumburg. She ranked among the top five revenue producers in the division sales staff.
As a national account executive, she nurtured a non-revenue territory into the company's top-billing retail territory. She sold 15 new major retail accounts, and handled Sears, Montgomery Ward and Carson Pirie Scott, three of the top 10 revenue accounts.
In 1995, she moved to the Los Angeles Times, where she twice earned the No. 1 Category Winner award for the most sales calls and made new clients of Allstate and Kraft.
Linda represented Money Magazine before becoming a stay-at-home mom. She and her husband, Russ, have two boys: Jake, 3, and Steve, 2. "This is much more challenging job," she said, "but it's awesome."
- Mark McGowan