Birthday: March 30, 1939.
Birthplace: Chicago.
Occupation: Journalist and professor.
Current home: Evanston.
Marital status: Married for 24 years.
Children: Matilda, 22, and Josie, 20.
Car: My favorite car is my summer car, a 1979 burnt orange and brown Volkswagen van. In winter I drive a 1994 white Ford Explorer.
Working on: I’m dean of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. I’m a special correspondent for CNN, and I’ll be making documentaries during the presidential campaigns. And I’m researching a book on the most corrupt county in America. It’s in West Virginia.
The last good movie I saw: “The Insider.”
The books I’m reading: Jack Germond’s “Fat Man in a Middle Seat: Forty Years of Covering Politics” (Random House) and Scott Turow’s “Personal Injuries” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux).
Personal heroes: A.J. Liebling, a writer for the New Yorker who wrote the best book on politics I ever read, “The Earl of Louisiana” (1961), the biography of Earl Long, Huey Long’s brotherand Nellie Fox.
Nobody knows: I would like to be a chef. My specialty is smoked duck, andouille sausage and shrimp gumbo.
I’m better than anyone else when it comes to: Ducking out of walking our two Labradors, Louie and Mingo.
If I could do it over: I would have married the former Margo Mary Hauff sooner.
I’d give anything to meet: Muhammad Ali, the greatest athlete of my time, who was robbed of truly critical years by the senseless political policy of this country.
The one thing I can’t stand: My own disorganization.
My most irrational act: Buying a 24-room house and then remodeling it. It was a nightmare, but we loved it when we finished it. It was in Greencastle, Ind., where you could buy a 24-room house for less than $200,000.
Most humbling experience: The first time I did live television, I called my dad and asked him how I did. He said, “Frankly, you looked like someone shoved a board up your butt.”
The words that best describe me: Impatient, easily bored and hungry.
