{"id":10503,"date":"2016-02-22T06:00:11","date_gmt":"2016-02-22T12:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.robertfeder.com\/?p=10503"},"modified":"2016-02-22T06:00:11","modified_gmt":"2016-02-22T12:00:11","slug":"walter-jacobson-still-takes-bows-for-homeless-act-after-25-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/2016\/02\/22\/walter-jacobson-still-takes-bows-for-homeless-act-after-25-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Walter Jacobson still taking bows for homeless act after 25 years"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Walter<\/a>

<\/a> Walter Jacobson in disguise (1991)<\/p><\/div>\n

Twenty-five years ago this week, Walter Jacobson wandered the streets of Chicago disguised as a homeless man. Cold, hungry, sleep-deprived and depressed, the millionaire news anchor uttered the immortal words: \u201cI\u2019m miserable. I am really, really<\/em> miserable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMean Street Diary,\u201d which ran six successive nights on CBS-owned WBBM-Channel 2<\/a> in February 1991, became a career-defining event for Jacobson. If not the most infamous <\/a>local sweeps stunt of all time, it\u2019s undoubtedly among the most widely remembered.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI still hear about it from people to this day,\u201d said Jacobson, 78, now a political analyst for Tribune Media news\/talk WGN AM 720. <\/a>\u201cI think it was a great thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Walter<\/a>

Walter Jacobson<\/p><\/div>\n

Although the homeless act had been played before by reporters at other stations, the idea of sending one of Chicago\u2019s most recognizable celebrities out in the cold and incognito was the inspiration of Bill Applegate,<\/a> who\u2019d arrived just four months earlier as vice president and general manager of CBS 2.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, jazzing up for sweeps means three hours with a makeup artist weathering my eyes, yellowing my teeth, and pasting onto my face a knotted beard,\u201d Jacobson recalled in his 2012 memoir, Walter\u2019s Perspective. <\/a><\/em>\u201cIn filthy baggy pants, a tattered coat, and a cameraman behind, I\u2019m onto the street into five-below-zero and February\u2019s intolerable winds. I\u2019m going \u2018homeless\u2019 for Applegate for forty-eight hours, begging for pennies and morsels, sleeping in boxes on Lower Wacker Drive, and on a floor with a hundred genuinely homeless men in a shelter on South State Street.\u201d<\/p>\n

His getup was so convincing that when Jacobson rang the doorbell of Bill Kurtis\u2019s Lincoln Park townhouse, he was sent away unrecognized and empty-handed, according to his producer, the late Jim Edwards, <\/a>who monitored Jacobson\u2019s odyssey from a news van nearby.<\/p>\n

Deborah Segal, who won a Chicago Emmy Award for editing the series, confirmed Edwards\u2019 account: \u201cJim put him up to it after the shooting was wrapped,\u201d she recalled <\/a>years later. \u201cDonna [LaPietra] came to the window and Walter asked for money. She told him to get lost. He replied, \u2018He [Kurtis] always was a cheap son of a bitch.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Critics howled at Jacobson\u2019s histrionics, and none mocked him more than writers at the Chicago Tribune.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cDisplaying a courage rarely found in anchormen outside of war zones, Walter Jacobson gave up the perks and comforts that his $1 million-plus yearly salary affords and spent 48 hours down-and-out in Chicago,\u201d wrote the Tribune\u2019s Rick Kogan. \"It was amazing that he was able to transform an issue of such inherent sorrow and desperation into something that could yield so many moments of great, if unintended, humor.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some who might have looked at Jacobson\u2019s adventure as journalistic slumming, who might have seen the lack of factual detail in the series and believed that Jacobson was exploiting rather than examining the homeless issue. What they fail to realize is that it was all of this \u2014 and more: an unparalleled example of self-indulgent, first-person, sweeps journalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jacobson had \u201cinspired ridicule,\u201d the Tribune\u2019s James Warren wrote. \u201cHis series seemed a testament to cheap, self-promotional compassion, aided by a professional makeup artist.\u201d<\/p>\n

A quarter-century later, Jacobson says he can understand why his \u201cMean Street Diary\u201d was derided so vehemently. But he insists that the series had genuine merit and that it taught him a lot about the plight of the homeless.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow can I have regrets?\u201d he adds. \u201cIt made my career.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CBS<\/a>

CBS 2 ad (February 17, 1991)<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Twenty-five years ago this week, Walter Jacobson wandered the streets of Chicago disguised as a homeless man. Cold, hungry, sleep-deprived and depressed, the millionaire news anchor uttered the immortal words: \u201cI\u2019m miserable. I am really, really miserable.\u201d \u201cMean Street Diary,\u201d which ran six successive nights on CBS-owned WBBM-Channel 2 in February 1991, became a career-defining... Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10503"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10503"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10518,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10503\/revisions\/10518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}