{"id":24639,"date":"2020-02-28T06:00:25","date_gmt":"2020-02-28T12:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.robertfeder.com\/?p=24639"},"modified":"2020-02-28T15:06:25","modified_gmt":"2020-02-28T21:06:25","slug":"became-mayor-pete-buttigieg-worked-nbc-5-investigative-intern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/2020\/02\/28\/became-mayor-pete-buttigieg-worked-nbc-5-investigative-intern\/","title":{"rendered":"Before he became 'Mayor Pete,' Buttigieg worked as NBC 5 investigative intern"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

<\/a> Pete Buttigieg<\/p><\/div>\n

For six weeks during the summer of 2002, a 20-year-old college student named Peter Buttigieg toiled in the background as an intern at WMAQ-Channel 5,<\/a> the NBC-owned station in Chicago.<\/p>\n

Few could have imagined then that he would become mayor of his hometown of South Bend, Indiana, or that 18 years later he would be on the March 17 Illinois Democratic primary ballot as a candidate for president of the United States.<\/p>\n

The record of his employment at NBC 5 \u2014 which ran from June 17 to July 28, 2002 \u2014 shows that Buttigieg received an \u201coutstanding\u201d rating on his evaluation form as an intern with the station\u2019s investigative unit. Otherwise the files provide no other details about his time there.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Pete Buttigieg and Renee Ferguson<\/p><\/div>\n

But Renee Ferguson, the Unit 5 investigative reporter who supervised Buttigieg that summer, recalled that the Harvard sophomore worked with her on an investigation of a sex offender who was believed to be working at a day care center in Chicago.<\/p>\n

When Ferguson and her photographer (both of whom were black) tried to enter the building, they were stopped by a security guard. But Buttigieg made his way in and managed to capture undercover footage of the sex offender on the job.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I understand what white privilege looks like,\u201d Ferguson recalled telling Buttigieg, according to a Washington Post<\/a> story last year. \u201cI couldn\u2019t get in, but you could. Think about how many times in your life that you\u2019ve just been able to walk through doors and the rest of us got turned away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buttigieg later said he couldn't recall the episode, but he did remember interviewing black men who'd been assaulted by police and forced to make false confessions, the Post reported. In any case, his work with Ferguson helped shape his understanding of racism \u2014 a quest that continues to this day.<\/p>\n

Ferguson, who retired from NBC 5 in 2008, is an outspoken supporter<\/a> of Buttigieg\u2019s candidacy, helping him make inroads with African-American voters who've been reluctant to embrace his campaign.<\/p>\n

Buttigieg, who still refers to Ferguson as a mentor, not only worked for her that summer but wound up living with Ferguson and her family after she learned he didn't have a place to stay.<\/p>\n

\u201cI watched him watching us and I came to understand how truly special Peter Buttigieg was,\u201d Ferguson told the crowd in South Bend when he formally announced his presidential bid in April 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cPete was easy to \u2018adopt,\u2019\u201d said his self-proclaimed \"other mother.\" \u201cHis folks had already raised a magnificent young man. . . . He was a great intern.\u00a0When the internship was over I couldn\u2019t say goodbye. My husband couldn\u2019t say goodbye. . . . In the space of a few months we had come to love each other as family.\u201d<\/p>\n

That summer wasn't the only time Buttigieg lived in Chicago. Following his graduation from Harvard and the University of Oxford, he returned in 2007 to work as a consultant for McKinsey & Company.<\/p>\n

Living in a rented loft condo in the Loop, Buttigieg told the Sun-Times,<\/a> he frequented Miller\u2019s Pub and the Billy Goat Tavern and often would walk around Millennium Park or browse bookstores in Hyde Park.<\/p>\n

Thursday's comment of the day:\u00a0<\/a>Howard Sudberry:<\/strong> CBS 2 has a disdain for local sports. They would like to get rid of it as they feel it has no value. It will happen some day. Take it from somebody that knows even though I do not know the current management. I know the news director has a reputation for lack of sports coverage in market from where he came.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For six weeks during the summer of 2002, a 20-year-old college student named Peter Buttigieg toiled in the background as an intern at WMAQ-Channel 5, the NBC-owned station in Chicago. Few could have imagined then that he would become mayor of his hometown of South Bend, Indiana, or that 18 years later he would be... 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\/24639"}],"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=24639"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24666,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24639\/revisions\/24666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}