When the Subject of Your Reporting Kills Himself

Unless you live in Chicago, and even if you do, you probably have never befroe heard of Phil Pagano. He was the longtime chief of the commuter train line Metra.

If you’ve heard of him now, it’s because Friday morning -- facing a meeting where he almost certainly was going to be fired for some alleged financial misdeeds –- Phil Pagano killed himself.

By walking in front of a Metra train.

Investigative reporting about Pagano had grown noticeably in the last few weeks as allegations emerged he had taken an improper bonus last summer, then that he had cashed out vacation, again improperly, for $56,000. Illinois’s U.S. senator, Dick Durbin, was calling for a federal probe of Metra. The Cook County, Ill., district attorney was considering a criminal investigation.

The disclosures all came from tips whispered in the ears of reporters –- who, by the nature of their jobs, had to check the stories out.

Crain’s Chicago Business political reporter Greg Hinz, one of the most astute in this city of necessarily-astute political reporters, writes movingly of how Pagano’s suicide affected him and other journalists who worked the Metra story.
 
“Phil Pagano surely didn't go to work for Metra to grab money he wasn't entitled to. Nor do reporters get into the news business to provoke suicides,” Hinz wrote.

“But sometimes the unexpected happens in life.  That certainly is the case with the apparent suicide of long-time Metra boss Phil Pagano a few hours before the Metra board was expected to fire him -- a development so stunning that it's going to take me and I'm sure a lot others quite awhile to fully get our arms around.”

Hinz got his first tip in the case a couple of months ago, he recounts. And though Metra blew him off at the time, the disclosures kept coming – right up to the days before Pagano took his life.

“I and other reporters started to get calls from folks offering explanations as to why Mr. Pagano -- who earned more than a quarter million dollars a year -- would need another 56K.  I'm not going to say more.  But that, too, may be part of the story,” Hinz wrote.

“I and others I've talked to who were involved in the matter are, frankly, rattled.  Writing about this is part of my job, and the job needs to be done. But that doesn't mean you don't feel bad. I do. I am sorry it had to end this way.”