Trib’s Loss Is Illini’s Gaines   

Renowned investigative reporter Bill Gaines leaves the Chicago Tribune newsroom after 38 years to become the Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of Illinois.

Renowned investigative reporter Bill Gaines leaves the Chicago Tribune newsroom after 38 years to become the Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of Illinois. Gaines, 67, has been teaching part time in Chicago for years and in 1992 published a textbook, "Investigative Reporting for Print and Broadcast," used in dozens of journalism programs. How did he learn investigative techniques? "It's an instinct, I guess, isn't it?" he says. Gaines joined the Trib's investigative team in 1974, digging up documents and holding seven undercover jobs--something, he notes, no longer done at the Tribune. One job, janitor at a hospital doing unneeded tonsillectomies on Medicaid recipients, helped the Trib staff win a 1976 Pulitzer. Gaines says he tells students to always consider whether a story is "going to hurt somebody more than it is going to help society."