Roger Simon

Roger Mitchell Simon (1948-03-29 to 2026-09-10) was an American political journalist and New York Times bestselling author whose career ran from Chicago city desks to the founding newsroom of Politico. Peers remembered him as a craftsman who could make readers laugh, cry and think in the same column, and as a colleague who stayed generous in a business full of egos.

He was born in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood, one of three children of a father who drove a laundry truck and a homemaker mother. He attended Bradwell Elementary and South Shore High School, then the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, graduating in 1970 with a bachelor's degree in English. On campus he was campus editor and executive editor of the Daily Illini, where he met Marcia Kramer, later his wife of nearly fifty years. After a brief stint at the City News Bureau of Chicago, he reported for the Waukegan News-Sun. Sun-Times editor Jim Hoge recruited him after a meeting arranged by former Daily Illini editor Roger Ebert, who became a lifelong friend.

At the Chicago Sun-Times he moved from investigative reporting into a column in 1975. He covered the John Wayne Gacy trial (with an exclusive interview), apartheid South Africa, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the U.S. invasion of Grenada, and the O.J. Simpson criminal trial. Columns on spousal abuse won awards from women's groups and helped push the Chicago Police Department to treat such abuse as a crime rather than a "domestic disturbance." A lighter side appeared in short observations collected in Simon Says: The Best of Roger Simon (1986). He covered every presidential campaign and nominating convention from 1976 onward and interviewed presidents from Jimmy Carter through Barack Obama.

When Rupert Murdoch bought the Sun-Times in 1984, Kramer left for the Chicago Tribune and then The Washington Post (metro copy desk chief for more than two decades). Simon waited out his contract, then became a Baltimore Sun columnist (1984-1995). He later served as political editor and correspondent at U.S. News & World Report, White House correspondent for the Chicago Tribune (including Monica Lewinsky coverage), Bloomberg News's first chief political correspondent (from 2006), and Politico's founding chief political columnist. Creators Syndicate distributed his column worldwide. He was a frequent guest on Meet the Press, Face the Nation, Today, Good Morning America, Hardball, Charlie Rose, Reliable Sources, C-SPAN's Booknotes and NPR's Diane Rehm Show. C-SPAN's library lists dozens of appearances.

His narrative campaign books include Road Show (1988 race), Show Time (1996; New York Times bestseller), Divided We Stand (2000 race), and Reckoning (2012). Michael Kinsley once placed his writing "just about halfway between Hunter Thompson and Theodore White." He was the only person to win the American Society of Newspaper Editors Distinguished Writing Award for commentary twice; other honors include multiple National Headliner Awards, American Bar Association Silver Gavel Awards, a National Press Club Angele Gingras Humor Award, a Dateline Award (2015), National Association of Black Journalists national writing award (first non-Black writer so honored), Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame (1999, with Kramer), Illini Media Hall of Fame (2006), and fellowships at Yale Poynter, Stanford Hoover, Harvard IOP and the University of Chicago Institute of Politics (2014).

In 2009, after lunch with a source, he fell ill with what was misdiagnosed as flu. It was septicemia. He spent weeks in an induced coma; to save his life, doctors amputated both legs below the knee. Months of therapy followed. Friends Dan Balz and David Axelrod helped arrange an Oval Office interview with President Obama, who told him, "The next time I see you, you'll be walking." He returned to writing on prosthetic legs, eventually without a cane, humor intact.

He published his last Politico column on 2017-02-01 ("A majority of one walks away from his keyboard"), stressing that he left voluntarily: "No editor hung a dead chicken over my doorway." He briefly returned as a Chicago Sun-Times columnist. He died of pneumonia on 2026-09-10 at MedStar Washington Hospital Center after months of illness, his wife said. He was 78. A private service was planned in Chicago and a celebration of life in Washington, D.C.

This memorial is for Roger Mitchell Simon (1948-2026), the Politico founding chief political columnist and Chicago / national newspaper veteran. It is not for Roger L. Simon, the screenwriter and PJ Media columnist. Empty X handle @RogerSimon is not his; his working handle was @politicoroger.