We managed to convince Aaron Chambers to slow down just long enough for a photographer to snap his picture in front of the state Capitol. He had a request, though. "Please choose one where I'm smiling."
Aaron doesn't take himself seriously, and we like that about him. He does, however, take his work seriously, and approaches it with awe-inspiring energy - or as he puts it, "blazing enthusiasm." We like that, too, of course.
These are only two of the reasons we're glad he joined the staff as our Statehouse bureau chief.
Readers of this magazine should already be familiar with Aaron's work. He's been writing for Illinois Issues on a free-lance basis for the past year, producing some of our bigger stories. Last fall, for example, he explored the potential impact of the rising costs of judicial campaigns. And last month, he profiled the "new" Illinois Supreme Court and examined some of the issues the justices will face in the coming year.
Aaron has plenty of experience covering the high court's justices, as well as other state officials. Over the past two years, he reported from the Statehouse for the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin. During that time, he garnered an award for being the first to get his hands on a special Supreme Court committee's recommendations for reform in administration of the death penalty - several weeks before the court made them public. Among his other credits: an analysis of a state constitutional provision requiring lawmakers to confine legislation to a single subject. That provision has been a source of controversy and confusion of late because the court has used it to invalidate several packages of legislation, many of them containing popular crime-fighting laws.
As a journalist, Aaron has seen the impact of the kinds of crimes those laws were designed to deter. Early in his career, he earned his stripes as an overnight reporter for the old City News Bureau of Chicago, compiling a nightly homicides list from the morgue.
Along the way, he put in stints as a writer at Streetwise, a publication produced as a means of support for Chicago's homeless, and as an intern at The Chicago Reporter, an investigative monthly that focuses on race and poverty.
Oh, yes, and he writes an occasional column distributed by the Illinois Press Association to newspapers throughout the state.
His first column for us, a State of the State on Illinois' death penalty moratorium, appears on page 6. It was due less than a week after he joined our staff. But, then, we knew he could pull it together in fine form.
As for the picture, he was smiling in all of them anyway.
