There’s a unique but special history in the city of Chicago when it comes to print media, though it’s hard to pin down exactly why. Maybe it was because both the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times were so respected during their heyday, or maybe it was because there were so many iconic writers in the city that brought personality and strong opinions to their columns. Regardless of the main reason, Chicago was truly a great newspaper town for several decades.
Dan Bickley lived through the golden era of print media in the city. He grew up infatuated with the regular columns from Mike Royko, as did so many other Chicagoans. It was such a memorable experience of his life, that he can still recall the exact smell of the cold newspapers he read at night, after his father brought them home from his shift as a bartender at a Chicago steakhouse.
“Every night my father would come home with an armful of newspapers for me,” Bickley said. “Mike Royko had an incredible way of relating to the common person and I thought it was the most liberating and incredible thing I had ever read.”
Needless to say, those nights lit a fire under Bickley. There was no confusion as to what he wanted to do with his life. The newspaper industry was his true passion.
Fast forward a few years and Bickley is now the guy he always dreamed of being. He was a beat reporter at the Sun-Times and was assigned to cover the early championship runs of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. The city was on fire. The newspaper industry in the city was on fire. Bickley didn’t want to be anywhere else.
“I remember covering Bulls games at Chicago Stadium and then driving down to the Sun-Times building to pick up newspapers that were literally hot off the press,” Bickley said. “I would take them to Callahan’s, which was a neighborhood tavern a couple blocks away. I’d walk in at 1:30 in the morning with tomorrow’s paper and people would look at them like they were from another planet. They looked at it with such reverence and they didn’t understand how they could have tomorrow’s paper in their hands while sitting at the bar.”
Bickley recalls those years as being magical. A time when people looked at reporters and reporting in journalism as a noble profession. The industry meant a lot to Chicago. So much so, that local newspaper writers were often looked at as celebrities.
As long as Bickley could remember, he wanted to be a columnist. He was living a great life as a beat reporter in late 90’s Chicago, but being the guy everyone in the city looked forward to reading was a step he always dreamed of. The problem was that writers such as Jay Mariotti and Rick Telander created a heavy log jam at the Sun-Times that made upward mobility hard to see.
“Say what you want about Jay Mariotti, but he lit the town on fire.” Bickley said. “His columns were hard-hitting, they were fearless, they were topical and it really kind of galvanized everything.”
Meanwhile in Phoenix, the city was about to get a new MLB team. The Arizona Diamondbacks would be the fourth pro franchise in town, along with the NBA’s Suns, the NFL’s Cardinals and the NHL’s Coyotes. This meant the local newspaper, The Arizona Republic, needed to hire an additional columnist to the one it already had. Bickley probably thought he would never leave Chicago, but in 1998 he moved to the desert to realize his dream of being a columnist.
For the guy that had such a deep love and admiration of newspapers, it would be wildly entertaining to tell him in the late 90’s he would someday be doing a daily radio show and writing exclusively online. His reaction would have been priceless, but Bickley is incredibly happy with how his career has turned out. The co-host of Bickley and Marotta and writer for ArizonaSports.com has turned himself into an Arizona institution and one that local sports fans both listen to and read on a daily basis.
He’s exactly the guy he looked up to as a kid. The only difference is that he traded the cold Chicago wind for the dry heat of the Phoenix desert.
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“Over the course of time, as you saw the industry start to die, and more to the point, as I started to work for Bonneville, and I started to work for Scott Sutherland and Ryan Hatch, the workplace culture where I’m at is off the charts in a positive way,” Bickley said. “People who work there know there’s no better place to work in Arizona than for Bonneville and those two gentlemen I call my bosses. I started to realize, this is the synergy and this is the energy and the team I really want to be a part of. It kind of made it easy for me to make that transition.”
Every weekday morning from 6 to 10 a.m. on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM, you can hear Bickley alongside co-hosts Vince Marotta, Sarah Kezele and Jarrett Carlen. Was radio ever a thought for him during his time in newspapers? Actually, yes.
Bickley did fill-in work in Chicago as well as the regular guests segments on local stations in Arizona. Radio was something that always appealed to him, because it was a way for him to show his creativity, along with his personality.
“I always thought, I really, really like this,” Bickley said. “One day I finally got an editor at the Arizona Republic, who is a great man, his name was Ward Bushee. One day I came to him and asked, would you mind if I did this in addition to my role as a newspaper columnist? He said yeah, if it’s something you really want to do. Go run with it.”
Sports radio opened a lane in another platform for Bickley to express himself. He soon found out that being a writer and a radio host dovetail nicely into one another. Essentially, he was reporting 24 hours a day, seven days a week. He loved every second of it. It was a labor of love.
“It’s rare to have a talent who has such strong opinions and a unique perspective that makes them a must-listen on the broadcast side, a must-read with thought-provoking columns on ArizonaSports.com and delivers exceptional results for our clients and marketing partners,” said Ryan Hatch, VP of Programming and Content for Bonneville, which owns Arizona Sports 98.7. “Dan is the complete package.”
What’s most impressive about Bickley is that he made the decision to pursue radio and then made sure he did everything necessary to become a huge success at it. That didn’t come without a strong intent of learning the how-to’s of the business. He made it a point to get better by constantly listening to himself to help refine his craft.
Creative spaces are where Bickley excels. In fact, it seems like he really surrounds himself with those opportunities. His writing space definitely gives him that freedom, as well as the daily radio show, but he’s also in a band that’s pretty good.
“I started a band over 10 years ago called Whiskey’s Quicker. I’m surrounded by four incredible musicians. I’m above average at best but it’s something I always wanted to do. Somewhere along my journey, I realized that if I never tried this it would be a regret I always had. 10 years later I have a band that is surprisingly really, really good. It allows me the opportunity to jam with my 20-year-old son. We played our first gig together, which was just a sublime, incredible experience. I’d like to challenge myself and I like to stretch out in a lot of different directions, that’s something that’s brought me a ton of enjoyment.”
If you couple in the Suns’ recent NBA Finals run and the Cardinals’ looking like the most exciting team in the NFL, few years have compared to the current landscape of sports radio in Arizona. Bickley worked in the golden era of newspapers in Chicago, just maybe, 20-plus years after, he’s working in the golden era of sports radio in Phoenix.
“Radio allows you to cover a lot of different topics and it allows you to show other areas of your personality,” Bickley said. “It’s really enjoyable having a team to work with, in terms of a radio show. I have to say this all the time, it’s one thing to experience individual success but it’s so much more rewarding to go somewhere with the team. When you rely on others to reach certain levels of success, there’s a synergy about that and there’s teamwork about that, which makes it really powerful.”
Chicago is where he grew up and cut his teeth, but Arizona has been home for over two decades. If Bickley has it his way, it’ll be home for several more decades. He loves his role with Arizona Sports 98.7 FM and is truly passionate about the people he works with. The desert is home.
“As of right now, I’ve got so many things in place here, I’m not sure what other city or job would appeal more to me than the one I have right now,” Bickley said. “You always want to keep growing and I’ve had people in Chicago over the years ask me, why don’t you come back home? But that feels like going backwards to me. I like to keep moving forward. I have such a great infrastructure around me of coworkers, bosses and a job that’s highly rewarding, as well as a highly earned reputation that I built over the course of the past 20 years.”
Tyler McComas is a columnist for BSM and a sports radio talk show host in Norman, OK where he hosts afternoon drive for SportsTalk 1400. You can find him on Twitter @Tyler_McComas or you can email him at TylerMcComas08@yahoo.com.
