George Bliss was born on July 21, 1918, in Denver, Colorado, United States, the son of William Lane Bliss, a newspaper reporter, and Marie Bresnan. His father worked for the Denver Post, then moved the family to the western suburbs of Chicago in the 1920's when he joined the Chicago Herald and Examiner as labor editor. From childhood, Bliss wanted to become a top reporter for a Chicago newspaper.
After graduation from Lyons Township High School in La Grange, Illinois, George Bliss studied for a year at Northwestern University, then dropped out to become a news clerk for the Chicago Evening American in 1937.
George Bliss began his long association with the Chicago Tribune in 1942, joining the metropolitan staff as a reporter. During World War II, he served in the United States Navy in the Pacific. He returned to the Tribune in 1945 and was a general-assignment and police reporter until 1951. In 1951, in a state-run juvenile home, documenting abuse inflicted on residents of the home so vividly that reforms were implemented. Bliss was appointed the Tribune's labor editor in 1953, a position that he held until 1968. In 1953, he reported on the attempt by organized crime figures Joey Glimco and Angelo Inciso to take over the Chicago Conference of Teamsters. Bliss and his colleague Sandy Smith prepared one of the first published charts of the Chicago crime syndicate's hierarchy. Bliss was a tenacious investigator: tough but fair, objective and thorough in his reporting. In August 1961 the Tribune published his series of articles that uncovered widespread corruption at the Metropolitan Sanitary District of Greater Chicago. Bliss detailed waste, fraud, padded payrolls, kickbacks, public land giveaways to special interests, rigged contracts, and the link between organized crime and the commissioners of the sanitary district.
In 1966, Bliss reported that trucks engaged in intrastate commerce were using cheaper out-of-state licenses to avoid paying higher fees for Illinois plates. A front-cover advertisement in the July 23, 1966, issue of Editor and Publisher promoted his investigation: "Illegal out-of-state truck licenses were costing Illinois millions in lost taxes until the Chicago Tribune exposed the racket. " Tribune management was less supportive of Bliss after McCormick Place, the lakefront exhibition hall named for the late Tribune editor Robert R. McCormick, burned in January 1967. Tribune editor William Donald Maxwell, who had been the driving force in the construction of the hall, sought political support to have it rebuilt. He conferred with Illinois secretary of state Paul Powell, former speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, who had much influence in the legislature. Powell's office had authority over truck licensing and had been seriously tarnished by the Bliss reports. Bliss had reported that Powell's chief investigator had a criminal background, a story that led to the aide's resignation and Powell's claim that he had been unaware of the situation. Bliss was continuing his investigation of Powell's office, but after the meeting between Maxwell and Powell he was ordered to abandon his truck licensing probe. Bliss resigned from the Tribune.
From 1968 until 1971, Bliss served as chief investigator for the Better Government Association (BGA), a civic organization that had been fighting waste, fraud, and corruption in Chicago since the 1920's. Under his direction, the BGA worked closely with investigative reporters at all four Chicago daily newspapers. Bliss received a tip from the owner of an ambulance firm about payoffs to police. He conducted the BGA's undercover investigation of ambulance firms in cooperation with Tribune reporter William Jones, who obtained a license as an ambulance attendant. Bliss staged a heart attack, and a Tribune photographer took pictures of an ambulance attendant stealing money from Bliss. The Jones series documented mistreatment of patients, Medic aid fraud, and police payoffs. As a result of the series, three ambulance firms were banned from transporting welfare patients, two firms were decertified by Medicare officials, and a grand jury indicted ten policemen and six ambulance company officials. Jones won a Pulitzer Prize for the ambulance series. Bliss also had himself placed in a nursing home as part of a Tribune investigation of nursing homes.
Bliss returned to the Tribune in 1971, after Maxwell's retirement. He investigated police brutality after records showed that only 27 of 827 complaints against policemen had been sustained by internal investigations. Bliss had sources in the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Chicago Police Department who provided him with police records. He and his team studied 500 cases, interviewing victims and witnesses, and arranging for lie detector tests. Bliss also studied medical records. In his series, he focused on thirty-seven cases. Time magazine said that the Bliss investigation was "probably the most thorough examination of police brutality ever published in a U. S. newspaper. " Several policemen were indicted after the Bliss articles, and the Chicago Police Department was ordered to develop policies to reduce the use of excessive force.
In December 1971, as director of the Tribune task force of investigative reporters, Bliss launched a probe of vote fraud. Registered letters were mailed by the Tribune to 5, 495 voters in 14 precincts where vote fraud was suspected. More than 700 letters were returned because the registered voter had died, had moved, or never existed. Bliss had seventeen Tribune staff members and eight BGA investigators named as Republican election judges and poll watchers. Though they challenged persons voting under false names, Democratic precinct captains overruled them in violation of election law. Two days after the March primary, Tribune articles documented the vote fraud. Bliss turned his evidence over to United States Attorney James R. Thompson and a federal grand jury, but no action was taken. He then placed one of his reporters, William Mullen, as a clerk for the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners. Mullen brought Bliss the ballot applications for the March 1972 primary. Bliss copied the applications, and Mullen returned the originals to the elections board. Bliss and Mullen compiled evidence of more than 1, 000 ghost voters, forgeries, and other violations. Mullen's articles were published in September 1972. A federal grand jury indicted seventy-nine election judges for fraud. All but a handful pleaded guilty or were convicted.
In 1975, Bliss and Tribune colleague Chuck Neubauer spent seven months examining the Federal Housing Administration's program of mortgage insurance to aid poor people in buying homes. They reported $4 billion in waste and showed how mortgage firms were defrauding tax payers. Their series reported a cover-up by officials at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and collusion between mortgage companies and federal officials. The series prompted several congressional investigations and a shakeup of HUD.
When the Tribune began publishing an afternoon edition in 1974, Bliss was asked to help launch the new edition. His response was three major exclusives on three consecutive days. After the death of his first wife, Bliss began suffering depression. In late 1977 he took a seven-month leave from the Tribune and was hospitalized. He returned to work on May 18, 1978. On September 11, 1978, in their Evergreen Park, Illinois, home, Bliss shot and killed his wife, then fatally shot himself.
During his career George Bliss was a three time Pulitzer Prize winner for investigative journalism for the Chicago Tribune. The first time for revealing of corruption at the Metropolitan Sanitary District of Greater Chicago in 1962. The second time for uncovering flagrant violations of voting procedures in the primary election of March 21, 1972. And the third time for fouding out the waste and fraud at mortgage firms related to Federal Housing Administration mortgage insurance in 1976.
Quotes from others about the person
"George Bliss was a journalism school for a generation of investigative reporters. He was the pre-eminent investigative reporter of his time. " - Bernard M. Judge, the Tribune's city editor
"George Bliss was, in effect, a victim of his own intense devotion to journalism. He was a perfectionist who was never satisfied with his stories. Bliss undoubtedly was the foremost investigative reporter in the nation. " - Clayton Kirkpatrick, editor of the Tribune
Bliss married Helen Jeanne Groble in June 29, 1940; they had six children. She died in childbirth in 1959, and Bliss married Therese O'Keefe on August 11, 1960; they had one child.
