After this week’s elections, the legendary TV news reporter, Carol Marin, will retire after almost 50 years in the business. For 40 of those years she worked in her hometown of Chicago, Illinois; 35 at the legendary NBC-owned WMAQ-TV.

As someone who always wanted to be a TV reporter and anchor (of the old school, not today), I have always admired Marin. She is easily the best reporter in the TV news business – straight, fair, tough, no-nonsense; she never made herself the story.

I’ll post some highlights of her career here over the next few days. First up, some great clips courtesy of Media Burn, an independent video archiving site out of Chicago. The clips focus on Marin’s work covering Chicago’s infamous First Ward (aka “the mob’s ward”).

This is the first of what will be several examples of top-notch TV reporting. They just don’t make ’em like Carol anymore.