Ray Long and Pat Quinn

After more than three decades as Springfield bureau chief for the Chicago Tribune and other news organizations, the great Ray Long is moving upstate.

With the change of administrations from Pat Quinn to Bruce Rauner, Long, 56, is shifting assignments from the statehouse pressroom to a full-time position on the Tribune’s investigative watchdog team, based in Chicago.

Covering two governors who went to prison and a state senator who would become president of the United States during his tenure, Long joined the Tribune in 1998 after many years reporting on Illinois government and politics for the Associated Press, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Peoria Journal Star.

Calling his Springfield job “the greatest beat on planet Earth,” Long nevertheless told the Springfield State Journal-Register he was “over the moon” to get the new assignment.

Succeeding him will be Tribune reporter Monique Garcia, who once worked as Long’s intern while studying for her master’s degree at the University of Illinois in Springfield.

Elsewhere on the Springfield beat, the Sun-Times bureau chief position remains vacant since the abrupt resignation last October of Dave McKinney. Sources said the paper still plans to hire a replacement.