Marni Pyke reports on transportation and politics for the Daily Herald. Her beat includes Metra, the Regional Transportation Authority, the Illinois tollway, Pace, aviation and writing a weekly column, "In Transit."
During her career at the Daily Herald, Pyke has covered the COVID-19 pandemic, DuPage and Cook county governments, environmental issues, courts, congressional elections and the 2018 gubernatorial race.
Projects include a series on patronage concerns at the Illinois tollway, which in 2019 earned her third place in the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Awards For Investigative Reporting, a Sarah Brown Boyden Award from the Chicago Journalists Association, the Chicago Headline Club's Peter Lisagor Award for Best Investigative Reporting, and the Illinois Press Association's Knight Chair Award for Sustained Investigative Journalism.
Pyke has also won Lisagor Awards in 2009 and 2011 in the Science, Health, Technology, Environmental Reporting category. In 2009, she was a finalist for the investigative series "Seeing Red," on red-light cameras at the Investigative Reporters and Editors awards.
Previously, Pyke worked as a reporter at the Crystal Lake-based Northwest Herald and at Press Publications in Elmhurst, where she was a reporter and a managing editor. At Press Publications, she received first place at the Illinois Press Association awards for editorial writing.
She has been a guest on several local broadcast programs, including ABC 7 Chicago's Sunday morning news show, "Chicago Tonight" on WTTW, and WBBM radio's "At Issue."
Pyke graduated from Victoria University at the University of Toronto with a bachelor's degree in English and history. She has a graduate certificate in journalism from Sheridan College, Ontario.
She lives in Downers Grove with her family and assorted pets.