Beyond the Byline: Deputy Managing Editor Pete Nenni's 46 years steeped in suburbs' history

If you count his work on newspapers in junior high school, high school, college and professionally, Pete Nenni has a journalism career that has spanned some 46 years in the suburbs.

That's a lot of writing and editing stories, sitting through government board meetings and watching election returns. But it has given him a front-row seat to the suburbs' history and milestones.

As a reporter, he contributed to the coverage of the Laurie Dann shootings, the Arlington Park Racetrack fire, and the Browns Fried Chicken massacre, to name a few. He interviewed former President Gerald Ford, former Gov. James Thompson and Boston Red Sox Hall of Famer Joe Cronin. Pete covered a presidential primary in New Hampshire and exposed government corruption.

His experience includes working as a reporter covering municipal, business, transportation and legal affairs beats, as well as an assistant city editor and Lake County bureau chief. Along the way, he's won more than a dozen awards, including three Lisagors.

That's pretty heady stuff for a kid who moved here from Erie, Pennsylvania, in the mid-1960s before Woodfield Mall was built. He graduated from Forest View High School in Arlington Heights, Harper College and Northern Illinois University. One constant through it all has been journalism.

These days, he uses that accumulated knowledge and experience to help direct coverage as the Daily Herald's deputy managing editor, as well as contribute to the newspaper's institutional voice as an editorial writer and member of the editorial board. Pete is no longer in the field and on the front lines of reporting the news, but he says it's still a thrill to be part of the next big story of the suburbs' history.