Beyond the Byline: Interest in science veers into journalism career for Group Editor Trappe

Three weeks after Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, Renee Trappe left Des Plaines for Iowa State University, determined to become a scientist.

But the aftershocks from Watergate, a daily diet of the Des Moines Register and the Chicago Tribune Midwest edition, and a literature teacher who kindly said, "You're in the wrong major," changed that. By 1976 she was at Southern Illinois University, majoring in journalism.

Curiosity, after all, is a key trait in both science and journalism. Trappe pestered hundreds of people on behalf of local papers in Des Plaines, Niles, Wheaton and St. Charles before joining the Daily Herald in 1985, where she has since pestered thousands more.

Today, after 30 years as, at various times, a reporter, city editor and assistant managing editor for the Daily Herald, she is the group editor for the Southern Illinois LOCAL Media Group, a collection of small, hustling newspapers at the very bottom of Illinois - in Marion, Harrisburg, Chester, Du Quoin, Carbondale and more.

Besides leading the editorial coverage for those newspapers, she also coordinates the Daily Herald's Academic and Leadership Teams and is a member of the Daily Herald Editorial Board.