Beyond the Byline: Sean Stangland, Assistant News Editor

Aside from his days in the dorms at Eastern Illinois University in downstate Charleston, Assistant News Editor Sean Stangland has spent all of his 41 years in the suburbs.

Born at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Stangland grew up in Wheeling and still lived in his parents' home when he was hired as an intern for the newspaper he grew up reading. He was a copy editor then, proofreading stories and pages.

Nineteen years, three apartments and two suburbs later, he's still doing that - and designing front pages for News and Sports, running the copy desk on Sunday nights and writing columns for the Time out! section. Every day at work brings a new adventure, whether it's picking the perfect photo of a Tim Anderson home run or reviewing the latest "Avengers" movie. That variety is what he enjoys most about working at the Daily Herald.

Stangland has won awards from the Illinois Press Association and the American Copy Editors Society for headline writing, and from the Illinois Associated Press Editors Association for page design. (For some reason, he'd also like us to mention that he took second prize in a video game tournament in 1989.)

When he's not doing his best to keep local print journalism alive, Stangland is dreaming of his next Walt Disney World vacation with his wife, or egging on their dilute tortie cat as she terrorizes her corgi-beagle brother.