Suzanne Hanney Nominated as
Communicator of Achievement
Communicator of Achievement nominee Suzanne Hanney is
back in the inner-city Chicago neighborhood where she grew up after working on Downstate
Illinois newspapers, including a stint doing the archives on President Ronald Reagan in
his boyhood hometown. She is now city editor of StreetWise, rated the No. 1 street
newspaper in North America by the North American Street Newspaper Association.
Hanney’s first job after graduating from Northwestern University’s journalism school was editing a weekly newspaper in Marseilles, Ill. She bought the paper to keep it going, published it briefly and sold it to a shopper, for whom she continued to serve as editor.
Her next move was Dixon, Ill., where she began as lifestyle editor of the daily Dixon Evening Telegraph. As "Reagan editor," she interviewed the president’s grade school and high school friends, covered the president’s first inauguration and compiled a 92-page special edition that won a first place from the National Federation of Press Women.
National and international media also consulted her regarding the significance of the president’s roots. She later served as Ogle County beat reporter, assistant news editor and editor of the Sauk Valley Sun, a new weekly paper the company started in a neighboring city.
After working a year as a copy editor at the daily Quad-City Times, she returned to Chicago, where she has written for The American Banker and United Press International.
She will receive the Sr. Mary Emilita Henneberry Award April 29 for over 20 years of service to her high school, The Immaculata. She has also served on the boards of Cathedral High School and Gamma Phi Beta Sorority at Northwestern, where she wrote a centennial women’s history and helped coordinate a weekend event. She has been elected to three terms on a local school council (LSC) in the Chicago public schools. A reform measure in the public schools, LSCs hire the individual school principals, oversee their budgets and implement school improvement plans.