The News Under Noonan
In 1986 the Desplaines Valley News was purchased by the soft-spoken, chain-smoking, former copy boy turned editor, John C. Noonan. Under the Bridgeport, Chicago native’s leadership, the Desplaines Valley News was transformed into a kind of “working school” for aspiring local journalists.
When he was 15 years old, Noonan went to work for the Bridgeport News and got his first exposure to print journalism. While attending DeLaSalle High School, Noonan was able to get a job as a copy boy at the Chicago Tribune. Some time later he was moved to the Tribune’s rewrite desk, and in 1961 Noonan became a beat reporter with the City News Bureau of Chicago. Noonan spent seven years at City News, where he was overnight city editor and broadcast editor.
During his 14-year tenure at the Desplaines Valley News, Noonan exposed a new generation of reporters to the “City News” style of journalism, training wide-eyed upstarts to think like beat reporters – be tenacious, make friends, get lots of information and make sure it’s good. Noonan brought the City News maxim, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out,” to Summit, Illinois.
In addition to running the Desplaines Valley News, Noonan also ran for Illinois Senate in the 24th District in 1992. He was defeated in the Democratic Party primary, but garnered nearly 10,000 votes.
John Noonan died on Sunday, October 15, 2000 at Hinsdale Hospital, Hinsdale, Illinois, after a short battle with lung cancer at the age of 58.
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Famous quotes containing the words news and/or noonan:
“If you are one of the hewers of wood and drawers of small weekly paychecks, your letters will have to contain some few items of news or they will be accounted dry stuff.... But if you happen to be of a literary turn of mind, or are, in any way, likely to become famous, you may settle down to an afternoon of letter-writing on nothing more sprightly in the way of news than the shifting of the wind from south to south-east.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“TV gives everyone an image, but radio gives birth to a million images in a million brains.”
—Peggy Noonan (b. 1950)