Steve Huntley biography

Steve Huntley is a commentary columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and a member of its editorial board.

He served as editor of the editorial page of the Sun-Times from 1997 to 2007. Under his leadership, the Sun-Times editorial page staff was awarded Peter Lisagor Awards for exemplary journalism in 2004 and 1997 and the Sarah Brown Boyden award for editorials from the Chicago Journalists Association in 2006.

Before joining the Sun-Times Editorial Board in 1997, Huntley was Assistant Managing Editor/Metro of the Sun-Times. Under his leadership, the Metro staff won Lisagor awards in 1996 for coverage of the Fox River Grove, Ill., school bus-train crash that killed seven children, in 1993 for coverage of the Chicago Loop flood and in 1992 for the "After the Shooting Stops" series on the impact of violent death on families and communities.

Huntley previously was Night City Editor of the Sun-Times. He joined the newspaper in 1986.

Huntley worked for seven years (1979-86) for U.S. News & World Report, heading up its Chicago bureau before transferring in 1982 to Washington, D.C., where he was an Associate Editor until promoted to Senior Editor in 1985.

Huntley worked 13 years (1965-78) for United Press International as a writer and editor in bureaus in Chicago, Greensboro, N.C., Atlanta, Ga., and Columbia, S.C. He was promoted in 1977 to Executive Editor of UPI's National Broadcast Department.

Co-author: Knocking Down Barriers: My Fight for Black America, by Truman K. Gibson Jr. with Steve Huntley (Northwestern University Press). Superior Achievement Award from the Illinois State Historical Society, 2006.

Certificate of Appreciation for Outstanding Contributions to Freedom of Information from the National Center for Freedom of Information Studies at Loyola University, Chicago; the Chicago Headline Club; and the Illinois Freedom of Information Council, 1993.

Media Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, October, 2001

Stick-O-Type Award for feature writing, Chicago Newspaper Guild, 1987.

Member, Board of Directors, City News Bureau of Chicago, 1992-98; President, 1997.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, BA Journalism, 1965.

Huntley lives in Wilmette, Ill., with his wife Linda. They have two daughters, Kristine and Katherine.