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Former award-winning investigative journalist dies

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Janan Hanna was an completed musician, lawyer and award-winning investigative journalist who grew up in Lengthy Island, N.Y., and spent the final 4 many years in her adopted residence of Chicago.

With a regulation diploma from Loyola, a grasp’s from the Medill College of Journalism at Northwestern and a Civic Orchestra fellowship from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as a classical violinist, Hanna was completed in lots of fields.

However of all her notable accomplishments, Hanna most cherished telling tales of her experiences as a reporter for former Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Royko, who employed her out of the Metropolis Information Bureau in 1990 and launched her profession as an investigative journalist.

“Her associates gave her quite a lot of grief when she began at Metropolis Information as a result of she was a Northwestern graduate and so they stated she wouldn’t be street-wise,” Judith Hanna, her sister stated. “However she proved herself. And he or she cherished working for Royko. She had a really robust pores and skin.”

Hanna died of coronary heart failure Sunday. She was 59.

Although she aspired to be a classical violinist whereas rising up in New York, Hanna modified course at Northwestern, incomes a bachelor’s diploma in political science in 1985 earlier than graduating from Medill in 1986.

Following stints on the Chicago Every day Regulation Bulletin and Metropolis Information, she utilized for an internship on the Tribune in 1990. In October, she turned Royko’s 14th “legman” — a place whose duties included reporting, analysis and listening to quite a lot of individuals from politicians to plumbers who referred to as Royko’s quantity with concepts or information suggestions for his nationally syndicated column.

Hanna later turned a basic task reporter and was a part of a group of Tribune reporters that gained a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism award for the “Killing Our Youngsters,” a collection on the rising murder price for Chicago-area youngsters. She additionally gained a Peter Lisagor Award for her reporting on the paper the place she spent 12 years earlier than leaving for brand spanking new adventures in 2002.

Amongst her post-Tribune jobs: clerk at a regulation group, instructing journalism at Northwestern and DePaul, and enjoying violin with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and the Oak Park Symphony Orchestra.

Hanna was pleased with her Palestinian American heritage. Amongst her earliest reporting on the Tribune was a 1991 article about Arab People who had been involved for his or her security after being the victims of discrimination on the outset of the Gulf Warfare with Iraq.

“It was essential to her, her (Palestinian) heritage and her background,” Judith Hanna stated. “She was very a lot for social justice. She even marched on the Tribune (Tower) when the paper offered the constructing off to make condos.

“She had a ardour for print information and was an advocate for the combat for racial justice, girls’s justice and Center Japanese affairs. She was very conscious of all that, and in her coronary heart she was very activist-minded.”

Judith Hanna stated Janan principally loved hanging with associates on the Billy Goat Tavern in Chicago. She as soon as shocked Royko by informing him that President George H.W. Bush was there for lunch and asking ‘The place’s Royko?”

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Hanna and her fellow feminine reporters who labored below Royko jokingly referred to themselves as “leg creatures” as an alternative of the extra formal “legperson” title utilized by the corporate.

Within the biography “Mike Royko: A Life in Print,” Hanna advised creator Dick Ciccone her casual talks within the workplace with the town’s most famous columnist had been “the most effective a part of the job.”

“Some days he didn’t wish to discuss,” she stated. “However different days he would say ‘Are available right here,’ and he would go off for hours on tales that had been fascinating. A number of instances he was rehearsing his column. It was good.”

Within the final 12 months, Hanna accepted a place as an investigative reporter on authorized issues for International Investigations Evaluate.

Survivors embrace her mother and father, Sam and Joyce Hanna; and two sisters, Judith Hanna and Pamela Hanna. A non-public memorial might be held in New York, with a memorial in Chicago scheduled at a later date.

psullivan@chicagotribune.com

To buy a demise discover, go to https://placeanad.chicagotribune.com/death-notices/. To recommend a staff-written obituary on an individual of native curiosity, e-mail chicagoland@chicagotribune.com

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