Andrea Hanis was a versatile journalist who spent almost her entire career working for Chicago newspapers, including the Tribune, where in 2013 she launched Blue Sky Innovation, a digital hub focused on Chicago’s emerging innovation economy, and served as its editor.
Those who worked closely with Hanis recalled her high journalistic standards, her strong work ethic, her effervescent personality, her upbeat spirit and her ever-present sense of humor.
“Andrea was a wonderful colleague and a lovely person, and she had such a rich history in Chicago working for the Sun-Times, Crain’s and then for the Tribune,” said former Tribune senior vice president and editor Gerould W. Kern. “She had an infectious personality that was really kind of a tonic for a newsroom and for anyone who worked with her and around her. She took on complicated jobs and did them exceptionally well.”
Hanis, 56, died of complications from brain cancer on Nov. 12 while in hospice care at the Warren Barr Gold Coast rehabilitation and nursing facility on the Near North Side, said former Tribune Content Agency president Joyce Winnecke, a longtime friend. Hanis, who had battled brain cancer for the past 14 months, had been a Lincoln Park resident until June, when she moved to the Streeterville neighborhood, and she also had a weekend home in Lakeside, Michigan.
Born in 1969, Andrea Marie Hanis was a native of Whiting, Indiana, and graduated from Whiting High School in 1986. She earned a bachelor’s degree in 1991 from Indiana University, where she worked on the school newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student, as managing editor and news editor.
After college, Hanis worked for the Louisville Courier-Journal newspaper in Kentucky for two years before moving to Chicago in 1993 to take a job at the Chicago Sun-Times. She was an assistant editor in features and was the paper’s lifestyles editor.
In 1998, the Sun-Times tapped Hanis to be editor of its travel section. Hanis also wrote a weekly column for the section and oversaw and edited a cadre of freelance reporters and photographers.
Hanis joined Crain’s Chicago Business in 2004 as an assistant managing editor, tasked with orchestrating a new features section, dubbed the Business of Life. One of her columnists was former Tribune staff reporter Shia Kapos, who wrote the “Taking Names” column for Crain’s starting in 2006 and who now writes the “Illinois Playbook” column for Politico.
“She was my boss and then became one of my closest friends. And when you’re a journalist, you hope that your editor is a great wordsmith to make your stories better, and then you also hope that your editor, who is your boss, is a great boss,” Kapos said. “But Andrea was one of the rare journalists who was an incredible wordsmith and the perfect boss. She was tough and she could be sharp at times, but she never made you feel bad about yourself in any way. She was great to work for. And we loved pulling together the Business of Life section because it was something new and different that hadn’t been done in Chicago.”
In 2011, Hanis joined the Tribune’s business section as its planning editor. Two years later, she took on a bigger role as editor of the business section’s new Blue Sky Innovation digital hub.
“We launched this startup, Blue Sky Innovation, looking at the startup and innovation space in Chicago because we were just coming out of the recession and so the whole idea of green shoots and businesses was important. But (Blue Sky) was also, in and of itself, a green shoots start-up for us,” Kern said. “So this was a very nontraditional kind of thing for us to do, and she took it and ran with it and did, I think, a fabulous job with it.”
Amina Elahi, a Blue Sky Innovation reporter from 2014 until 2017 who now is Louisville Public Media’s managing editor for news, said Hanis’ leadership and mentorship were “very influential” for her. Elahi said she regularly passes to her own staff what she learned from Hanis.
“She had very high standards in editing and in the stories she would green-light, and despite all of that, it was always fun to work with her,” Elahi said.
Several colleagues noted that one of Hanis’ mantras in running Blue Sky Innovation was “identify and destroy nonsense.” That line was emblematic, colleagues said, of how she approached the stories covered.
In 2019, Blue Sky Innovation’s staff members, including Hanis, were transferred to other duties. She took on an assignment writing editorials for the Tribune. The following year, she was one of several journalists to accept a voluntary separation package and left the Tribune.
In 2021, Chicago Daily Law Bulletin president and publisher Peter Mierzwa hired Hanis to be the editor of the venerable legal newspaper. He called her “a natural mentor, always willing to guide younger staff members, helping them grow not only as journalists but as professionals.”
“At her core, Andrea was a journalist through and through — someone whose deep roots in reporting, editing and storytelling shaped every decision she made,” he said. “Those of us who worked closely with her will especially remember her humor: smart, warm and often punctuated by an unmistakably genuine laugh that could brighten even the busiest newsroom. We shared a vision for change in our news operation, and her commitment to accountability, reliability and doing the work the right way helped bring that vision closer to reality.”
About a year ago, Hanis resigned from the Daily Law Bulletin amid her cancer treatment. She had no immediate survivors.
Winnecke and her husband are planning a memorial service for Hanis, to be held in January.
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
