Pete Nickeas

My name is Pete Nickeas.

All I want to do is report. Seriously. Until my legs stop working. I don’t mind the hours, I don’t mind that the job is all-consuming. I didn’t know it would be this way when I started out writing concert and album reviews more than five years ago.

I didn’t even want to go to college. I was going to go into the army or pursue any number of other ventures that would’ve kept me away from school. But an English teacher in high school forced me to keep a journal by hanging a failing grade over my head, and I started writing album reviews to fill the pages.

If it wasn’t for his kick in the backside I don’t think I ever would’ve pursued higher education.

Before I went to Lewis University, I joined on a now-defunct start-up that aimed to cover Hip-hop music in Chicago - through reviews, feature stories, interviews, concert coverage, photos, and audio clips.

At the time, I was balancing that project with a landscaping company I started before applying to college. So at the end of 2004, I was wrapping up my first semester of undergraduate work, raking leaves, and covering concerts every weekend.

As the web venture floundered, my responsibilities with Lewis’ student paper and business ramped up considerably. I chalked the time spent with the website to experience and moved on, keeping only copies of my work and a shoebox of photos.

At the end of my junior year, after having spent three years balancing a growing business, coursework, and student paper responsibilities, I approached the proverbial fork. If I was going to be a reporter, I had to give up landscaping. If I was going to be serious about the business, school had to go.

So I sold my equipment and forwarded clients to other reputable landscaping operations in the western suburbs, and spent the rest of my college career being the best reporter I could.

After getting into UIS’ Public Affairs Reporting Program, I was assigned to Small Newspaper Group’s statehouse bureau, where I report from today. Daily coverage mostly but when all is said and done, I’ll have squeezed a long-term project or two in there.

And now, when I pass the exit for Onarga on the way to or from Chicago, all I can think is “this is Shane Cultra country.” And I fear I’ll permanently associate Pontiac with Sen. Mike Jacobs’ rants about how Pontiac’s prison is old, crumbling, and a waste of state money. And the south suburbs is state Rep. Lisa Dugan territory, who was in the same union (different local) as my father.

I just want to report.