After 31 years as a Journal Star reporter and photographer, Leslie Renken says goodbye

In May of 1993 I drove up out of the desert to work at the Journal Star.

Peoria was literally a breath of fresh air after working for three and a half years in Odessa, Texas. All the things that were missing in Odessa, like humidity, trees, drinkable tap water, and historic architecture, were present in Peoria. And it felt a lot like coming home, since the move meant I would be only three hours from my family in St. Louis, a far cry from the 18-hour drive to west Texas.

I moved into the carriage house behind the Greenhut Mansion, which has stood at the intersection of Sheridan Road, High Street, and Moss Avenue since 1884, and began what would be a 31-year career at the Journal Star.

In the early '90s, the Journal Star photo department was a bustling place with five full-time photographers, a couple part-timers and a year-round intern. We were still shooting film and printing black and white images in the darkroom. Color images were shot on slide film and processed in a machine. The photo department was a rabbit warren of small rooms filled with enlargers, rinsing sinks and film dryers. When digital photography came on the scene, the space was renovated and all that equipment disappeared. Eventually, film disappeared as well.

For 18 years I worked as a full-time photographer, shooting sports, festivals, portraits, press conferences, and the occasional horrific event. On 9/11 the entire photo department fanned out across the community to find images of Peorians reacting to the event. I ended up in a barbershop in Peoria's Twin Towers Mall, where I met an elderly man who compared the terrorist attack to Pearl Harbor. While I was photographing him, I saw the towers fall for the first time on TV.

In the mid-2000s, a variety of forces led newspapers across the country to contract, and the Journal Star was not immune. In 2011 the Journal Star had too many photographers and not enough reporters, so I was moved into the newsroom to become a full-time feature writer. I was delighted by the opportunity. By that time, I had been a newspaper photographer for more than 20 years, and the move provided a mid-career career change and reignited my love for the job.

I was asked to produce the local content for the weekly Lawn & Garden and At Home pages, both full-page spreads with text and lots of photos. In that role I got to tour some of the most magnificent homes and gardens in central Illinois.

Further contraction in the newsroom led to more beat changes and more opportunity to grow. I worked as the fine arts reporter for a couple years before moving onto the medical beat. The expertise I gained while reporting on Peoria’s medical community aided my transition into full-time COVID reporter, a job I did until the pandemic was nearly over. In the eerie, early days of the pandemic, when everyone from the Journal Star was working from home, the only contact I had with the outside world were the daily press conferences at the Peoria City/County Health Department.

Thirty-one years is a long time; I compare this job to a marriage, and with any marriage, there are good times and bad times that must be weathered. Watching the Journal Star contract from a bustling daily newspaper into a much smaller publication has been difficult. Having grown up in a newspaper family – my father was the outdoor editor for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for more than 40 years — I never expected to see newspapers struggle. I have always believed that they are essential, providing a forum for everything happening in the community. I am heartened by the fact that my younger colleagues are quite capable of carrying on the torch.

As for me, I’m not going anywhere. After 31 years, Peoria has become my home, and the perfect location for my next great adventure.

This article originally appeared on Journal Star: Reporter Leslie Renken has retired from the Journal Star