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Former Dayton Daily News editor Joe Fenley dies at 74
Newspaperman was managing editor from 1976 to '88.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
DAYTON — Former Dayton Daily News Managing Editor Joe Fenley died Tuesday morning following a lengthy illness.
Fenley, 74, died in hospice care at the Dayton Veterans Administration Medical Center, according to his daughter, Elizabeth Smith.
Joe Fenley, former Managing Editor of Journal Herald & Dayton Daily News, in 1983. Mr. Fenley, 74, died in hospice care at the Dayton Veterans Administration Medical Center, according to his daughter, Elizabeth Smith.Known as an old-fashioned newspaperman who had a hard-nosed yet compassionate style, Fenley served as managing editor from 1976 until his retirement in 1988.
"He touched everything that went on in the newsroom," said Steve Sidlo, Fenley's immediate successor and now publisher of the Springfield News-Sun. "He was so compulsive about making everything just the way he thought it should be. Every paper that came off the presses back then had Joe Fenley's fingerprints on every page."
Fenley led the newsroom when the Dayton Daily News and Journal Herald merged into one newspaper in 1986. A tireless worker and teacher to many, the University of Missouri graduate and photography buff thrived on the coverage of breaking news.
Fenley, a Staten Island, N.Y., native, served four years in the U.S. Navy as an aviation ordnance man. He joined the Daily News in August 1963 after his first newspaper job with the Painesville Telegraph in northeastern Ohio.
After serving stints as court reporter and business editor, he left in 1969 to work for Industry Week, a New York City-based business magazine. He returned to the Daily News in 1972 as an assistant city editor and was made metropolitan editor in 1974.
"Joe Fenley's energy and enthusiasm for the news was unsurpassed," said retired Daily News reporter Rob Modic, whom Fenley hired in 1979. "As a reporter in the courthouse, he was well known to cover five trials in a day and he knew everything that happened. As he moved up the ranks of the newspaper, he applied that (energy) to the entire community."
For several years, Fenley served on the board of the Family Service Association and later on the board of Building Bridges, a program concerned primarily with at-risk teenagers. In retirement, he practiced photography and taught at Miami University in Oxford.
Fenley was preceded in death by a daughter, Shawn, in 2003. Besides his daughter, Elizabeth, he is survived by his wife, Ann, a son, Brian, and four grandchildren.
Visitation is set for noon-1 p.m. Friday at Precious Blood Catholic Church, 4961 Salem Ave., followed by a funeral Mass at 1 p.m.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-7408 or agottschlich@DaytonDailyNews.com.
