Nick Penniman
Nicholas G. Penniman IV retired in 1999 as publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and as senior vice president of newspaper operations for Pulitzer Publishing Company, responsible for 22 daily newspapers from Hawaii to Vermont. He spent 40 years in the newspaper business in California, Illinois and St. Louis, and started an online service (www.stltoday.com) to bring print into the 21st century .
A 1960 graduate of Princeton University (Religion), he received an M.A. at Washington University St. Louis (American Culture Studies) in 2000.
Penniman was an adjunct faculty member of the American Press Institute in Reston, VA and is a founding director of NewsGuard (www.newsguardtech.com), a company partnering with Microsoft that rates web sites for businesses, U.S. government agencies, the Department of Defense, and the E.U. Commission under the Code of Practice on Disinformation.
His first book – Nature’s Steward: A History of the Conservancy of Southwest Florida – was published by Pineapple Press in 2014. His second book – A Toxic Inconvenience: Red Tide and Blue-Green Algae on Florida’s Coast – came out in December 2019. His third, On the Knife: A History of Sugar in Florida, was published in January 2021. A fourth book – Enjoyment of the Same: A History of Public Lands in Southwest Florida, is scheduled for release this Fall.
Married for 55 years he and his wife, Linda, have two children and five grandchildren. They reside in Naples, Florida.