Albert J. Neri

For eight years, Erie had a direct and inside connection to the important doings in Harrisburg with the presence of the Erie Times-News Capitol bureau and its chief, Albert J. Neri.

That bureau closed when the main target of the coverage coming out of it, Governor Tom Ridge of Erie, moved on to Washington to create the US Department of Homeland Security. On Saturday, Neri died of complications from cancer. He was 58.

From Sunday’s obituary:

Until 2009, Neri had remained active as a media consultant to utility groups and non-profits. He graduated from the Temple University School of Journalism in 1974, was a reporter for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette from 1979 until 1990, and was state capitol bureau chief for the Erie Times-News from 1993 until 2001 before becoming founding publisher and editor of the Insider, an electronic newsletter for Pennsylvania political enthusiasts, between 2002 and 2009.

The Erie paper’s opening of a Capitol bureau was the kind of big undertaking from a long-gone era, seldom seen in this media context. The real coup was landing Al Neri, who had been in Harrisburg for years, covering Bob Casey and winning awards on his coverage of Budd Dwyer’s public suicide.

I remember his first columns from Harrisburg being so insightful and interesting; thinking that this guy had a depth of knowledge and access that Erie newspaper readers could only dream of. In 1993, the Harrisburg Neri covered was pre-Ridge, who at the time was the “guy nobody ever heard of, from a place nobody has been to.” Ridge’s gubernatorial candidacy was a long shot, but with his win and subsequent reelection, the Times-News gig for Neri turned into a long-term assignment, and we as readers were all the better for it.

Governor Ridge paid tribute:

“I think that more than anything he has ever written,” Ridge said, “the best story that will be chronicled will be the grace and the dignity and the courage and the spirit he demonstrated during the past several years. The best story is the one that he wrote with his life, not with his pen. It is pretty remarkable.”