After 15 years and more than 750 issues, Pete Mazzaccaro is stepping down as the Chestnut Hill Local’s editor. His last day is Friday, July 2.

Mazzaccaro, 47, is leaving to join the corporate communications department at Asplundh Tree Experts.

“I’m leaving,” he said in an interview last week, “because I think 15 years was a long time to serve the paper as editor. I’m looking forward to learning something new and working for a really good company.

“I also think it is potentially good for the Local to find someone who can approach the role with renewed energy and focus.”

His time as editor is only one part of his relationship with the Local. From 1999 to 2004 he served the paper as a writer, associate editor and, for a time, business manager. He left to become the articles editor at Philly Style Magazine, returning as editor after 18 months away.

The Connecticut native earned a BA in English from Central Connecticut State University in 1996 and, while on the Local’s staff, a Masters from Temple in 2001. After receiving his Masters he taught part-time for 18 years in the La Salle University English department.

When Mazzaccaro joined the Local, newspapers were thriving. During his time as editor, however, social media and 24-hour cable news networks began to erode people’s attachment to newspapers. And then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Dozens of papers, daily and weekly, became shadows of their former selves. Many simply disappeared.

The Local, thanks in large measure to Mazzaccaro’s leadership and its long-term relationship with the Chestnut Hill community, survived.

“I feel that we did really well, all things considered,” he said. “As newspapers were going away we were able to put out something that was good, that was reliable. We told every news story we had the capacity to tell.”

He also spent a great deal of his time improving the paper’s online edition. While containing all the material in the paper, it also gave space for some stories and columns for which it didn’t have the space in the print edition.

Part of the reason for his success, Local Publisher John Derr said, “is the impressive way that he, especially during the pandemic, has been able to do so much with so little. He’s been able to cultivate a group of very good correspondents who respect him very much and are able to really be eyes and ears on the street.”

Tom Utescher, who’s been covering sports for the Local since late 1975, has been writing for the paper longer than anyone else and has worked for seven different editors-in-chief. “Pete’s a real student of journalism that not many people in his generation are,” Utescher said.

“His understanding of the shift to online journalism was important in helping the Local make that transition. He was well qualified to lead the Local into more of a digital platform.”

Derr concurs and reports that there are about 60,000 visits to the Local’s website each month. There are slightly more than 4,000 print editions read each week.

Utescher, speaking for many of us who have been long-term reporters and/or columnists for the Local, said that when Mazzaccaro became editor, “I’d always enjoyed a large degree of autonomy. Pete didn’t really affect that. One of the good things about somebody coming into a new position is when they’re smart enough, [as Pete was], not to try to fix things that aren’t broken.”

Mazzaccaro said that his approach to the paper’s content “is really just me trying the best I can to hear what people want to read and then give it to them as best we can.”

Never one to avoid controversy, he says that he tries to be balanced by reporting both sides of issues about which parts of the community have differing opinions.

“I think he’s strived for fairness in trying to represent as many points of view as he could,” Utescher said.

“I’ve published columnists I didn’t like whatsoever but people enjoyed them, they got widely read and remarked about,” he said. “That’s what my job really is. It’s not ‘The Pete Mazzaccaro Show.’ It’s an institution. It’s been here a long time. The best thing to do is to keep some semblance of what people expect it to do and try to do that with the resources you have.”

As he moves on, he is looking forward to having a schedule that allows for more time with his family: Hannah, to whom he’s been married since 2004; daughter Izzy, 15; and son John, 13.

In departing Mazzaccaro, a multiple Keystone Award winner for his journalism in Pennsylvania, said he’ll miss “the issues, and the things that are going on. From zoning battles to Black Lives Matters protests and the pandemic, it can be really exciting.”

Interviewed on his way to page 4, Arnie captured what all who have worked with and for Mazzaccaro and those who rely on the newspaper he edited for so long are feeling about his departure:

“What can I say about Pete? He’s wise, thoughtful, and creative. I owe him much gratitude for my longevity. Each week he’d give me, a two-dimensional cat, a purpose. Nothing seemed to faze him. I will miss him.”