About Owen Youngman
Owen Youngman is the Knight Professor of Digital Media Strategy at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. He joined Medill in 2009 after a 37-year career at the Chicago Tribune, most recently as senior vice president/strategy and development.
(Photo by Chris Walker)
Youngman directed the creation of many innovative new products at the Tribune, both in print and online.
As managing editor for features, he led the research-driven 1995 transformation of the newspaper’s Food Guide into Good Eating, launched simultaneously with a TV program on Tribune Co.’s 24-hour cable news channel, CLTV, and a channel within Chicago Online, the Tribune’s service on AOL.
After leading a company-wide investigation of the possibilities of the World Wide Web, in 1996 Youngman became the newspaper’s first director of interactive media, with both editorial and P&L responsibility. In that job he oversaw the creation of chicagotribune.com, the first site to simultaneously be named “best newspaper Web site” by both Editor & Publisher and the Newspaper Association of America, as well as Metromix.com, which remains Chicago’s leading online entertainment guide.
In his subsequent strategy work for the Tribune, teams directed by Youngman created such products as RedEye, the Tribune’s free daily paper for young urban commuters; Triblocal, a print/online hyperlocal news source for dozens of Chicago suburbs; and TheMash, a weekly newspaper produced collaboratively by Tribune journalists and Chicago Public Schools high school students. In 2008, a social media strategy that grew out of his early experimentation with Facebook and other online networks drove a 10% increase in traffic to chicagotribune.com.
Youngman’s other Tribune positions included associate managing editor/financial news, suburban editor, and deputy sports editor. He has spoken and lectured widely on the intersection of digital and analog media and serves on the board of Legacy.com, the nation’s leading online source for death notices – the extension of a business plan he drew up for the Tribune in 1997.
He serves on the Executive Board of the Evangelical Covenant Church; is a member of the Board of Trustees of North Park University (his alma mater, which awarded him the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters in 2005); chairs the marketing and strategic planning committee of Swedish Covenant Hospital, the Chicago hospital where he was born; and is secretary of the Solti Foundation US.
Youngman’s consulting company, Owen R. Youngman & Associates, provides strategic media, communications and digital services and advice to corporate and individual clients. When he’s not reading, spending time online, or at a board meeting, he plays the trombone, sings bass, or attends classical music events.