Owen Youngman holds the Knight Chair in Digital Media Strategy at Northwestern University’s Medill School. He joined Medill in 2009 after a 37-year career at the Chicago Tribune, the final few years 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 1995 Youngman – a user of online services since 1982 – 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 speaks and lectures 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 and has been 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). He also is board secretary of the Solti Foundation US and a member of both the Online News Association and the American Society of News Editors.
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.
