Charles Madigan

Charles M. Madigan is Presidential Writer in Residence at Roosevelt University in Chicago and a veteran journalist and author. His specialties include American politics, journalism and culture. He has also written extensively on business and economic issues during his four-decade career as a journalist.

Madigan was a reporter, writer, senior writer, editor and columnist for the Chicago Tribune for 27 years. For a decade before that, he was a reporter, writer, editor and foreign correspondent for United Press International in Philadelphia, Harrisburg and overseas. He wrote from Moscow for UPI from 1977 to 1979, when he joined The Tribune in Chicago.

Madigan, 60, started working in journalism at a small paper in Pennsylvania while he was attending Pennsylvania State University. He was 19 years old. In 1968, he joined the Altoona Mirror as a staff writer. He also worked as a staff writer for the Harrisburg Patriot before joining UPI in Philadelphia in 1971.

He is a broadly experienced journalist, having covered everything from county courts and police beats to war crimes prosecutions. He was assigned to political coverage at UPI and later at The Tribune and was a staff writer for Presidential campaigns beginning in 1972.

He has researched and written award-winning projects on toxic shock syndrome, agriculture, change in the workplace, the collapse of Communism and the rise of Nationalism in Eastern Europe. He won an Overseas Press Club Human Rights award for a series of articles he wrote on the murder of 63 Muslims in a small town in Kosovo during the war.

At The Tribune, Madigan received outstanding professional performance awards on two occasions and two Beck Awards, the paper’s highest honor for reporting and writing. After spending years in the field as a writer and editor, he was named the paper’s first Senior Writer in 1996.

He left The Tribune in 2000 to become Executive Editor at Britannica.com, but returned to the paper ten months later to become its Perspective Editor, a position he held for more than five years. He left that job to become an op-ed columnist and to design and run the paper’s first Internet news desk. He left the paper in 2007.

Madigan has written a number of books, among them, “Dangerous Company, Management Consultants and the Businesses They Save and Ruin,” for Times Books (with co-author James O’Shea); “The Hard Road to the Softer Side of Sears,” with former Sears chairman Arthur C. Martinez and “Lessons from the Heart of American Business,” with Jerry Greenwald, former CEO of United Airlines. He writes reviews for The Conference Board’s “Across the Board” Magazine.

He edited “Global Chicago” in 2004, a University of Illinois Press book that examined Chicago’s role in the world market. He wrote and edited “30, The Collapse of the Great American Newspaper” for Ivan R. Dee Press (published in September, 2007). Dee Press will also publish Madigan’s account of his family’s history in the Pennsylvania coal mines upon completion. Madigan was the editor for DePaul University’s 2003 report on human trafficking. He designed and edited the Chicago Economics Club’s 50th Anniversary Book and wrote The McCormick Foundation’s 50th anniversary history. He is a frequent contributor on political subjects to the op ed pages of the Chicago Tribune.

Madigan was an instructor in global studies at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in 2003 and 2004. He has lectured at Earlham College in Richmond, Ind.., and Columbia College in Chicago. He was also senior editor and instructor for Northwestern’s part of the Carnegie-Knight Foundation’s News21 program. In 2007, he was invited to Moscow by the Russian Debates to explain the American presidential election process before an audience of Russian critics, journalists and philosophers. At Roosevelt University, he teaches media, writing and politics courses. He is also a frequent moderator during Chicago’s annual Humanities Festival and was guest lecturer on Abraham Lincoln for The Friday Club of Chicago.

Madigan, who is married and has three sons, composes and performs music. He has played guitar for 45 years.

Madigan attended Pennsylvania State University for two years, then returned to college 37 years later to graduate with high honors from Roosevelt University.

Professional history:

2007 to present: Professor and Presidential Writer in Residence, Roosevelt University

2000-2007: Chicago Tribune senior writer, Sunday Perspective editor (2001 to 2006) and op ed columnist

2000-Oct. 2000: Executive Editor, Britannica.com

1979-2000: Chicago Tribune staff writer, national correspondent, deputy national editor, Washington news editor, national editor, senior national correspondent, senior writer in politics and national affairs

1976-1979: Moscow, U.S.S.R. correspondent for United Press International

1970-1976: United Press International Philadelphia bureau night, overnight and day radio and newspaper editor; Harrisburg UPI, state government correspondent; Harrisburg UPI Bureau Chief and columnist

1968-1970: Harrisburg Patriot, Harrisburg, Pa. police and local government reporter

1966-1968: Altoona Mirror, Altoona, Pa. police and local government reporter and feature writer

Honors:
Overseas Press Club Award for Human Rights Reporting
Chicago Tribune Beck Award, Political Writing
Chicago Tribune Beck Award, Investigative Reporting
Chicago Tribune Outstanding Professional Performance, Atlanta Murders
Chicago Tribune Outstanding Professional Performance, News Writing
University of Missouri, Economics Writing
Amos Tuck Economics Writing Award, Dartmouth College
Washington Press Club Consumer Affairs Reporting Award
American Library Association Best New Business Book (Dangerous Company)