Robb Montgomery is a Chicago journalist and former newspaper editor. In 2004 he founded a social network and public charity for visual journalism education, Visual Editors. Montgomery is recognized as an influential newspaper designer in the U.S. with his work on the 2003 redesign of the Chicago Sun-Times and 2005 redesign of The San Francisco Examiner.
He was a principal editor and designer of Chicago’s Red Streak newspaper that launched in October, 2002 as a spoiler to the Chicago Tribune’s Red Eye tabloid. Montgomery redesigned the business section for The San Jose Mercury News in early 2007.
CEO of Visual Editors
Montgomery incorporated the Visual Editors social network in 2004 as a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity, positioning the site as an educational exchange for student and professional journalists working in the world’s newsrooms. The charity is operated by a volunteer board of directors.
Since leaving the Chicago Sun-Times in 2005, Montgomery has worked as a journalism educator for U.S. and foreign media groups including, the World Association of Newspapers, Egypt Media Development Group, Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, IFRA, INMA and many others.
Montgomery began his career as an editorial artist at the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel in 1990 after graduating from Eastern Illinois University with a degree in Journalism. He held a number of editorial positions for newspapers in Florida and Illinois between 1990 and 2005.
In 2007 the group launched Camp Video Journalism: A series of video journalism workshops for print journalists adapting to new reporting landscapes and digital media newsrooms.
Highlights of recent activity
In October 2005, he left his editing position at the Chicago Sun-Times to launch his own business as a media consultant. His first client was The Examiner, based in San Francisco. Robb redesigned The Examiner and helped launch the Baltimore, Maryland edition in early 2006. As a freelancer, Robb had already been working with the editors to redesign the Washington, D.C. edition in early 2005. Montgomery has also redesigned the business section for The San Jose Mercury News in early 2007 and is an adviser to newspaper groups on the U.S., Scandinavia, Asia, the Middle East, Canada and Eastern Europe.
Montgomery has traveled extensively to these regions since delivering a keynote speech on tabloid designat the World Editors Forum and World Newspaper Congress in Seoul, Korea in June 2005. In Egypt, he partners with the Media Development Project to help newspapers improve their newspaper design and their reporter-produced multimedia. He designs workshops, documentary video projects, and digital journalism seminars in Egypt, Dubai, South Africa, Malaysia, Sweden, Canada, Latvia, Germany, Croatia, Italy, United States, and Poland.
Music and composition
In 2002 Montgomery founded kidvibe.com - a music publishing company that manages his copyrights and global song distribution. Kidivibe.com is a member of ASCAP - the American Society of Composers and Publishers. Kidvibe.com released an album of Robb’s children’s music in 2002 - “Lullabies and Little Ditties” Montgomery’s music is listed in Apple’s iTunes store.
Journalism experience
Sun-Sentinel
Six months after joining the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel in 1990, Montgomery was tapped to be the founding art director for the company’s new publishing startup - XS Magazine (now called City Link). The alternative news and entertainment weekly tabloid was awarded seven first place awards from the Florida Press Club in its first year of publication. XS was also recognized by the Society for News Design and Robb presented a lecture on the paper’s design at the SND annual conference in Washington, D.C. in 1992.
Chicago Tribune
In 1993 Montgomery was named art director for the newly-launched KidNews section at the Chicago Tribune and earned several awards from the SND competition including two bronze medals. He left the Tribune in 1997 after stints as the design editor for other sections of the paper including, Perspective, Tempo, Transportation, Your Money, Arts and Friday. Robb’s recognition as a designer in the tabloid format (Your Money Arts and the Friday section were tabloids when he designed them) led to a job as an editor for Sun Publications in suburban Naperville.
Sun Publications
Montgomery was the design editor in charge of editorial visuals and was a key editor for developing a range of new projects. The group launched 15 newspapers for suburban Chicago communities - from Waukegan to Joliet. The papers were photo-driven, tabloid-designed papers with a high emphasis on local and street-level news. Montgomery’s redesign of Sun Publications was honored in 2000 by the Society of News Design and profiled in March of 2001 in Update magazine. Between 1997 and 2001 the staff of Sun Publications won numerous awards from the Pictures of the Year competition, the Illinois Press Association, NPPA, and the Society of News Design for outstanding documentary photojournalism and presentation.
Chicago Sun-Times
Montgomery joined the tabloid-sized Chicago Sun-Times in 2001 as the deputy news editor and was a principal designer in the 2003 redesign of the newspaper. He is credited with the design of several of the paper’s award-wining news investigations, including ‘Clout On Wheels’ - the Hired Trucks scandal that uncovered vast corruption in Mayor Daley’s City Hall. He won a Peter Lisagor Award for Exemplary Journalism in 2003 and was nominated again in 2004 - both awards were for high-profile series about local people and their issues.
While at the Sun-Times he also designed the Red Streak edition - a commuter youth tabloid paper that launched in October 2002. His Red Streak design portfolio was honored by the Society for News design in their annual design competition. His work as a visual editor and new project designer was profiled in the fourth edition of the journalism textbook Graphic Communications Today written by Theodore E. Conover and William E. Ryan.
When the Sun-Times moved into new offices in 2004, Montgomery curated and designed the installation of a large-
format picture gallery of over 200 historic news photographs, sculptures and artifacts from the newspaper’s 70-year history.
World Association of Newspapers
Montgomery has presented and directed programs for at the World Editors Forum and World Newspaper Congress events annually since 2005. In Seoul, Korea he presented a lecture on Tabloid newspaper design trends with case studies of three tabloid redesigns and new launches that he had a leadership role in as a visual editor.
In 2006 he led a pilot project for Web video journalism blogging at the Moscow congress. In Cape Town, SA in 2007 he led three teams of graduate student journalists (Stellenbosch University) to produce daily online video reports, longer video interviews with editors-in-
chief and edited video excerpts of workshop lectures. In 2008 at the congress in Gothenburg, Sweden he directed student video reporting teams to produce daily online video reports in the documentary style as well as longer video interviews with editors-in-chief and edited video excerpts of workshop lectures.
IFRA
In 2005, Montgomery co-produced a three-day workshop on newspaper design and graphics in Kuala Lumpur. In 2006 he was an instructor at a three-day workshop on newspaper circulation promotions in Kuala Lumpur. In 2007 he co-produced a three-day workshop on social networks and building online communities in Kuala Lumpur.
Egypt Media Development Project
MDP is based in Cairo and is a USAID funded five-year program to develop journalism training resources and raise professional reporting standards. Montgomery has been working with MDP since April 2007 on a renewable contract that involves quarterly visits to Cairo to works with MDP staff and partners to improve visual journalism in the Egyptian press. Montgomery designs and produces seminars and workshops in newspaper design, redesign, social networking and video journalism. These are administered in Arabic and English. He develops training topics and researches materials for the e-learning modules. He uses social networks and social media tools like flickr to provide live critiques for page designs and prototypes in progress.
The Examiner
Robb was hired in 2004 and again in 2005 to conduct a preliminary and then a full redesign of The Examiner newspapers for the San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and Baltimore markets.
He was responsible for designing the paper from scratch to appeal to a more up market reader and advertiser.
INMA
INMA is a non-profit group with more than 1,200 members in 80+ countries with mostly senior marketing officers at daily newspapers.
Robb has filed a multimedia and video journalism column for INMA’s IDEAS magazine since April of 2007. Topics have included “Small cameras can tell really big stories,” and “Everyday multimedia for newspapers.”
Pennsylvania Newspaper Association
Since 2007 Montgomery has been working with senior management at PNA to design and produce a year-round schedule of video and multimedia reporting workshops for Pennsylvania journalists. He also has toured newsrooms to consult on video journalism and blogging at many member newspapers including weekly publishing groups like Calkins media to large dailies like the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Other journalism training activities
Since 2004, Robb has delivered visual/video journalism workshops and lectures to the following groups. The Los Angeles Times, American Press Institute, Danish Press Publishers, Lativian Press Publishers, Poland PressForum, Svenska Dagbladet, IFRA/FRANCE, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Gulf News (Dubai), Supreme Press Council (Cairo), The Orlando Sentinel, Chicago Sun-Times, Press Syndicate (Cairo), Canadian Newspaper Association, British Columbia and Yukon Community Newspaper Association, SND/Scandinavia, The Globe and Mail, and APME Newstrain.
References
^ Newspaper editor at Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times
^ OJR article about Visual Editors
^ Charles Apple’s biography of Robb Montgomery
^ Tabloid design talk at World Editors Forum, Seoul, Korea
^ Newsdesigner reports redesign of The Examiner in three cities
^ University textbook article about the launch of Red Streak
^ business section Photos and article detailing the redesign process
^ Visual Editors is an all-volunteer charity
^ List of international media groups and newspaper associations
^ 510(c)(3) filing is posted at the Visual Editors Foundation
^ Kuala Lumpur: The Guardian’s blogs editor, Kevin Anderson, writes about training with Montgomery
External Links
Writers and Designers Workshop | Association of Alternative Newsweeklies
American Journalism review: The evolution of Visual Editors
News design - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Newsdesigner.com | The New “Bright One”
MediaShift . Digging Deeper: Traditional Journalism Job Cuts Countered by Digital Additions | PBS
Graphic Communications Today - Textbook
AsiaMedia : KOREA: “The tabloid revolution will go on!”
‘RedStreak’ Designer Leaves ‘Sun-Times’ | Editor and Publisher
UK Journalism at the University of Central Lancashire
KidNews - Chicago Tribune
THE INSIDE JOB: City Link
Pictures of the Year Competition | Robb Montgomery
58th POY - Winning Images | Sun Publications
Martin Stabe - IT questions for newspaper executives
Kidvibe.com
Live blogging from Kuala Lumpur. | Kevin Anderson of The Guardian
Bob Stepno’s Other Journalism Weblog
Visual Editors
About the Visual Editors Foundation
Canada: Conventional Wisdom: Moving Pictures II
Bio: Robb Montgomery at Charles Apple
LinkedIn profile: Robb Montgomery
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