Howard Witt Home Page

Howard Witt is an award-winning journalist, accomplished editor, inspiring executive and dynamic new media innovator. His specialty is finding stories that actually change people's lives. His talent is leading others to do the same. And his experience spans the globe, from Johannesburg to Moscow to Washington, D.C.

Witt finds solutions.
As an Internet visionary, he directed the Chicago Tribune's early forays onto the web more than a decade ago, pioneering a bold front-page web design in 1998 that today is a news industry design standard.

He forged new relationships between bloggers and the mainstream media, demonstrating how journalists could utilize social media to reach vast new audiences.

He oversaw the complete overhaul and expansion of the website for Stars and Stripes, boosting traffic and creating new content niches that attracted advertisers and opened fresh revenue streams.

Witt fixes problems.
As the Senior Managing Editor at Stars and Stripes, he turned around a newsroom and inspired reporters and editors to challenge the military with hard-hitting journalism rather than reprint handouts from public affairs officers.

Confronted with the need for budget savings, he crafted a restructuring plan that reduced personnel and expenses while simultaneously increasing newsroom productivity and awarding incentive raises to top employees.

As the editor of one of the nation's leading alternative newspapers, he taught the nuances of long-form narrative journalism to a staff of young and hungry reporters at the Washington City Paper.

Witt wins prizes.
In 2009, under Witt's direction -- and for the first time in its history -- Stars and Stripes won a Polk Award and a National Headliner Award.

In 2008, he was honored as a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for his groundbreaking coverage of civil rights issues. He also received the Nieman Foundation's Taylor Award for Fairness in Journalism, the American Judicature Society's Toni House Journalism Award and several other major national citations.

Witt's groundbreaking national reporting in the Chicago Tribune:

* Unmasked one of America's most notorious spammers, who was forced to shut down his operations and pay a $1 million fine.
* Won the release from prison of a 14-year-old girl sentenced to up to 7 years in prison for shoving a teacher's aide.
* Led to a $9 million civil verdict for a mentally-retarded black man beaten and left for dead by a group of whites who received only a slap on the wrist for the crime.
* Revealed the story of the Jena 6 in Louisiana that led to the largest American civil rights protest in decades.

Witt knows the world.
As a foreign correspondent stationed in Canada, South Africa and Russia, Witt reported from more than 70 countries over nine years. He stood outside the gates as Nelson Mandela walked free from prison; he chipped chunks of concrete from the Berlin Wall when it fell; he followed Charles Taylor on his murderous march through the jungles of Liberia; and he survived two bloody coups in Moscow as the Soviet Union broke apart.

As a national correspondent based in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Houston, Witt witnessed the lunacy of the O.J. Simpson trial; he stepped over body parts at the scene of the Oklahoma City bombing; he illuminated the nuances of American foreign policy in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks; he waded through the flooded streets of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina; and he broke some of the most significant civil rights stories of the last decade.