The Sun-Times Media Company, owner of the Chicago Sun-Times and alternative-weekly Chicago Reader, on Monday launched its new content leadership team.
Chris Fusco, a 17-year veteran of the Chicago Sun-Times, is the new editor-in-chief. Fusco won dozens of awards as an investigative reporter with the Sun-Times Watchdogs unit before becoming managing editor of the newspaper last year. He has served as acting editor since August. Fusco, a Chicago area native, will continue his efforts to build on the Sun-Times’ longtime reputation as a scrappy voice for the city’s working women and men.
Carol Fowler, a tech entrepreneur and 20-year veteran of Chicago television news management, joins the company as senior vice president of digital news products — a new position designed to foster innovative storytelling and to take advantage of Sun-Times Media’s move next month into new offices that include television and
podcasting studios and other state-of-the-art news tools. Fowler ran local Chicago newsrooms at WGN, Fox and CBS before becoming an active member of Chicago’s leading tech incubator, 1871, with a focus on social-media innovation.
Fusco and Fowler will work alongside Chief Digital Strategist Matt Watson, who joined the Sun-Times from Vox Media in September.
“The leadership of this team, together with the dedicated employees of the Sun-Times and Reader, will assure the quality of our legacy products and build meaningful digital relationships with Chicago’s news consumers. Their talents complement each other and give us the bandwidth we need to meet the challenges ahead,” Sun-Times CEO Edwin Eisendrath said.
“The Sun-Times Media Company is a distinctly Chicago news organization. With our team of outstanding journalists, we are determined to listen to, and engage with, our community to bring it news coverage that matters. Using new, multi-platform production and delivery capabilities, we will meet our news consumers where they are, and provide our advertising partners with real value.”
