CAREER
Introduction
Ronald E. Yates is dean of the College of Media (formerly the College of Communications) and the Sleeman Professor
of Business and Financial Journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Before his appointment as
dean in 2003, Yates served as head of the Department of Journalism for six years.
Before coming to the University of Illinois, Yates — who is also
president of R. E. Yates & Associates, a media consulting company —
was an award-winning foreign correspondent, writer and lecturer.
During his tenure as head of the UI Department of Journalism, the
Department competed for and won a $1.5 million Knight
Chair (2000), a $1.2 million Swanlund Chair (1999) and a $500,000
Professorship (2000). Yates added two Pulitzer Prize-winning
journalists to the faculty. He also oversaw
the creation of a new student-driven department Web site and newsletter
and guided the department into an era where students learn
a wide range of media disciplines while the curriculum has remained tightly
focused on the teaching of the fundamentals of journalism and skillful
journalistic practice.
In addition to his current duties as dean, Yates teaches classes in International
Reporting and Foreign Correspondence, Business and Financial Reporting and
basic and advanced reporting. He also holds the Sleeman Professorship in Business
and Financial Journalism and is a member of the boards of the European Union
Center and the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies.
For 27 years, Yates was a foreign and national correspondent for the
Chicago Tribune. During his career, he accumulated extensive international
experience. He lived and worked 18 years as a foreign correspondent in
Japan, Southeast Asia and Latin America, where he covered several wars and revolutions,
including the fall of South Vietnam and Cambodia in 1975, the Tiananmen Square
tragedy in Beijing in 1989, and political upheavals in South Korea, Taiwan,
Thailand and the Philippines. He also covered wars and revolutions in Nicaragua,
El Salvador, Guatemala, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Brazil and Colombia.
In addition to reporting on the political and social changes in these countries,
Yates spent many years documenting the shifting global economic conditions
that are reshaping traditional business affiliations between the United States
and its foreign trading partners.
His work as a foreign correspondent resulted in four Pulitzer Prize nominations
and several other awards. In 1990 he received a commendation from the Gerald
Loeb foundation for an in-depth series of stories entitled: "Vanishing
Borders: Trade in the 1990s," and he has also won the Inter-American Press
Association's Tom Wallace Award for coverage of Central and South America.
His work as a foreign correspondent has been rewarded by the Tribune with three
Edward Scott Beck Awards, and in 1993, Yates won the coveted Peter Lisagor Award
from the Society of Professional Journalists for excellence in business writing.
Before joining the Tribune in 1970, Yates served with U.S. Military Intelligence
in Germany as an intelligence analyst. Yates is a frequent speaker at
seminars and symposiums dealing with international business affairs, relations
between Asia and the United States and the critical topic of how American companies
are competing globally. He has spoken at seminars sponsored by Northwestern
University, the University of Chicago, the U.S. Automotive Export Council,
the International Trade Association, the World Trade Center, the Council on
Competitiveness, the Competitiveness Policy Council and the Chicago Council
on Foreign Relations, to name a few.
His latest book, entitled, "The Kikkoman Chronicles: A Global Company with A Japanese
Soul," was published by McGraw-Hill in June 1998. He is also the author of "Aboard
The Tokyo Express: A Foreign Correspondent's Journey Through Japan", a collection
of columns translated into Japanese.
Yates is working on a new book based on his experiences as
a foreign correspondent in Asia from the early 1970s to the early 1990s. Its
working title is "The Last Rickshaw Home: A Foreign Correspondent’s Journey
Through Asia."
Yates is a native of Kansas City, Mo. He is an honors graduate of the
William Allen White School of Journalism at the University of Kansas in Lawrence,
Kansas.
In addition to his work as a foreign and national correspondent, Prof. Yates
spent 1982 to 1985 in the world of senior management as the Chicago Tribune's
metropolitan editor and national editor—positions in which he supervised
a staff of some 240 reporters and editors. Prof. Yates also has taught journalism,
writing and international studies at California State University, Fullerton,
Cal., Orange County California Community College and the Oakton Community College
system in Chicago.
While in Japan, Yates wrote the popular TOKYO EXPRESS column for Japan's
Mainichi Daily News. He is senior editorial adviser to the China Financial
Weekly, published by the Financial Relations Board and writes frequently for
several Asia-based publications.
Yates, who lives in Champaign, Ill., speaks several foreign languages,
including German, Japanese and Spanish.
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