Mark Tatge
Mark W. Tatge is an American journalist, author, and college professor. He was a senior editor at Forbes magazine's Midwest Bureau, a staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal, an investigative reporter in the Statehouse Bureau of Cleveland's The Plain Dealer, and is the 2014 recipient of the Baldwin Fellowship at University of South Carolina where he is nearing completion of a PhD in Mass Communication.
Tatge taught journalism at DePauw University and Ohio University's E. W. Scripps School of Journalism and at University of South Carolina. He also worked as an adjunct professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, where he taught graduate journalism students about business, economics and finance.
In 2010, Tatge published his first book, The New York Times Reader: Business and Economics.
Early life
Mark Tatge was born in Chicago, the descendant of German and Irish immigrants who grew up on the north side of Chicago in the Portage Park neighborhood. Tatge attended Catholic schools, including St. Viator High School in suburban Arlington Heights, Ill.Tatge graduated from high school and enrolled in Western Illinois University, studying social work. He planned to get a job after graduation working in the criminal justice system with juvenile delinquents. On the side, Tatge wrote for his school newspaper the Western Courier and WIU's Sports Information office. Tatge also freelanced for daily newspapers while at WIU, including the Galesburg Register Mail and Peoria Journal Star. Upon graduation, Tatge went to work running a small weekly and a small daily newspaper in Wisconsin. He moved up the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison, where he attended graduate school at the UW-Madison while working on the night copy desk.
Tatge is a past Kiplinger Fellow in Public Affairs Reporting at Ohio State University where he completed his master's degree in journalism. The fellowship was named after W.M. Kiplinger, W. M. Kiplinger editor and founder of the Kiplinger Letter. Kiplinger was one of OSU's first journalism graduates and he also founded Kiplinger's Personal Finance. Following in Kiplinger's footsteps, Tatge found that economics, not politics, was more fascinating. Upon graduation, Tatge embarked upon a career in business journalism. Tatge went on to complete his MBA at Ohio University. He holds a bachelor's degree from Western Illinois University.
Tatge is chief executive of an editorial consulting/content management company, Deadline Reporter LLC.
Work as an investigative reporter
Tatge has written about corporate misdeeds, starting with his coverage of the savings and loan scandal in Colorado Savings and loan crisis during the 1980s. Tatge chronicled how lax federal regulations allowed bank executives to speculate on land deals with depositors' money. The funny money deals sank Silverado Banking. The thrift collapsed in 1988, costing taxpayers $1.3 billion. Tatge spent eight years as the Cleveland Plain Dealer's statehouse investigative reporter uncovering corruption in state government. Tatge's investigation into corruption at the Ohio Department of Insurance, entitled "Secrets of the Deal," was twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.He was the lead writer on the magazine's Best Places for Business and contributed to Forbes 400 Richest Americans.
Academic career
Tatge was awarded a visiting professorship at Ohio University endowed by the foundation established by the E.W. Scripps Co.. E.W. Scripps School of Journalism Director Thomas Hodson asked Tatge to join OU's faculty with the goal of developing a business writing program. Over the course of the next three quarters, Tatge wrote and received approval for a curriculum, put together a plan to raise money for an endowed chair in business journalism and he solicited donations on the school's behalf. Additionally, he worked closely with faculty members to help re-write the school's curriculum, giving it a more digital focus as OU moves from quarters to semesters.The program Tatge initiated enrolled its first students in the winter of 2008-09. Students were given specialized training in
areas of accounting, finance, markets, the economy and trained how to use a Bloomberg Terminal. As part of plan Tatge devised
to help promote the program, he began appearing on the nationally televised Fox Business Network founded by OU alumnus Roger Ailes. Graduates of OU's business journalism program are now working as business journalists in New York City and Chicago.
Tatge initiated a partnership with OU College of Business, where he taught courses jointly to students from both the College of Business and the College of Communication. business and communication. Tatge developed and taught courses in media management, magazine writing, business writing, online reporting, media literacy, media economics, information gathering and media law.
In 2011, Tatge was named Eugene S. Pulliam Distinguished Visiting Professor of Journalism at DePauw University. Tatge advised media fellows at the Pulliam Center for Contemporary Media where students learn firsthand about journalism by working at DePauw's newspaper, radio and TV stations. Tatge also created a program in multimedia storytelling teaching students how to shoot, edit video and create websites.
The Pulliam Visiting Professorship was created in 2000 with a gift from the family of Eugene S. Pulliam, a 1935 graduate of DePauw and former publisher of the Indianapolis Star and News, "to support and advance DePauw's strong tradition of graduating men and women who become highly successful and significant journalists."
In 2014, Tatge was awarded the prestigious Baldwin Business and Financial Graduate Fellowship at the University of South Carolina. The fellowship is funded by a $500,000 gift made by Kenneth W. Baldwin Jr., a 1949 USC journalism alumnus. Tatge is teaching, conducting research and developing financial literacy programming while pursuing a doctorate in mass communications. In 2016, Tatge was awarded USC's Graduate Teaching Award for "innovative and engaging approach to teaching business journalism." At USC, Tatge helped the school secure a $2.3 million chair in business journalism and he established a Baldwin lecture series bringing nationally acclaimed journalists such as New York Times Editor David Leonhardt and Center of Public Integrity Founder Charles Lewis to USC's campus.
Most recently, in August 2016, Tatge and his co-author, Alex Luchsinger, won the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Graduate Student Interests Group's fifth annual Carson B Wagner Scholar-to-Scholar Award, for the presentation of their study, "Where Should We Eat? A Content Analysis Examining What Factors Yelp! Users Perceive Useful When Picking Restaurants" at this year's 99th convention in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Tatge received a plaque emboldened with the authors' name and the name of the study, as well as a check for $100.