Boring Biographical Data

1. When he was in fifth grade, Harrower launched his school’s first newspaper, The Eagle Enterprise.

2. His father was a prominent TV executive at a station owned by The Detroit News, and was once heard to say: “Newspaper people are losers.”

3. While a student at Eastern Michigan University, Harrower dreamed up a story for the campus magazine titled “The Ghost of Pease Auditorium.” The story was fictional, but it was written as if it were an actual true story. To this day, many EMU students and instructors still believe that the building is haunted.

4. In 1987, he introduced summary decks at The Oregonian. Since then, they’ve become standard design elements at newspapers around the world.

5. Harrower’s design book has been translated into Russian, Polish and Chinese.

He’s been an award-winning editor, designer and columnist at such newspapers as the Times-Union (Rochester, N.Y.) and The Oregonian (Portland, Ore.). He now consults on print and online design, teaches journalism and runs a dog-and-frog ranch deep in the Oregon woods.

• As an author, his Inside Reporting and Newspaper Designer’s Handbook have influenced and inspired a new generation of journalists.

• As an editor, he’s won numerous national awards, including the prestigious Penney-Missouri award for feature editing both at The Oregonian and the Times (a weekly in suburban Portland).

• As a writer, his daily column, The Edge, drew national attention for its ground-breaking mix of text, graphics and humor.

• As a lecturer, he’s spoken to thousands of professionals, teachers and students at seminars around the country. He’s given dozens of keynote addresses, led hundreds of workshops, and taught writing courses as adjunct professor at Portland State University.

• As a designer, he transformed The Oregonian into one of the best-designed newspapers in the world (according to the Society of News Design). He’s now moving into Web design and multimedia.