Biography
The son, grandson and great grandson of bituminous miners from Cambria County, Pennsylvania, Charles Martin Madigan was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania in 1949, where he attended parochial school and later, St. Columban’s Seminary in Silver Creek, New York.
Madigan attended Pennsylvania State University and in 1967, joined the Altoona Mirror, then the Patriot-News in Harrisburg. In 1970, he joined United Press International in Philadelphia as a writer and editor. He was transferred to UPI in the Soviet Union in 1976 and stayed there until 1979, when he joined the Chicago Tribune. There, he was a reporter, correspondent, national editor, Perspective Editor, Washington news editor and columnist. Among his awards was the Overseas Press Club Award for Human Rights Reporting for an investigation of war crimes in Kosovo.
In 1971 Madigan married Linda Kay Harbaugh. He and his wife Linda have three sons, Eamon, Brian, and Conor. He graduated with honors from Roosevelt University in 2005 and spent a decade there as Presidential Writer in Residence. He currently resides in Evanston, Illinois.
Charles Martin Madigan
from Wikipedia
Madigan grew up in Altoona, Pennsylvania and attended Pennsylvania State University. He had his first professional newspaper job with the Altoona Mirror in 1966. From 1968 to 1970 he worked as local government reporter for the Harrisburg Patriot in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He worked for United Press International from 1970 to 1979, including two and a half years as correspondent from the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Associated with the Chicago Tribune from 1979 until 2008, he was the Sunday Perspective editor and senior correspondent, and was the paper's national editor, Washington, DC news editor, projects editor, Atlanta correspondent, national correspondent and was the paper's first senior writer. In 2000 he was executive editor of Britannica.com, but returned to the Tribune in October. Madigan wrote the main story on the September 11, 2001 attacks for the September 12, 2001 editions of the Tribune.
In 2003 and 2004 Madigan was an instructor at the Medill School of Journalism of Northwestern University. He co-authored and collaborated on several books. He was the editor of Global Chicago and worked on a book about his family's history in the coal mines of Western Pennsylvania. He has three sons, Eamon, Brian and Conor. His wife, Linda, teaches special education.
In 2007 Madigan became the Presidential Writer in Residence at Roosevelt University in Chicago, teaching classes focused on journalism and politics in the university's Department of Communication. He appeared on C-SPAN in 2005 and 2010.