Meet the Speaker: Don Wycliff ’69

Don Wycliff ’69 spent 35 years in the newspaper industry as a reporter, editor, editorial writer and opinion columnist. His career included stints of five years as a member of the editorial board of The New York Times, nine years as editorial page editor of the Chicago Tribune and six years as the Tribune’s public editor, or ombudsman. In that last position he wrote a widely read weekly column on issues in journalism.

During his tenure as the Tribune’s editorial page editor, the paper won one Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing and was a finalist for a second. The paper also won two Distinguished Writing Awards in editorial writing from the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE). Wycliff personally was a Pulitzer finalist in 1996 and the winner of the ASNE editorial writing award in 1997.

Wycliff finished his working life as the distinguished journalist in residence at the School of Communication at Loyola University Chicago. He retired from Loyola in June 2014.

He is a 1969 graduate of the University of Notre Dame. After his retirement, he co-edited  a book of essays, Black Domers: African-American Students at Notre Dame in Their Own Words. It originally was published in June 2014 and was reissued in a new edition in September 2017.

He is the father of two grown sons. He now lives in South Bend, Indiana, with his wife, Pamela.