Janeway, Michael, 1940-2014

Biography

Michael C. Janeway was born on in May 31, 1940, in New York City. He was the son of the novelist and social critic Elizabeth Janeway and the late Eliot Janeway, political economist and author.

Janeway received a bachelor's degree, magna cum laude, from Harvard University in 1962 and was awarded a Shaw Travelling Fellowship at Harvard in 1962-63.

His career in journalism started in 1963, when he began to write as a feature reporter for Newsday, Long Island, New York. and in 1964 as a reporter-writer for Newsweek. In 1965-66 he was associate editor of the political magazine The New Leader. In 1966 he began an 11-year association with The Atlantic Monthly, working as an associate editor, writing, editing, and soliciting manuscripts. In 1970 he became managing editor, with additional responsibilities for production, copy editing, design and graphics. In 1975 Janeway became executive editor, and in 1976 member of the board of directors of The Atlantic Monthly Co., Boston, Massachussetts.

From 1977 through 1978 Janeway worked in the Carter Administration as special assistant to former Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance. In 1978 he was named editor of The Boston Globe Magazine, became assistant managing editor of the Sunday edition in 1981 and managing editor for Sunday in 1982. He was editor of "War and Peace in the Nuclear Age," a special section of The Boston Globe. He was chair of the paper's strategic planning committee from 1983 through 1985 and was named editor of The Boston Globe in 1985, serving in that post during 1985-1986.

From 1986 through 1987 Janeway was a Fellow at the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and from 1986 to 1988 he was an associate of Harvard's Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History. In 1987 Janeway was named executive editor of the Trade and Reference Division of Houghton Mifflin Co. He was also a senior associate of the Joan Shorenstein Barone Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government from 1987 to 1989.

On September 1, 1989, Janeway accepted appointment as professor of Journalism and dean of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. In 1992 he became a member of the board of directors of the Chicago Educational Television Association (CETA), which owns and operates WTTW-TV (Channel 11) and WFMT-FM (98.7) in Chicago. He was a director of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and also a member of various committees at Northwestern University, including, among others, the committee on diversity and the board of directors of Northwestern University Press. In 1994 Janeway received the degree of Doctor of Letters, Honoris Causa, from North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. In 1996 he became a fellow at the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University in New York.

In 1997 Janeway left the deanship of the Medill School of Journalism to lead and administer the National Arts Journalism Program, a mid-career program designed to improve cultural and arts reporting, which had been headquartered at Northwestern University but moved to Columbia University in 1997/98. He retired to emeritus status in 2011. Michael Janeway died on April 17, 2014.

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