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Tim Franklin Bio

Published: April 24, 2008
Last Updated: April 24, 2008

Tim Franklin was named editor and senior vice president of The Baltimore Sun, Maryland's largest news organization, in January 2004.

During Franklin's tenure, The Sun has won dozens of national and regional journalism awards, including two National Headliner Awards this year. The Sun earned more than 20 national journalism awards in 2007, including the prestigious Polk Award for medical reporting, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, the Loeb Award for business/economics reporting, the Society of Professional Journalists Award for Washington correspondence, Columbia University's Mike Berger Award for human interest reporting and seven awards of excellence from the Society of News Design. The Sun was a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in local reporting, and for the Associated Press Managing Editors Public Service Award. The Sun has been named the "Newspaper of the Year" three consecutive years by the Maryland/Delaware/D.C. Press Association. In 2005, Franklin led a comprehensive redesign of The Sun, which was honored, with the Award of Excellence by the Society of Newspaper Design.

Before joining The Sun, Franklin was the editor and vice president of the Orlando Sentinel for three years. During that time, the Sentinel won more than two dozen national journalism awards, including the Polk Award for environmental reporting, the Scripps Howard Distinguished Service to the First Amendment Award for its investigation into NASCAR racing safety, the National Journalism Award for literacy from the Scripps Howard Foundation, a national Society of Professional Journalist Award for non-deadline reporting, and a National Headliner Award for investigative reporting in collaboration with The Sun. In 2003, the Sentinel won the highest journalism honor from the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors for its coverage of the Columbia space shuttle tragedy.

Franklin's first top editor job was at his home state newspaper, The Indianapolis Star, a paper he led in 2000. In his year there, The Star won a national Polk Award for state reporting for an investigation into Indiana's "shockingly inadequate oversight" of its mentally ill patients. Franklin also led a redesign of the paper and a reorganization of its newsroom staff.

Previously, Franklin spent 17 years as a reporter and editor for the Chicago Tribune. His reporting assignments included Cook County government, Chicago City Hall and the Illinois Statehouse. He then rose through the editing ranks from assistant city editor to associate managing editor.

Franklin is active in First Amendment and freedom of information issues. In April, Franklin will become co-chairman of the American Society of Newspaper Editors' Freedom of Information Committee. He took the leading role in organizing the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors' first "Sunshine Sunday" public awareness campaign for open government in 2002. That effort was honored with the Society of Professional Journalists "Sunshine Award," and his efforts also were recognized by the First Amendment Foundation. That initial "Sunshine Sunday" effort in Florida has blossomed into a national public awareness campaign by ASNE.

Franklin was a Pulitzer Prize jurist in 2006 and 2007, and has judged several other national journalism contests. He also has lectured at the American Press Institute. Earlier this year, Franklin was named one of the most influential Marylanders by The Daily Record.

Franklin holds a bachelor's degree from Indiana University, where he majored in journalism and political science. In 1981, he won the Society of Professional Journalists' Barney Kilgore Award as the top college journalism student in the nation. In 2000, he endowed a journalism scholarship at his alma mater. He has been a member of the Board of Visitors of the University of Maryland School of Journalism since 2004.