Ex-Chicago Trib biz editor joins Cook County Treasurer office

Mary Ellen Podmolik

Former Chicago Tribune business editor Mary Ellen Podmolik has been hired by the Office of Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas as director of communications.

Podmolik left the newspaper last month.

She has been with the paper since June 2008 and has been business editor since December 2015. Podmolik previously was the deputy business editor and a reporter covering the housing market. She also wrote a weekly column covering real estate.

She also has worked for the Chicago Sun-Times and Southtown Economist and was a contributor to Crain’s Chicago Business and cnbc.com.

“While writing on the housing crisis and the Great Recession for the Tribune, I saw up close the difficulties faced by many homeowners in Cook County,” Podmolik said in a statement. “The uneven recovery that followed, compounded by the pandemic, continues to put homeowners at risk. I look forward to contributing to the important work undertaken by the Treasurer and her team to address these inequities.”

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.