Youngblood, longtime Star Tribune biz columnist, dies at 85

Dick Youngblood

Dick Youngblood, a longtime business columnist and editor for the Minneapolis Star Tribune who wrote up to three columns weekly from 1983 until his retirement in 1998, died last month at the age of 85.

Neal St. Anthony of the Star Tribune writes, “In the 1970s, Youngblood pioneered an annual special section about executive compensation. Dave Beal, retired business editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, recalled that some executives were unhappy with that.

“Youngblood admired candid executives. In 1998, in his last column as an employee, Youngblood reminisced about some of his favorites, including a deceased securities industry CEO.

“‘And there’s the stunning combination of wit and courage with which the late Tom Dale, then CEO of [the former] Dain Bosworth, confronted the death sentence attached to the diagnosis of liver and pancreatic cancer he’d just been handed,’ Youngblood wrote. ‘The good news, he told a friend, is that I’m not a hypochondriac.'”

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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.