John Lavine is a professor of media management and strategy in the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications and in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.  He was dean of Medill from 2006 – 2012. After stepping down as dean Lavine returned to the helm of the Media Management Center, a research and executive education hub he founded in 1989. It advances the success of established and emerging media organizations and their leaders with ground-breaking research and executive education on the media’s most pressing challenges. Since Lavine returned, the Center has also pioneered MOOCs – massive, open, online, courses – for executives who want to learn about content strategy. For more than 25 years before Lavine came to Northwestern, he was publisher/editor of four daily and four weekly newspapers in Wisconsin. He also was an executive of an international film company in London and the United States that did most of its work for television, and he was president and publisher of an international medical journal publishing company.

Since 1999, he’s led major media industry research projects that explore many of the major challenges and opportunities that confront the media, such as how to better understand audiences and how to enhance the impact, value and usage of journalism, news and advertising. From 2000 to 2002, the Media Management Center’s Readership Institute (RI), which Lavine directed, completed the largest studies ever done on newspaper readership for the Newspaper Publishers Association and the American Society of Newspaper Editors. It shows which reader experiences motivate and which inhibit newspaper usage. In 2003-04 the Media Management Center studied the experiences of readers of U.S. consumer magazines for the Magazine Publishers Association. That work is being used by many magazines and magazine groups and is also part of the new metrics of leading advertising agencies. In 2005 the Center completed a national study for the Online Publishers Association which explored the experiences and usage of consumers on the major Web sites and portals.

On the global front, in 2004, Lavine founded the International Media Management Academic Association (IMMAA), the first such organization with membership in all major parts of the world. In 1985 he founded the Inter American Press Association’s study of Latin American daily newspapers, and each year since he’s directed that study as well as a media management seminar in Central or South America.

Before coming to Northwestern, Lavine was the John and Elizabeth Bates Cowles Professor of Media Management and Economics at the University of Minnesota. Prior to that, for more than 25 years he was publisher/editor of four daily and four weekly newspapers in Wisconsin. During those years, he also was an executive of an international film company in London and the United States that did most of its work for television and was president and publisher of an international medical journal publishing company.