Douglas Burns, vice president for news, is a writer and columnist for the Carroll Times Herald. Burns also is a co-owner of Herald Publishing Co., which has been in his family for three generations. The family newspaper operation also owns the Jefferson Herald.
Additionally, Burns writes monthly for Political Mercury, for CITYVIEW, a Des Moines weekly newspaper.
Burns has worked as a reporter for the Ames Tribune in Iowa, Palm Beach Post in Florida and Inside Washington Publishers in Washington, D.C. He also served as the communications director for Congresswoman Pat Danner of Missouri, working from her Washington, D.C. office.
Burns is a Cedar Rapids native who was adopted as a baby and grew up in Carroll and graduated from Carroll High School in 1987 before moving on to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where he majored in journalism and graduated in 1991.
Burns has been back in the family business since 1997.
Running a local newspaper is challenging any time, perhaps never more so than in a pandemic when local advertisers shut their doors and shopping moves online.
This year, Burns and a collaborative group of western Iowa journalists launched the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation as a way to support local enterprise journalism through a nonprofit organization.
Follow him on Twitter @douglaswburns, and contact him at d.burns@carrollspaper.com or 712-792-3573.
Art Cullen column on Burns’ role in the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation.
Douglas Burns…..5 I would give him a 9. Incredibly sharp and had an unfathomable expression, top-of-the-line Journalist expression. You don’t know if he is going to yell at you next or if you are on the right track or what. We all felt elevated at his table in a way I’d never experienced. Exceptional combination of “Old School” cool and “21st century savvy and so canny.”
Okoboji Writers’ Retreat Participant