Interviewees

Born in 1947, Owen Ullmann grew up in Spotswood, New Jersey. In the interview, he recounts his father's experiences during the McCarthy era being subpoenaed to testify before several U.S. Senate committees. He also discusses his parents' involvement in the civil rights movement. He went through public schools in Spotswood and South River. From 1965 to 1969, he attended Rutgers College, where he immediately joined the staff of The Targum as a reporter and eventually became the editor. He recalls the Eugene Genovese controversy, volunteering for Eugene McCarthy's campaign in 1968, being in the fraternity Gamma Sigma, memorable professors, including Ross Baker, Gerald Pomper, Gordon Schochet, Warren Susman and Lloyd Gardner, the anti-war movement on and off campus, his involvement in the dissolution of Cap and Skull, and traveling in Europe. After graduating in 1969, he briefly attended law school, worked as a reporter for the Elizabeth, New Jersey Daily Journal, and then went to graduate school in journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Ullmann enjoyed a fifty-year career in journalism as a reporter and editor. From 1973 to 1983, he worked at Associated Press, first as an automotive writer in Detroit and later as a labor writer and chief economics correspondent in Washington. From 1983 to 1993, he worked in the Washington Bureau of Knight-Ridder Newspapers, covering economics, the White House and the State Department. He served as the senior news editor of the Washington Bureau of BusinessWeek magazine for six years. For twenty years, he worked at USA Today in various senior management and editing positions. He is the author of Stockman: The Man, the Myth, the Future and a biography on Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, due to be published in 2022.