Janet S. Key

Janet S. Key, who worked at the highest levels of journalism and education, both in the United States and abroad, died Thursday, May 4, in Chicago, after a long illness. The Cincinnati, Ohio, native was 76.

 

Ms. Key earned a bachelor’s degree in 1969 from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and a master’s degree in 1972, also from Medill. Her first job was in Chicago at the United Press International wire service, where she wrote copy for the wire service’s radio and television clients.  But sitting all day at a desk was not for Janet Key. In 1974, she resigned and began freelance writing, which took her to Lebanon, the greater Middle East and on to war-torn Belfast, Northern Ireland, all while carrying press credentials issued by The New York Times. In addition to the Times, she had articles published in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Tribune Magazine and the Chicago Daily News. Ms. Key loved the travel, the adventure, the derring-do of freelancing.

 

She returned to Chicago in 1976 as a reporter for Business Week magazine.  She covered stories throughout an eight-state Midwestern region. Two years later, the Chicago Tribune wooed her to join its business reporting team. Her traveling days weren’t over: the Tribune regularly had her on the road reporting, attending industry seminars and, in 1990, covering financial stories in Eastern Europe. While at the Tribune, she won the prestigious Peter J. Lisagor Award, presented by the Society of Professional Journalists, for a series of stories she had written about corporate takeovers.

 

In the mid 1990s, Ms. Key tried her hand as a communications consultant, helping major corporations, from Ameritech to McDonald’s to Sears, get their messages across to employees and shareholders alike. It was during this time that she also began teaching as an adjunct instructor at her alma mater, Medill. She taught journalism from the fall of 1996 until graduation in 2001. But it was during a brutally cold Chicago winter six months before that graduation that Ms. Key saw a job posted on a bulletin board at Medill for a full-time professorship in sunny, warm (hot) Egypt, at the American University in Cairo. She applied, got the job and in September of 2001 moved to Egypt. There, she supervised the student newspaper, was director of the undergraduate degree program, taught classes, and twice a year provided week-long professional training for the Union of African Journalists.

 

Seven years later, Professor Key was back at Northwestern/Medill, but this time not in Evanston. Not even in the United States. Northwestern University established a campus in Qatar in the fall of 2008, and Ms. Key was one of three original professors recruited to teach the undergraduate degree program that the Medill School of Journalism had exported to Qatar. (Northwestern began its School of Communication degree program in Qatar the same year.) Professor Key loved teaching in Qatar, where she was known and respected for her tough-love teaching style. She required students (almost all female) to exchange their high-heeled shoes for sneakers and find stories by talking to and interviewing strangers -- something they were culturally averse to doing. After writing the first few stories, many of those young women said they felt empowered as never before. Students often said they learned about journalism from all their professors, but they learned to “do” journalism from Professor Key.

 

Professor Key resigned from Northwestern in Qatar at the end of 2014, after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. She returned to the United States and spent her final years at Norwood Crossing, a senior living community in Northwest Chicago. She is survived by friends, students and caregivers who have loved her and appreciated her intelligence, dry wit and kindness. A memorial gathering will be on Friday, July 14, 2023 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. at McCormick Foundation Center 1870 Campus Dr, Evanston, IL 60208.