About Me

I’m originally from New Orleans, Louisiana, but call Baton Rouge home.

My first real experience with publishing and journalism was in Qingdao, China, where I managed The Corner Jazz Club and co-founded an English entertainment guide for the 2008 co-host Olympic city in 2002.

In 2005, I assumed the managing editor position of Ringier AG’s City Weekend, a 100,000-circulation bi-weekly English entertainment magazine and website for Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, China. My responsibilities there included editorial planning, production and management. I also worked closely with a great Web development company, Exoweb, to help build a unique content management system that published user, editor and database-generated material into City Weekend’s email, mobile and print products. During my seven years in China, I learned spoken Chinese.

After City Weekend, I earned my M.S. in Digital Media at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism in New York City. I spent a lot of time working with Final Cut and Flash, as well as learning more about the business of digital publishing. My classmate, Chris Kieffer, and I produced a documentary video and Web site,  www.hoopknight.com, that documented the 2009 season of the Mount Vernon Knights, a high school boy’s basketball team. The project was (briefly) featured on Sports Illustrated Web site, ESPN Web site and Slam magazine.

In June 2009, I moved to Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam to help build Ringier Vietnam as general manager. I inherited a weekly mass-market women’s magazine and a family cooking magazine. (See Publishing Projects.) My priorities are to introduce new international titles to Vietnam and launch several digitally-oriented brands i.e. new special interest Web sites and blogs (all in Vietnamese) (No, I don’t speak Vietnamese… Yet.).

I thrive on good hoppy beer and bourbon whiskey; clear my head with a run, eat all things spicy, love Louisiana seafood, play “swamp bocce” whenever I get a chance, enjoy mountain biking, kite surfing and the occasional Frisbee toss. I try to wear vintage Casio calculator watches and generally describe myself as a closet geek.

Contact me

ctcrowell[at]gmail[dot]com