J. Bruce Baumann retired in 2007 as the editor of the Evansville Courier & Press, after serving six years as that newspaper’s managing editor and a year and half as the executive editor. The Courier is a 68,000 daily, 92,000 Sunday circulation newspaper in Southern Indiana.

Prior to Evansville, Baumann worked in Monterey, California, where he was the managing editor of the Monterey County Herald. He was also editor of Scripps Howard Publishing, Inc., a book and special publications company owned and operated by E. W. Scripps. Baumann was responsible for developing, editing and publishing 15 regional coffee-table books for both Scripps Howard and non-Scripps Howard newspapers.

For more than 46 years, Baumann has worked for newspapers and magazines as a designer, photographer, reporter, picture editor, director of photography, lifestyles editor, Sunday Magazine editor, and assistant managing editor. For five years, he was a picture editor, designer and photographer at National Geographic Magazine. In addition, Baumann was a visiting professor of journalism at Syracuse University for four years, and founder and director of the interdisciplinary Pittsburgh Conference for eight years.

Baumann's work for newspapers in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa and California has earned him more than 500 awards, including 22 awards in the University of Missouri/ National Press Photographers Association competition for editing and photography. He was a POYi Picture Editor of the Year four times. In 1992 he received the prestigious Joseph A. Sprague Award for Photojournalism. In 2005 the National Press Photographers Association named him Editor of the Year.

The Evansville Courier & Press won the best use of pictures eight out of the last nine years in the Indiana News Photographers Association annual competition. In 2006, the Courier & Press won Best Use of Pictures for newspapers under 100,000 circulation in Pictures of the Year international (POYi) competition. And was twice named Indiana’s Blue Ribbon Daily Newspaper, designating it the best daily in the state.

Bruce started his career in 1960 as an intern in the sports department of the old Evansville Courier, while still finishing his senior year at the old Central High School.

He concluded almost 47 years in publishing as the editor of the Courier & Press.

Since his retirement, Bruce has picked up his cameras again, this time working on a personal photographic documentary on Posey County — a National Geographic styled assignment — entitled the Posey Project.

In January 2008, Baumann started a new chapter in his life as the Picture Editor-in-Residence at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. He is a professor in the journalism department, teaching advanced photojournalism, and picture editing/newsroom management.