Robert K. Elder

In July 2018, Elder was featured on Billings Gazette. It recollects the moment that, "spurred a lifelong love of concert photography," and provoked Elder's journalism career.

In 2013, he was named the Lake County Editor for the Chicago Sun-Times. He went on to become editor-in-chief of Sun-Times Media Local, overseeing 36 of the company's suburban publications. The next year, he was named vice president of Digital Content, founding a guest editor program featuring people such as Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins, Presumed Innocent author Scott Turow, and astronaut Jim Lovell. Elder also started a podcast network at the Sun-Times, hosting "The Big Questions," one of four initial shows.

In June 2009, he founded the Web 2.0 company Odd Hours Media LLC, which launched the user-generated sites ItWasOverWhen.com and ItWasLoveWhen.com. Both sites attracted more than one million hits within a few months. Later that same year, Sourcebooks signed the sites to a two-book deal. The book It Was Over When: Tales of Romantic Dead Ends was available two years later.

In June 2006, Elder debunked the long-believed Chicago legend that Del Close had donated his skull for use as a stage prop to the Goodman Theatre. While Close had willed his skull to the theater to serve as Yorick in productions of Hamlet, the delivery of the skull never happened, due to medical and legal issues, and it was cremated along with the rest of Close's body.

Elder has published in The New York Times, Premiere, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Salon.com, The Chicago Tribune and The Oregonian, among other publications. In the late 1990s, Elder worked for several publications and changed his byline to "Robert K. Elder" after working with another Rob Elder at the San Jose Mercury News.

Robert K. Elder (born January 20, 1976) is an American journalist, author, and film columnist. He is currently the President and CEO of the Outrider Foundation. He has written more than a dozen books on topics ranging from the death penalty and movies to Ernest Hemingway and Elvis Presley.

Elder has worked for DNAinfo Chicago as its managing editor, Stop Smiling magazine as a contributing editor, Crain Communications as the director of Digital Production Development and Strategy, 1871 Chicago as a business mentor, Blockchain News as a publisher and president, the Garage Fellows program at Northwestern University's Startup Incubator, the Garage, on the board of advisors, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists as the Chief Digital Officer. As of May 2022, Elder is the president and CEO of the Outrider Foundation.