Zachary M. Newmark

Zachary Michael Newmark is the entrepreneur who founded Open Source Pictures.

Early Life
His first role in the entertainment industry was as the host of a radio show at WNTH, the FM-radio station at New Trier High School, when he was 14-years-old. Possibly influenced by his father, a former radio journalist, he stayed in the industry with work at University of Texas radio station KVRX, Touch and Go Records, Bloodshot Records, and Ebel Productions[http://www.abs.uva.nl/mba/object.cfm/objectidA7E367D5-E46E-44DF-828373C623AD401B/downloadtrue].

Career in Television & Film
Veteran news producer Val Press brought Newmark into the Chicago-owned station of NBC as an intern. Newmark's mentor passed away in September 2002.

While with WMAQ-TV, Newmark developed news stories from the Chicago newsroom in the NBC Tower. Notable stories he worked on include the September 11, 2001 attacks, the fall of Illinois Governor George Ryan, the Arthur Andersen – Enron accounting scandal, and many of the sexual abuse allegations against Chicago-area Catholic priests. Newmark received a nomination for a national Emmy Award in 2002, and received seven nominations for regional Emmy Awards during his career at WMAQ-TV. For his work as an Assignment Editor on duty when a construction accident at the John Hancock Center in downtown Chicago left three people dead and injured eight others, he won an Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in a Regularly Scheduled News Program (Spot News) in 2002.

In 2001, NBC5 also won an Edward R. Murrow Award for an investigative journalism piece and a news series, given out by the Radio-Television News Directors Association, both of which were produced in part by Newmark. In 2007, Sandeep Marwah, Director of the Asian Academy of Film & Television, presented Newmark with an honorary lifetime membership to the International Film and Television Club for lecturing students at the AAFT[http://aaft.com/newsevents/news/news25.htm#HOLLY].

Prior to working in television, Newmark co-produced and co-wrote Plano, Texas: A Cultural Study of Suburbia, a documentary released in 1999. The film, a semi-finalist in competition at the 1999 Cinematexas International Short Film + Video Festival Festival, was also selected for the 2000 Dallas Video Festival.

Personal Life
The 29-year-old will graduate with a Masters in Business Administration from the Amsterdam Business School at the Universiteit van Amsterdam in October 2007. Although he did the bulk of his undergraduate work at the University of Texas at Austin, Zack earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago in the field of Sociology.

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