Posted by thelowedown on July 29, 2009 at 18:57:43:
Charlie Meyerson is leaving the Chicago Tribune to become WGN-AM 720's news director, a move that will take him from the fourth floor of Tribune Tower to the ground floor and back to radio, where he made his debut as a Chicago newsman 30 years ago this month.
His return to broadcasting, announced Wednesday and effective Aug. 6, comes nearly 11 years after Meyerson left the business to help the Tribune develop its then-nascent digital presence and strategy.
Meyerson has contributed to the Tribune's breaking news coverage on the Web as chicagotribune.com senior producer and columnist of Daywatch, an weekday e-mail he launched, all the while making frequent appearances on WGN, which, like the newspaper, is owned by Tribune Co.
“This has been a quest for a rare individual who can lead our accomplished news professionals forward in gathering and delivering news through traditional, emerging, and as-yet-undeveloped technologies,” Kevin Metheny, WGN-AM's program director, said in a statement. “Charlie can’t help himself from telling fascinating stories by whatever means possible and we simply couldn’t find a more perfect person to guide our mission to better leverage co-owned news gathering assets.”
Meyerson replaces Wes Bleed, who exited the station in April after more than 25 years .
"I joined chicagotribune.com almost 11 years ago to help create some of the excitement, urgency and fun of radio news," Meyerson said in the announcement. "It's a thrill now to have the chance to bring what I've learned on the Internet back to radio."
Although he is moving to WGN-AM, Meyerson indicated he expected the station to beef up its presence in the Tribune newsroom upstairs, better leveraging the newspaper's brand and resources.
Meyerson arrived at Chicago's WXRT-FM 93.1 in 1978 after a stint as news director Aurora's old WMRO-AM and WAUR-FM. A decade later, he left 'XRT to become news and public affairs director at WNUA-FM 95.5 until moving to the Tribune in 1998. He also has taught news writing at Chicago's Columbia College and served as a columnist for Oak Park's Wednesday Journal.
1465_8 Over the course of his career, Meyerson has earned numerous journalism honors, including a 1989 national United Press International award for investigative reporting and a Chicago Headline Club Lisagor Award for best news Web site in 2008.
Meyerson has undergraduate and graduate degrees in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which last year inducted him into the Illini Media Alumni Hall of Fame.
He also has the distinction of having been blown up in 1991's issue No. 8 of DC Comics' "Hawkworld." The body was never found.