Charlie Meyerson interviews

How the worst day of my young adult life … turned out great

Meyerson@gmail.com (Charlie Meyerson) — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 16:20:00 -0600

Every fall, the Farther Foundation—a nonprofit devoted to providing global travel opportunities for students from families and communities that have faced chronic disinvestment and sustained inequity—hosts a Story Slam at the historic FitzGerald’s Night Club in Berwyn. I was honored to be invited to take the stage in 2023 but—as you’re about to learn—couldn’t make it.

The foundation nevertheless invited me back the next year. And—given its belief in the life-changing power of travel—well, I couldn’t resist sharing the story of how one particular seemingly ill-fated trip changed my life absolutely for the better. Here’s how it sounded, Oct. 10, 2024.

If you enjoyed this story—or even if you didn’t—consider making a tax-deductible contribution at fartherfoundation.org/donate.

If you’re not in a place where you can listen, here’s a transcript.

[Cheering and applause.] I am unworthy of those woos, but thank you very much.

You know, one of the Farther Foundation’s overarching themes is learning from travel experiences. Interesting fact: I prepared what you’re about to hear in 2023, when it turns out I was not allowed any travel experiences—because I came down with COVID just before last year’s big Farther Foundation fundraiser.

For you, the good news is that I’ve had a year to practice this. (Not that I have.)

So …

Driving a car is a kind of travel, right?

I have to confess: I’m not a great driver. I’m a lot better than I used to be, but I’m probably still not great. Let me give you an example that’s become a running joke in my family:

I’m driving to the airport, more often than not to drop off or pick up a relative approaching the airport. The signs say Arrivals and Departures. So. I’m arriving at the airport to drop off a son who is departing for another city. Which way do I go?

Or: I’m arriving at the airport to pick up someone, and then we’ll depart from my home in Oak Park. Which way do I go?

More than once, I confess, I have made the wrong choice over the years. I’ve mostly managed to keep this cognitive dissonance at bay by focusing on the icons: Airplane pointed up? Someone leaving Chicago. Airplane pointed down? Someone coming home with me.

But I’m still easy to fool.

My son, Joel, not long ago—as I wrote this last year—screwed around with me as I took him to a flight out of town. “We’re arriving at the airport,” he said helpfully, “so go to arrivals.” And he said it with such straight-faced authority—I’ve come to trust my sons on driving counsel—that I started to head down until he laughed nervously, just before I made the wrong turn: “No, no, no. I’m departing. Go up! Go up!”

In the fullness of time, the reasons for my motorist shortcomings may become clearer. But—right now, at this point in my life—I have a few theories:

Maybe because my mom died when I was 14 and my dad, his hands full with me and my two younger sisters, kinda left me to figure out the whole driving thing on my own with some help from my friends.

Or maybe it’s because as a high school kid in band, I recognized that I had to sacrifice one of my academic elective slots to band rehearsals. So, after my freshman year, I exploited a loophole in the rules to push to the shorter six-week summer sessions the classes I didn’t really care about. You know, P.E, health and, uh, yeah, driver education.

So I didn’t really get that much driver education. And then I flunked my driver’s license test—twice. For, you know, little things like turning right when the examiner said to turn left. I passed on the third try only because the examiner took pity on me: “Ya failed twice? Ah, man. No one should fail twice. Ge’ me back alive and I’ll give ya yer license.”

So, besides all that, I was an early embracer of the environmental movement, and I didn’t buy into the whole car culture thing. I liked bicycling a lot better.

In the summer of 1976, I biked 120 miles back to our home in Orland Park from the University of Illinois, where I had worked at the student radio station, WPGU—where a friend fatefully there would later recommend me for my first job out of college, as news director at an AM/FM combination in Aurora.

And so it was that in July 1978, I was driving back home to Orland Park from Aurora in my Volkswagen Rabbit—with a manual transmission, because back then they were more fuel efficient, if a little more attention intensive. I’d worked a long day—got in around 5 in the morning and I was leaving that day around 4:30 in the afternoon—and I was headed home along 75th Street through Naperville, just east of Fox Valley Mall, if you know where that is. Probably was fiddling with the radio because, you know, I worked in radio—when the car ahead of the car ahead of me stopped. And the car ahead of me stopped. And I stopped—but not quite soon enough.

My little Rabbit crashed into the big Buick LeSabre that was ahead of me.

The LeSabre suffered, maybe, like, a cracked taillight. The Volkswagen Rabbit crumpled up like an accordion.

Fortunately, no one was hurt. The young woman in the car ahead of me got out and—as I recall—said, not as I might have said, “What the hell? Weren’t you paying attention?” but “Oh, your poor car!”

Well, the Rabbit was functional enough to ease to the side of the road as we awaited the arrival of a police officer, who sat us in the back of his cruiser, allowing us to exchange insurance information and phone numbers—and who chose, to my good fortune, not to issue a ticket.

But it was clear nevertheless that, as the motorist whose car had rear-ended another, it was my fault and my insurance company and I would pay.

So the Rabbit limped home to Orland Park on what seemed like the worst day of my young adult life. The repairs weren’t gonna be cheap and the deductible wasn’t trivial for a recent college graduate.

But I thought to myself: “Hmm. She seemed nice.”

The next week mercifully was a vacation week for me. Unfortunately, the state of the Rabbit meant I wouldn’t be able to make a date I’d planned with a former girlfriend whom I’d hoped to reconnect with, and so that was off. But I thought to myself again about the other driver in my accident on what had seemed like the worst day of my young adult life: “Hmm. She seemed nice.”

So I called her to make sure that the insurance company was taking care of the damage, and—of course, it was just a polite thing to do—to offer to take her to lunch.

And once I was back at work with a functioning car, she accepted and we had a lovely lunch. And that was that, I thought. My duty was discharged. I’d made amends for my lousy driving on what had seemed like the worst day of my young adult life, and that was that. Also, she was four years younger than I was, so that was that.

But then she called me at work just to say hi. Because the radio station I worked at was playing at the mall clothing store where she worked—Best & Co.—and she wanted to know if I could get a song played: The Moody Blues, as I recall.

Well, as the news guy, I didn’t control the music and the Moody Blues were not in the main rotation at the station, but she seemed nice. So I walked down the hall and I begged the DJ to break format and play a Moody Blues song, and he did.

And that was that.

Then she called another time or two, for another song or two, and one day she called to say she was considering transferring to the University of Illinois and would I be willing to talk to her about the U. of I., and I said, thinking that she seemed nicer all the time, that I’d be happy to—in fact, I happened to have two press tickets to the Second City performance at Aurora’s Paramount Art Center that weekend so maybe we could go to dinner and a show and talk about the U. of I. along the way.

And she said yes.

I don’t remember talking much about the U. of I. that night, but whatever I said or did, she later told me, prompted her to tell a friend late that evening that … um …she was in love.

And it turns out she decided to attend DePaul University instead of the U. of I. And, to make a long and somewhat winding story short and a little straighter, almost five years after what seemed like the worst day of my young adult life, we got married.

And three sons, three grandsons and a granddaughter later—now, just a bit past our 46th crashiversary, as we call it—we remain happily married.

And she still seems nice.

And with some embarrassment but much joy, I would have to concede that none of it would’ve happened …

… if I had been a better driver.

‘ I’ve really only had one idea through my whole career.’

Meyerson@gmail.com (Charlie Meyerson) — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 20:50:00 -0600

The existence of my daily email newsletter, Chicago Public Square, became public Jan. 27, 2017, during a visit to my alma mater, WGN Radio.

So it seems appropriate, eight years later to the day, to share audio from another interview on WGN—earlier this month, at 10 p.m., Jan. 4, 2025—joining two people I’ve known for (wow) close to half a century: Steve King and Johnnie Putman. Johnnie and I met at my first job out of college, news director at WMRO-AM and WAUR-FM in Aurora—where I designed this T-shirt:

(2017 photo)

It was a privilege to take Johnnie and Steve’s questions about Square, my journalism career and the state of the news biz. You can hear how it went here.

If you’d like to hear their full show from that night, with other guests to follow, you’ll find that on WGN’s website here.

Or if you’re the readin’ type, here’s a rough—and roughly edited—transcript:

Johnnie Putman: We have a full show tonight.

Steve King: We do. And we are going to reconnect with a long-time friend that many of you know from this radio station and other radio stations around the Chicago area. Charlie Meyerson is gonna be joining us.

Putman: Yep.

King: Charlie is now the publisher of a wonderful news site, Chicago Public Square.
Ron Brown: Isn’t that great?

Putman: It is.

King: It is one of the go-to news sites that we have every day.

Putman: Wasn’t it just recognized as being the best blog?

King: I think, yeah. Didn’t they get the Reader’s award for the best blog?

Brown: If not once, several times. But at least once. And deservedly so. There’s nothing that really compares. There’s nothing as good. I’ve seen others. And they really pale in comparison.

Putman: Yep.

Brown: Yeah.

Putman: He puts a lot of effort into making that a first-class site where you can go and just get all the news you need to start your day.

Brown: Maybe you can get ’im to talk a little bit about that.

Putman: Ya think?

Brown: Maybe be a good idea.

King: We’ll see if we can twist his arm.

Putman: 1977 is when we started together. Dean Richards, Charlie Meyerson and yours truly at WMRO and WAUR in Aurora.

Brown: Oh, is that right? I didn’t know that.

Putman: It was a wonderful radio station, too, ’cause it was like the WGN of the Fox Valley.

King: It really was.

Putman: Don’t laugh at that, ’cause Aurora was a big town.

King: That was back in the day when the suburban radio stations, they played for their own audience. Like, at WJOB in Hammond—same thing. On the outskirts of Chicago—but still: Full-service radio station for their own audience, which is what WAUR was doing.

Putman: WMRO in particular, ’cause we were talk and sports and we had a great sports department and carried all the NIU Huskies sports because we were a stone’s throw from DeKalb. It was a perfect fit. One of the funnest things that I ever did when I worked out there—there were competing Aurora teams and it was such a big competition. They had me out there with the wives of the coaches from the Aurora teams. I was like, OK, is this gonna be like a wrestling match? What’s gonna happen? I did not realize just how intense the rivalry was, and I think it’s probably still that way. But it was great because they had a radio station where you could listen to those games and it was a great service. And it was also pretty fun to be a big fish in a small pond.

King: Sure. We gotta take a quick break and then we’ve got a whole lot coming up. So stay with us at WGN.

Musical interlude: Bill Haley and His Comets, “The Paper Boy.”
King: Steve King and Johnnie Putman at WGN Radio. Tell me just what. Do you read? We read Chicago Public Square, and we’re gonna talk about that and a whole lot more with a man that you know from the days when he was working at this here radio station, but Johnnie started her career with him. So I’m gonna turn it over to you.

Putman: Yes, he is Charlie Meyerson. How are you tonight, Charlie?

Meyerson: I’m fine and I’m delighted to be with you. And I’m gonna, I’m gonna steal a little bit of your thunder, Johnnie, because I wanna recap all the ways that that we have intersected over the years. Are you ready?

Putman: I think yes.

Meyerson: I listened to Steve on WLS during my formative years. I’m still in my formative years …

King: Don’t blame me for this.

Meyerson: … my earlier formative years. I started my first job out of college alongside Johnnie at WMRO-AM and WAUR-FM in Aurora in 1977. I attended your wedding—a wonderful event in 1984—where Steve did a killer version of “Johnny B. Goode.” Am I correct?

King: Yes, I did. I did.

Meyerson: … which I’m just now thinking about. “Johnny B. Goode”: What a great selection for a song that was, when you’re marrying someone named Johnnie. And I found myself working the swing shift at the Chicago Tribune in 2008 and I was honored to join you guys nightly, it seems, for a regular segment “From the Update Desk of the Chicago Tribune.” And then, when I joined WGN News as news director, we won awards together, as you led coverage of a big fire overnight.

King: Yeah, it was right down on Michigan Avenue. And, oh, and our producer was Margaret Larkin at that point.

Putman: Wow. I’m still reeling at all these times that our paths have crossed. You didn’t even mention that I attended your wedding, which was one of the great stories of all time because when we were working together out in Aurora and you came in and talked about being in a car accident and the fact that you had collided with this lovely young woman who you ultimately married. So there on the top of your wedding cake were the cars colliding.

Meyerson: Two little Matchbox cars, yes, that proved—I tried with a hammer to bang them up, so they kind of resembled what happened in the accident, but let me tell you, I speak from experience—Matchbox cars are almost indestructible.

Putman: Unless you step on them, and then you break your foot.

Meyerson: No, even then. I tried to hammer them. A couple of paint flecks came off. But yeah, it was close enough. So yeah, you were there at the very beginning of my wonderful marriage to my wonderful wife, Pam.

Putman: And who was at fault in that car accident? I don’t recall that.

Meyerson: It’s not important. There were no tickets issued.

Putman: That’s right. And you just got her number. That was the important thing, right?

Meyerson: If she were here, she’d interject, “His insurance company paid.”

Putman: Ah-huh. We should tell folks that—they certainly recognize your name. You’ve been at a few radio stations here in Chicago, and we are so fortunate because—born and raised in this area, you’ve always worked here. You never left, right, Charlie?

Meyerson: I have to correct you there. I was not born here. I was actually born in Detroit. But, at 13, moved to Orland Park—unincorporated Palos Township, but so you know, almost—

Putman: But your entire journalism career has been at radio stations in Chicago, as well as the Chicago Tribune, and that’s pretty, pretty impressive for 40-plus years, Charlie.

King: I don’t know that I’ve ever asked you this, Charlie, but what gave you your passion? Because you have a passion for good journalism. What ignited that in you?

Meyerson: First of all, thank you for asking. I have to credit my parents, who both were at various points in their careers newspaper people. My dad was a newspaper editor in the Detroit area. The reason that we moved to Illinois when I was 13 in 1968 was that my dad, who had been teaching journalism at a suburban community college outside Detroit, got the same job at Moraine Valley Community College in Palos Hills. So— he was a journalism teacher and taught me much of what I know and what I’ve taught and what I’ve tried to apply about concise writing and good journalism. My mom was a community journalist and would write, both in Michigan and here in the suburbs of Chicago, community news roundups for, among others, the Palos Regional newspaper back in the day. But also, you guys know, I’m a comics fan.

Putman: Yes.

King: Are you?

Meyerson: And Steve—

King: That’s one of the many things we bonded on.

Meyerson: Absolutely. Who are some of the most prominent journalists in comics? Clark Kent and Peter Parker.

King: Yeah, there you go.

Meyerson: And, Peter Parker—Spider-Man as a teenager—was working for this big newspaper in New York. And it gave me the idea in high school that maybe I could do some journalism in high school—in addition to working for the student newspaper. When a reporter for then the Star/Tribune newspaper, Barb Hipsman—who went on to teach journalism in Ohio [at Kent State University]—was interviewing high school students about what we thought about the war in Vietnam, I said, “Hey, do you need a stringer? Do you need any volunteer journalists?” And, lo and behold, they started sending me to cover some school board meetings and park district meetings. And so, in high school, I was, like Peter Parker, kinda pretending that I was a journalist.

Putman: Were you a nerdy high schooler?

Meyerson: Johnnie, I think you’ve known me long enough to know the answer to that. That’s a loaded question. And yes, I think my wife and my kids and my sisters—yeah, and anyone else who’s known me all these years—would tell you, “Yeah, he is still pretty nerdy. The nerd is strong in this one.”

Putman: I still have to say, though, it’s very impressive that you never had to leave town to get the job of your dreams, ’cause you’ve had some awesome positions. How many years were you with WXRT?

Meyerson: 10 years. 1979 to 1989. Yeah, and when I talk to young people who are considering journalism as a career—and, sadly, there aren’t as many of them as there used to be—I tell them that, assuming they have the luxury of a little bit of time, they should look for a job first in the place where they want to live. And to follow their hearts. And, for me, that was really staying close to family and friends. You probably both got this same advice when you were coming up: You wanna make it in Chicago? You’re gonna have to go to Podunk, Iowa, and pay your dues. And I could have done that, but I also had friends—contemporaries at the time—who did that and never found their way back to Chicago.

So I decided early on I was gonna look for something here—was lucky enough, really, to find that great job in Aurora which was—for Johnnie, for you and me both, as well as many others—including our good friend, Dean Richards; we all started there in Aurora. And it was, far enough away from Chicago that, for instance, in my case, I could phone in news stories from Aurora for WIND Radio in Chicago back when WIND was a good radio station, as you’ll recall—

Putman: Yes.

King: Sing it!

Meyerson: —and, get my voice on Chicago radio, which helped build up the resume. And when I knocked on the door at ’XRT, I could say, oh, “I’ve done some work for WIND in Chicago.” In high school, since we’re going way back, I did do one phone-in report for, I believe it was then WDAI-FM—an Earth Day report or something like that: “Here at Carl Sandburg High School, kids are sending balloons into the air to mark Earth Day,” and so I think that was my Chicago radio debut when I was back in high school.

Putman: You mentioned that, sadly, there’re not that many that you come across that are going into the field of journalism. It breaks my heart that Columbia College has dropped their Radio Department. I’m like, what? Why? Wouldn’t you just hang on?

Meyerson: One of the things is—I have to step back and say, I taught radio news at Columbia College for four years in the ’80s, and it made me a better journalist to be telling kids, “Don’t do this, and here’s why.” So I owe a tremendous debt to Columbia College and have had a good relationship with the college through the years, even when I’m not getting paid for it. But I think it was a little antiquated to have, at this point, separate tracks for radio journalism and television journalism and print journalism. Because, as the web taught us at the Tribune and elsewhere, it’s all one. Radio stations have websites, radio stations need people who can spell, TV stations need people who can write, radio stations need people who can write and create video. So, to have individual tracks I think was, at this point, shortsighted.

Putman: Understood.

King: The Blatant Plug Light has started flashing—

Meyerson: Oh, good.

King: —so we wanna talk about, for people who have not checked out Chicago Public Square, Charlie, it’s all yours: Chicago Public Square—who, what, when, where, how do you access it? What do you do?

Meyerson: All right, a shortcut if people want to jump on that right now—and I’ll be able to actually watch my email inbox to see if anyone actually responds to this: If you go to, right now, to sub as in subscriptions, sub.ChicagoPublicSquare.com, you can sign up, type your email address in, and every weekday at 10 o’clock—almost every weekday; I take some days off for the holidays, for instance—you’ll get my take on news that is relevant to and important for the Chicago area. It began back in 2017 with the rise of the first Donald Trump administration. I had some time on my hands and a compulsion to get into the day-to-day news business again. And, to my surprise, it’s grown over the last almost eight years now. People seem to value it. So I’ll say that one more time and then you guys can take it back: sub.ChicagoPublicSquare.com, And it’s free—it’s always free—and I’m happy to have everyone jump in and join the fun.

King: And I don’t know if you heard our conversation with Ron Brown earlier. Ron is manning the news desk tonight, and Ron was saying—and Ron, feel free to jump in—that Chicago Public Square is one of your go-to sources too, right?

Brown: Oh, I’ve been reading it every day for several years—seven of the eight years. Maybe all eight years, Charlie.

Meyerson: I’ve been honored to be on the same team with Ron at Rivet, which is this startup that we began in 2013 to sort of reinvent radio news for the smartphone era—a great idea, wonderful talent, including, of course, Ron, which is how I came to know Ron. Rivet’s more in the podcast production business now. But Ron is a wonderfully talented news guy. And Ron, it’s great to be on the air with you again.

Brown: Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. But let’s talk about the newsletter. It’s just so good. There’s nothing out there that equals it, that rivals it—and seriously, everybody should have this.

Putman: And we should explain—because I did the shoutouts for the people who are listening to us around the country: When we talk about this being a compilation of news that you can use to start your day, it’s not just what’s happening in Chicago, right, Charlie? This is your approach to “This is valuable stuff that you might miss. So I’m gonna put it all together for you so you, you’ve got it there at your fingertips.”

Meyerson: Johnnie, I’ve really only had one idea through my whole career, which is: Newscasting. And what do radio newscasters do? What does Ron do every hour? What do all the WGN News anchors do? We traditionally have looked at the morning newspapers—in the days before the internet—to see what’s in there. We look at the wire services. As the internet has come along, we look at email alerts that we get from various news sources. We look at our Twitter, or maybe now—certainly for me—Bluesky accounts to see what smart people that we follow are sharing, and then we boil it down to, a 3-, 4-, 5-minute newscast, maybe a 10-minute newscast. “Here’s what you should know.” And it’s generally with attribution: “The Tribune is reporting this, the Sun-Times is reporting this, The Associated Press is saying this, The New York Times says this, The Washington Post says this.” I’ve billed Chicago Public Square as “Chicago’s new front page.” And anyone who’s looked at the front page of a traditional newspaper or the front page of a news website like the Chicago Tribune—which, for many years I would get in first thing in the morning and decide what stories were gonna be on the front page of chicagotribune.com—knows that, yes, there are a lot of stories about things that happen in Chicago. But there are also—especially over the last eight years—a lot of stories that happen elsewhere that affect what happens in Chicago.

A few things have happened in the last few months—trends have emerged in the feedback I get from readers of Chicago Public Square. One is, “Hey, why are you writing so much about Washington and, the presidential election?” Or, more recently, the incoming Donald Trump administration. And “Why aren’t you writing more about Chicago?”

And my answer has been: “Yes, there’s lots that happening that’s happening in Chicago, but, frankly, what’s happening in Washington is, in my opinion, going to have a lot more impact on Chicago and how Chicagoans and how people in Illinois live their lives than many of the stories that are geographically located here.”

So the idea behind a front page is, yeah, there’s local news on the front page of the newspaper. There’s also national news and world news. What affects Chicago and Chicago readers is, as I preached when I was news director at WGN, not just stuff that happens in Chicago, but also stuff that happens anywhere but that resonates with people who are listening or reading or watching here in Chicago.

Putman: Chicago Public Square, your approach is as an independent source for news, correct?

Meyerson: One of the nice things about what I’ve discovered in running Chicago Public Square is that it is— Well, there’re pros and cons. First of all, I miss editors. Having an editor, a second voice or a second pair of eyes, look at your work and say, “Hey, you gotta typo here, Hey, you misspelled this. Hey, you got these facts wrong”—that’s not something to be dismissed lightly. Fortunately, I’m blessed with many engaged readers who are not shy about saying, “Hey, you got this wrong,” and then I send out a correction. But as we watch what happens with national corporate-owned media where the people in charge are concerned, seemingly, about their businesses under an incoming Trump administration, we see instances where independent-minded journalists and independent journalism is not being given quite the free reign that that we’d like it to get. And there’s a story today in the news that we can talk about if you want.

King: And there’s a whole lot of things we gotta get to. So we’ll come back and talk more with Charlie Meyerson. And, again, it’s sub.ChicagoPublicSquare.com or just go to ChicagoPublicSquare.com. And you can scroll around and you’ll find everything you need …

Putman: … and subscribe and follow that way.

Musical interlude: Hedgehoppers Anonymous, “It’s Good News Week.”
King: Steve King and Johnnie Putman at WGN Radio. It may or may not be Good News Week, but we’re talking about a terrific news site, ChicagoPublicSquare.com. We’re talking with Charlie Meyerson. And Charlie, I wanna address one thing that has impressed me from Day One with Chicago Public Square. Separate from the fact that we’ve known you as a colleague for years and we respect your work, one of the many things I appreciate about the way you approach Chicago Public Square: Unlike news sites—and I’ll name it like Fox News, and their slogan for years has been “Fair and Balanced”; they have never been fair and balanced from Day One—if there is a story on Chicago Public Square, and if you have a particular take on that story leaning one way or another, you say it. You don’t hesitate to say, “This is where I’m coming from about this particular story.” And I really appreciate that.

Meyerson: One of the style choices that I’ve made at Chicago Public Square is when I write “Fox News,” I go back and strike out the word news. There’s a little crosshatch through the word news when I refer to it.

I’m gonna go back to my college days when, influenced by professors, I rejected the notion of objectivity, which has become a corporate mandate over the years, and really is just something that manifested itself during what some have called The Age of Mass Media—roughly 1955 and the rise of television to 1995 and the rise of the internet. During those years, the mission of the news business, unlike before and after, was to amass the largest possible audience. And to do that, you try not to piss anybody off. But who were some of the most influential journalists in that Age of Mass Media? Here in Chicago: Mike Royko—again a big influence for me. And Mike Royko didn’t make any secrets about where he was coming from—who was a liar, who was a truth teller, whom you could trust, whom you couldn’t. And it’s become my mindset when I’ve been able to apply it over the years to not hide opinions that are based in fact. And that when someone has a reputation of being a liar, or someone has a reputation of being inaccurate, that person is identified as such when that person is in the news.

King: And don’t you agree that, sadly, too many people in positions of control of the news media don’t understand that the average person … can take a news report from someone who has a bias—if they’re open about that bias? Just don’t say, “I’m giving you everything fair and balanced.” No, you’re not. You’re hiding your particular bent inside the story.

Meyerson: Yeah, the tradition, just coming back to, for instance, Chicago City Hall—something that I covered for many years. Over the course of covering the City Council, for instance, you get to know over time which aldermen are full of crap, and which aren’t. And to report what one of those City Council members says without putting it in context—without mentioning this City Council member who has a reputation for being inaccurate, or who previously told us this, and after that we learned this. Just quoting the alderman without that context is to do a disservice to the audience and not provide context for, “Here’s the quote.”

With Chicago Public Square, for instance, I look to elevate informed opinion from columnists who may have opinions, but whose opinions are backed up by facts and hyperlinks and details. And, people can certainly read those opinion columnists and I generally identify them by something like “columnist” so that someone knows going in, “OK, this is not gonna be your traditional straight, ‘he- said-she-said-they-said’ kind of story”—that they have some context for understanding what they’re about to read.

Putman: I think Neil Steinberg is a good example. You guys have a great working relationship.

Meyerson: I’m a fan.

Putman: Yeah. And he’s—

King: We are, too.

Putman: —obviously a fan of yours too.

Meyerson: Yeah.

Putman: And that works out well because he brings our attention to something that you have reported on and you do the same for his columns.

Meyerson: Yeah. And Eric Zorn also—a similar relationship. Again, two great columnists. And it’s sad that the Chicago Tribune has parted ways with many—all, really—of its news opinion columnists. And it’s great that Neil is still with the Sun-Times. But yeah, I look to columnists to provide context and provide explanatory journalism that TikTok news reporting doesn’t.

King: Yes. And don’t you think that what’s happening with the Tribune, because I think objectively there are a skeleton crew of people at the Tribune who are really trying hard—in spite of the hedge fund owners that have decimated that paper.

Meyerson: … and we should remind everyone that, once upon a time, the Tribune and WGN— World’s Greatest Newspaper—were co-owned and are not anymore.

King: Yep.

Meyerson: There are tremendously talented journalists still at the Tribune. I still get the Tribune and the Sun-Times tossed onto our porch every morning—

Putman: So do we.

King: Yep.

Meyerson: It is a much smaller staff than it used to be, and those who are there are doing the job with far fewer resources than was the case when I left the paper to join WGN in 2009.-of-

Putman: I did some end-of-year bookkeeping and I was stunned at what we pay for a seven-day-a-week subscription. We’re into the thousands of dollars.

King: Yeah.

Meyerson: OK, let me back up. If you’re paying more than I believe it’s 155 bucks a year for seven-day delivery, then you should call …

Putman: What???

Meyerson: … customer service.

Putman: What???

Meyerson: I’m not kidding you. And Eric Zorn has written about this at great length, too. Much of the—and I don’t want to pick on any one newspaper. Much of the business at this point—as I perceive it, because I’m not in it anymore—is relying on momentum from newspaper subscribers of a certain age and older just to keep paying whatever ’cause they’ve always paid it. But it is worth everyone’s while, at least once a year, to call and say, “I’m gonna cancel unless you give me the best rate that you’re offering your brand-new consumers.” And you can Google and say “New subscriber to [this newspaper].”

Putman: I will start the year out that way because …

Meyerson: The Tribune’s offering new subscribers—I think it’s 155 bucks for a full year. And if they say, “No, we can’t do it,” then what you do is you cancel and then you sign up with your spouse’s name and a different email address and get the new rate. But, generally, the customer service people are happy to keep you on board. I’m payin’ four bucks a month for access to The New York Times and, I think, four bucks a month for access to The Washington Post. Although—you wanna talk about The Washington Post?

King: Who was the cartoonist who just resigned from The Washington Post?

Meyerson: Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes quit The Washington Post after an editor rejected her cartoon showing tech magnates, including Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos—and Mickey Mouse, by the way—genuflecting before a statue of Donald Trump. My friend, another Pulitzer-winning cartoonist and columnist, Jack Oman—he’s given us clearance to republish his cartoons, which I do frequently in Chicago Public Square, to which you can subscribe free at sub.ChicagoPublicSquare.com as several listeners have already—Jack wrote something that I want to quote, because he has a blog of his own, and he wrote this today about Ann Telnaes’ resignation. He’s worked with her through the years. He says—here’s the quote: “I grieve because it’s not just Ann. It’s everyone in journalism. If you’re in opinion, you should be getting your affairs in order and making other arrangements. Unless you’re a coward. Then you’ll be fine.”

Putman: Wow.

Meyerson: And the bottom line there is: With these large corporate news media—for which I hope things go well and things get much better—we do see their owners bending the knee to the new administration, the incoming administration …

King: Yeah.

Meyerson: … and so I put a great deal of hope in independent truth-tellers—Substack/email newsletter journalists, who have in increasing numbers been leaving these large news organizations to strike out on their own and form startup news organizations or, in some cases, to just work solo. There is a lot of great work being done there. It’s not the same as the work that was being done by big corporate media, but I put a lot of hope in what they’re doing—Jack, and now Ann Telnaes has got her own email newsletter and will be distributing her cartoons that way, probably.

Putman: Yes. I just signed up for her Substack today.

Meyerson: Good. Yeah. I was not actually familiar with her work, but I really like this cartoon that The Washington Post didn’t publish, which now will ironically no doubt be seen by a lot more people—a lot more than it would’ve seen by had they published it in the Post.

King: Just before we take a break, did you just win another award from the Chicago Reader?

Meyerson: No, not yet. Chicago Public Square is again, as it’s been several years in a row, a finalist for Best Email Newsletter and Best Independent Website or Blog. Some years we win, some years we don’t, but the voting just wrapped up on Dec. 31st and we’ll learn the winners in March. But it’s an honor just to be a finalist.

Putman: And in this case. He’s telling the truth. We’re gonna take a break and we will come right back for some closing thoughts with our friend Charlie Meyerson on WGN.

Musical interlude: John Fogerty, “Headlines.”
King: Steve King and Johnnie Putman at WGN Radio, where we’re talking with our friend Charlie Meyerson. You should check out ChicagoPublicSquare.com. Subscribe. It’s free, and your life will be better for doing that.

Putman: And Charlie, let’s clarify. You can subscribe for free, but your site is actually reader-supported, correct?

Meyerson: That’s true. I did it free for a year. I think I mentioned that I started it in 2017, when the first Trump administration was dawning. And after a year, as new forms of financial support evolved—back in the day, I used Memberful—about a year in, I said, “Hey, is this worth anything to you?” Subtext: “What will you pay me not to quit?” And, to my surprise, people actually paid me not to quit. And that model has since been adopted by other organizations—Substack it most famously—but it didn’t exist back in 2018. And people are finding in general—journalists are finding across the country and across virtually all beats—that people are willing to pay to get email newsletters that they find valuable. Which brings me back to something I said earlier: I said there have been a couple of threads of communication that have developed with readers over the last few months. One is: “Why are you doing so much Washington news, D.C. news, national news?”

The other is: “Please don’t quit.” I had a friend, a woman I hadn’t seen for 20 years, stopped me in the grocery store parking lot —one of the aisles at Jewel, actually—and said, “Love your newsletter, please don’t stop.” Just a few weeks ago. And I gotta confide: Had the presidential election gone another way, I was prepared to glide off into the sunset. But a number of people have unsolicitedly said, “Please don’t stop.” And so now I’m kinda stuck. It’s a responsibility that I feel I have to keep.

King: And full disclosure: That was part of the conversation we had with Charlie, off the air, a few weeks ago …

Putman: … when we said “Please don’t stop.”

King: Yeah.

Putman: By the way, I’m looking at texts that come in and wanted to clarify that, in fact, people can subscribe for free right to Chicago Public Square and you can give Charlie feedback and Chicago Public Square is, in fact, visible on Facebook, if that’s where you wanna check it out first.

King: Facebook and I believe Bluesky and Threads.

Meyerson: Yeah. In the weeks leading up to the presidential election, Facebook—Meta, its parent company, Facebook and Threads—suppressed some of the posts that I shared: Others’ reporting—critically, specifically—about Donald Trump. So I have begun to, let’s say, deprecate the role of Facebook—which was the go-to channel for between-editions updates for Chicago Public Square—in favor of Bluesky.

King: Yeah.

Meyerson: So I’m now encouraging anyone who likes Chicago Public Square and wants to know what’s happening between editions to follow Chicago Public Square on Bluesky, which—can I get a little technical in this?—has a major advantage over Twitter, which once upon a time was of great value to me and many other people.

Twitter turned off its API, its automated programming interface—I believe that’s what it stands for [Correction: Application programming interface]—that allowed other programs to skim Twitter. That was a valuable channel for me to find out what all the smart people I was following on Twitter were sharing. It could rank news stories by “12 of your friends have shared this, 12 respected journalists have shared this.” They turned that off. Bluesky has that: There’s a free app called Sill that people who are on Bluesky can use. Sill basically cuts out the noise of social media and serves up, “OK, 12 of your friends are sharing this on Bluesky, 11 are sharing this, nine are sharing this,” or “They shared it within the last three hours.” And that’s a major source of information for me in Chicago Public Square, and for the content that I share with people on Bluesky because—ideally—I’m following people who are smarter than I am. And I’m able then to share the news from people who are smarter than I am with my readers and followers. For instance, that’s how I learned about the Washington Post cartoonist, Ann Telnaes, who stepped down from her job. I saw it on Sill, which was monitoring Bluesky for me. So I recommend that: Bluesky and Sill.

King: I get it. You’re looking out at the blue sky from your window sill. I get it. Okay.

Meyerson: Yeah, I think that’s it. It also helps that the guy who developed Sill actually took feedback from me. I made some suggestions and he said, “Yeah.”

Putman: Really?

Meyerson: Yeah. So it’s nice when there’s an organization with a human being behind it, as opposed to the faceless, unreachable customer service.

Putman: Like when you say to Facebook, “Why are you doing this to me?” We have so many friends who are musicians who’ve had basically Facebook to shut them down and this is how—

Meyerson: Yeah.

Putman: —they make their living.

Meyerson: With no explanation and no way to reach a human being. Very frustrating.

King: It has increased over the past six months.

Putman: Yeah. Very intense. You’ve done a great job explaining what Chicago Public Square is all about and how people can get their copy of Chicago Public Square every day. But you’ve also done a great job, and I’m telling you folks at the Chicago Tribune, you better buckle up because we’re hearing from people saying, “Oh my God, I’m calling on Monday.”

King: And so are we.

Putman: We’ve heard from people who are paying $116 a month. We are paying $190 every two months.

Meyerson: Oh no.

Putman: Yeah. Oh yeah.

Meyerson: And I don’t wanna pick on the Trib. This is true of all the major publishers and magazines. Call them—and cable providers, too. Anyone you have a subscription with, it’s worth calling at least once a year. Say, “What’s your best deal?”

Putman: And our problem is we just get complacent and it’s automatically withdrawn. And until you look at it, you don’t realize, “Whoa, what am I doing here?”

King: And I don’t play the age card often, but I will here: Johnnie and I are guilty of, as much as we embrace all forms of new social media, a day without a newspaper—or, in Chicago, two newspapers—on our kitchen table is a bad day.

Putman: Absolutely.

King: And I don’t apologize for that, but we need to find out ways to make that day a little less expensive.

Putman: Yeah, exactly. Again, congratulations with Chicago Public Square. I’m gonna say right here, right now: Join us in March so we can celebrate Chicago Public Square being chosen by the Chicago Reader. ’Cause it’s gonna happen again.

Meyerson: From your lips to the Reader editors’ ears. So lemme just—Are you kicking me off now?

Putman: Yeah.

Meyerson: I’m just getting warmed up.

Putman: I know.

Meyerson: I was gonna be with you all six hours tonight. You don’t want me anymore?

King: You hear that chortling in the background? That’s Ron Brown.

Brown: Yes. It was great to hear from you again, Charlie. I hope that we hear from you again very soon. And I’ll add my voice to the chorus, too: Please don’t quit. I’ve been following you since ’XRT days and I still do.

Meyerson: It’s my privilege.

Putman: Thank you so much, Charlie.

King: Thanks, Charlie. We’ll talk again soon.

Putman: Yeah, happy New Year.

King: See you.

Meyerson: You, too. Thank you.

King: And again, it’s ChicagoPublicSquare.com. Free subscription, but if you want to support Charlie, you can do that too.

How best to open a podcast

Meyerson@gmail.com (Charlie Meyerson) — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 10:19:00 -0500

I haven’t posted much here lately about my work with the talented team I helped assemble a decade ago at Rivet (now formally known as Rivet360)—mostly in secret at the beginning.

That’s partly because, as I’ve shifted focus since 2017 to my award-winning Chicago Public Square email news briefing (subscribe free!), I’ve eased into a role as Rivet’s Vice President of Editorial and Development—or, as I call myself, Nagger-in-Chief.

And it’s partly because the company’s shifted its focus from journalism to become an innovative podcast consultancy—producing audio for others as well as shows of its own.

One of those shows, PodWell—a guide to becoming better podcasters—is hosted by my friend and colleague Terri Lydon, who was kind enough to share the mic with me in her June 6 edition (recorded May 3, 2023, when I was just getting over a cold or something else that really wasn’t COVID-19).

That gave me nine minutes or so to nag on one of my favorite topics: How best to open a podcast.

If you like this, check out more of my podcast guidance on Rivet’s website and elsewhere on this blog.

And hear more of my conversations with thought-leaders through the years on this website, in Apple Music, on Pandora or Spotify, via your favorite podcast player and at Chicago Public Square.

(Meyerson headshot: Steve Ewert.)

Science fiction writer Greg Bear in 1994: The Internet’s future

Meyerson@gmail.com (Charlie Meyerson) — Sun, 20 Nov 2022 08:39:00 -0600

[Updating this original post—from March 1, 2015—on Nov. 20, 2022: Greg Bear is dead at 71.]

Science fiction writer Greg Bear in a 1994 interview with me on WNUA-FM, Chicago, on the future of the Internet:

“It’s going to be a huge intellectual telephone line, with graphics and library materials, all available at a few minutes’ notice. That, I think, will be revolutionary. ... We have a lot of people from the entertainment industries thinking it’s going to be a lot of the same old, same old — where they can simply market movies in new ways, and I don’t think it’s going to be that way at all. ... The people who are loosely called Generation Xers are going to have their say on this. And I think we may not be able to predict what they’re going to do with it.”

Update, Jan. 4, 2018: A later interview with Greg Bear, from 1996, when we talked about the prospect of life on Mars.

Why I should never sing in public

Meyerson@gmail.com (Charlie Meyerson) — Sat, 11 Jun 2022 13:31:00 -0500

Chicago Reader columnist Ben Joravsky was kind enough to invite me on his show this week—we talked Wednesday, the podcast was published Saturday—to answer questions about how and why I do what I do for Chicago Public Square.

I was honored along the way to express my admiration for columnists Neil Steinberg and Robert Feder, Reader critic Jack Helbig, The Onion, WXRT-FM News pioneers C.D. Jaco and Linda Brill, Square reader Angela Mullins, radio DJs Bob Stroud and Marty Lennartz, my college radio station WPGU …

… and to deliver an ill-advised musical tribute to my alma mater, Carl Sandburg High School, whose fight song I was—for reasons that elude me now—moved to butcher.

You’ve been warned. Here it is.

If you like this, check out more of my conversations with thought-leaders through the years on this website, in Apple Music, on Pandora or Spotify, via your favorite podcast player and at Chicago Public Square.

1995: Peter David, Chris Claremont and Gary Colabuono discuss the comic book industry’s flirtation with disaster

Meyerson@gmail.com (Charlie Meyerson) — Wed, 1 Jun 2022 18:17:00 -0500

[It’s been a while since we dove into the archives. But now that hour’s come round at last—again.]

In 1995, the comic book industry was approaching what later became known as “the Great Comics Crash of 1996”—triggered in part by Marvel Comics’ 1994 purchase of the business’ third-largest distributor, converting it to distribute Marvel’s stuff exclusively.

So that was a significant topic June 30, 1995, when I sat down at WNUA-FM in Chicago—just ahead of the 20th annual Chicago Comicon*—with acclaimed comics writers Peter David and Chris Claremont, maybe best known then for their work on Marvel’s The Incredible Hulk and The Uncanny X-Men, respectively; and the convention’s CEO, Classics International Entertainment President Gary Colabuono, also then the proprietor of Moondog’s comic shops.

Here’s how it went.

Looking back on that time now, Colabuono recalls: “Marvel’s decision to distribute their own comics was not only the death knell for direct market distributors, it was also the beginning of the end for the vast majority of comic book specialty shops in the U.S. Of the 21 stores in the Moondog’s chain, 20 were out of business within a year of Marvel’s move.”

I’ve also asked David and Claremont for their perspectives on that time. I’ll share them as they arrive.

But here’s David’s July 28, 1995, reflection on that year’s con: “If Gary Colabuono … asks you to be guest of honor, two words—Do It. Gary is the consummate host, making sure that you want for nothing and taking care that every need is anticipated.”

* For a show that was broadcast July 2, which explains David’s joke at the end, “Boy, am I exhausted from that!”

Ex-Chicago Tribune editor James Squires warned in 1993 about the corporate takeover of America’s newspapers

Meyerson@gmail.com (Charlie Meyerson) — Tue, 24 Aug 2021 19:40:00 -0500

Back in 1993, a former editor of the Chicago Tribune sounded an alarm about the growing conflict between the drive for corporate profits and traditional journalism’s social-reform agenda.

That was close to six years before I joined the Trib and close to two decades before that trend inexorably led to a gutting of the paper’s staff.

As the paper welcomes a new editor, now seems like a good time to revisit the words of Jim Squires, talking about his book Read All About It! The Corporate Takeover of America’s Newspapers—in an interview recorded Feb. 3, 1993, and aired Feb. 7 on WNUA-FM, Chicago. Listen up.

If you like this, check out more of my conversations with thought-leaders through the years on this website, in Apple Music, on Spotify, via your favorite podcast player and at Chicago Public Square.

Email pioneer Aaron Barnhart interviewed in 1996

Meyerson@gmail.com (Charlie Meyerson) — Mon, 8 Feb 2021 16:59:00 -0600

Of all the interviews I’ve conducted, none have influenced my career more than this 1996 sit-down with Aaron Barnhart, whose Late Show News newsletter pioneered the email news biz.

Listen to us discuss his model for how, in my words, “a lot of us in this profession will … do our work in the future” and you’ll hear the siren call that two years later would draw me from radio to the internet—and, not much later, to lead the Chicago Tribune’s email program.

Decades later, Barnhart’s work inspired the launch of Chicago Public Square.

First aired June 23, 1996, this show remains great and relevant listening, and it spotlights Aaron as one of the internet’s early visionaries.

Also: A cool time-capsule about the state of late-night TV in 1996.

Listen here.

Chicago 7 lawyer William Kunstler in 1994: That trial ‘changed me totally’

Meyerson@gmail.com (Charlie Meyerson) — Fri, 16 Oct 2020 16:43:00 -0500

Prepping to watch The Trial of the Chicago 7 on Netflix, I revisited my Sept. 16, 1994, interview with The 7’s defense lawyer, William Kunstler, who told me then that the trial “changed me totally. …

“I never knew what it was to really fight until I watched Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Dave Dellinger, Hayden and so on fight in a courtroom—do things that would make the jury understand that they were being persecuted: Bringing in a birthday cake for Bobby Seale, a Viet Cong flag on their table, standing out and protesting the binding and gagging of Bobby Seale in the courtroom.

“There were so many things they did that showed they were fighting—they weren’t gonna sit there like bumps on a log and be railroaded.

“And the net result was they won.”

I realized I never shared this file to this blog and the accompanying podcast series. So here you go.

Check out more of my conversations with thought-leaders through the years on this website, in Apple Music, on Spotify, via your favorite podcast player and at Chicago Public Square.

_____

P.S. I was apparently the first to inform Kunstler in 1983 of Judge Julius Hoffman’s death.

Charlie Meyerson interviewed … about Charlie Meyerson

Meyerson@gmail.com (Charlie Meyerson) — Sun, 6 Sep 2020 12:59:00 -0500

This hasn’t happened much in my career, most of which I’ve devoted to profiling people far more interesting than I am.

But, twice in less than two weeks, I was honored to be interviewed about journalism, politics, radio, the origins of Chicago Public Square and my personal journey:

On Friday, I was a guest on Chicago Reader columnist Ben Joravsky’s podcast—and that was just seven days after Matt Baron had grilled me for the Common Ground Oak Park podcast.

So here, in the Charlie Meyerson interviews series, is—for lack of a better phrase—Charlie Meyerson interviewed …

… and Charlie Meyerson interviewed again.

Check out more of my conversations with thought-leaders through the years on this website, in Apple Music, on Spotify, via your favorite podcast player and at Chicago Public Square.

Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry in 1974 and 1976

Meyerson@gmail.com (Charlie Meyerson) — Thu, 7 Nov 2019 00:01:00 -0600

You’d think if you’d met the creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, in the flesh you’d remember it.

Especially if he told you the real reason he made Mr. Spock look a little … devilish (about 32:17 in).

Well, I did meet him, and he told me that—and I confess that I forgot all about it.

Only when a longtime friend and neighbor lent me a vintage reel-to-reel tape player and I opened a long-filed-away box labeled “Gene Roddenberry” did I recall that I was actually in a studio with Roddenberry at college radio station WPGU in 1974—a half-decade after the original TV show had been canceled and a half-decade before the first Star Trek movie was to debut in theaters. (Photo: Roddenberry in 1974 by Nolan Hester for The Daily Illini.)

Not only that, but I got him to autograph a book, which sat on my shelf forgotten and unloved for years.

Here’s how it sounded, Nov. 7, 1974: A long-unheard interview with the visionary Gene Roddenberry, hosted by Phil Robinson with help from Jim Gassel, Bill Taylor, a so-young-and-nerdy-you-could-plotz 19-year-old Charlie Meyerson and a bunch of call-in fans.

Bonus 1: Keep listening past the end of that show and you’ll hear my second Roddenberry encounter—raw audio of a 1976 phone interview followed by the finished feature that resulted: An episode of WPGU’s mini-documentary series, Probe.

Bonus 2: For completists, here’s the aircheck of the full 1974 hour—including ads and a newscast by WPGU anchor Maggi Pratt.

Related listening: My interviews with “Trekspert” Mark Altman in 1995, science fiction writers Ray Bradbury in 1999, Cory Doctorow in 2019, Greg Bear in 1994 and 1996, William Gibson in 1993 and Douglas Adams in 1997 and 1992.

Check out even more of my conversations with thought-leaders through the years on this website, in Apple Music, on Spotify, via Amazon Music or through your favorite podcast player, and at Chicago Public Square.

And thanks to Dave Mausner for lending me that tape player.

1988: Chaos in the Chicago City Council

Meyerson@gmail.com (Charlie Meyerson) — Thu, 5 Sep 2019 17:28:00 -0500

This week’s transformative Chicago City Council development—the historic livestream video presentation of a committee meeting—brings to mind a time when the council was maddeningly tough to follow.

In 1988, I was a newbie City Hall reporter for WXRT-FM. It was an assignment I relished not—partly because the council’s procedures were bewilderingly opaque and byzantine.

But I channeled my journalistic frustration into creation of a series that won a nationwide United Press International award for documentary radio reporting.

So, let’s return to the year 1988. Eugene Sawyer was briefly Chicago’s mayor, and a young journalist was pissed off at the difficulty navigating … Chaos in the Council.

Related:
■ Me, far more enthusiastic about covering City Hall in 2012.
■ Another award-winning WXRT News investigation from 1984.
■ And check out some of my interviews with thought-leaders through the years on this website, in Apple Music, on Spotify, via Alexa-powered speakers, through your favorite podcast player, and at Chicago Public Square.

Journalists Lois Wille and Linda Lutton discuss Chicago's urban development in 1997

Meyerson@gmail.com (Charlie Meyerson) — Tue, 23 Jul 2019 13:17:00 -0500

The death Tuesday of Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago journalist Lois Wille—a veteran of the Tribune, the Sun-Times and the Daily News—brings to mind a memorable 1997 interview with her and journalist Linda Lutton.

You can hear them debate urban housing trends that were remaking Chicago then and, more than two decades later, are shaping it still.

Here’s how it sounded—as aired June 22, 1997, on WNUA-FM, Chicago.

More conversations with thought-leaders through the years on this website, in Apple Music, on Spotify, via your favorite podcast player, and at Chicago Public Square.

(1984 image of Wille: C-SPAN.)

We were warned in 1997 of ‘underground prejudice’

Meyerson@gmail.com (Charlie Meyerson) — Sun, 18 Nov 2018 13:00:00 -0600

In his 1997 book A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America, Pulitzer Prize winner David K. Shipler documented a major split among Americans: “The divide between those who see racism and those who do not.”

And he sounded an alarm about what many then might not have perceived: “How much prejudice has gone underground since the civil rights movement.”

Here’s my 1997 interview with Shipler, aired 19 years ago today.

Sadly, it doesn’t sound dated.

Related listening: A panel discussion I led in July on the future of integration.

Leon Lederman, science education hacker, in 1997

Meyerson@gmail.com (Charlie Meyerson) — Thu, 4 Oct 2018 22:14:00 -0500

The death of Nobel Prize winner Leon Lederman took me back to March 19, 1997, when I interviewed the professor about his then- (and still-) revolutionary ideas on how to overhaul science education. Hear him talk about that—and much more—here …

… or on iTunes or via your favorite podcast player.

And while you’re at it, check out my other interviews with thought-leaders through the years here and here.

(1988 photo: Energy.gov.)

Anna Quindlen, talking out loud in 1993

Meyerson@gmail.com (Charlie Meyerson) — Sat, 5 May 2018 12:55:00 -0500

Approaching Mother’s Day 1993, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Anna Quindlen—who shaped a generation’s approach to parenthood—stopped by the WNUA-FM studios in Chicago to promote her then-new book, Thinking Out Loud.

Check out this audio—recorded May 5, 1993—to learn why she objected to the name of a Chicago Tribune newspaper section.

Listen to my interview with Anna Quindlen—on the web, iTunes or your favorite podcast player.

(Book jacket cover photo: Joyce Ravid,)

Trump’s precursor? An interview with Pat Buchanan in 1998

Meyerson@gmail.com (Charlie Meyerson) — Thu, 3 May 2018 11:25:00 -0500

In many ways, two-time presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan—former adviser to three Republican presidents (Nixon, Ford and Reagan)—set the stage for Donald Trump’s ascendance.

When Buchanan made 2016’s “Politico 50,” the magazine pronounced Trump “Pat Buchanan with better timing.”

How similar are they? Here’s the unheard-since-broadcast audio of my interview with Buchanan, aired on this date in 1998. What similarities—and differences—do you hear?

Listen on the web, iTunes or your favorite podcast player.

(Photo: Bbsrock.)

From 1998: The man who REALLY saved Apple

Meyerson@gmail.com (Charlie Meyerson) — Fri, 27 Apr 2018 17:31:00 -0500

In 1998, Apple’s now-widely-forgotten CEO, Gil Amelio, sat down with me to discuss his relatively brief time atop what was then a struggling company—the subject of his book On the Firing Line: My 500 Days at Apple.

As you’ll hear—and as Engadget noted in 2014—Amelio proved remarkably “accurate … regarding how Apple could get its groove back.”

In at least one way—his decision to bring Apple founder Steve Jobs back to the company—Amelio may truly be the man who saved Apple.

Twenty years to the week after this interview aired—April 26, 1998—you be the judge.

National Lampoon's origins, recalled by founding publisher Matty Simmons in 1987

Meyerson@gmail.com (Charlie Meyerson) — Sun, 28 Jan 2018 00:03:00 -0600

Netflix’s comedic biography of National Lampoon co-founder Douglas Kenney, A Futile and Stupid Gesture, sent me back to my conversation decades ago with one of the story’s key figures, who shared his recollection of developments that made their way into the movie.

If you enjoyed A Futile and Stupid Gesture, you’ll get a kick out of this unedited April 30, 1987, interview with the Lampoon’s founding publisher, Matty Simmons.

Enjoy this? Get more on iTunes or via RSS feed.

In 1998, a look to the future of working women

Meyerson@gmail.com (Charlie Meyerson) — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 11:14:00 -0600

From the perspective of the Women’s March and #MeToo era of 2018, a 20-year-old book that set out to examine “working women and the transformation of American life” offers insight into trends decades in the making.

Here’s my 1998 interview with author Sally Helgesen, who, over the course of three years, put a microscope to women in the Chicago suburb of Naperville—and found dramatic changes, which she documented in her book Everyday Revolutionaries.

One excerpt, as she discussed two-career families:

Helgesen: “Many of the women said to me … ‘My husband is tremendously helpful in the house.’”
Me: “You didn’t talk to my wife about this.”
Helgesen: “‘However,’ they said, ‘I have to decide everything that’s done.’”
Me: “Oh, you did talk to my wife.”

Helgesen on technology in 1998: “The personal computer is what’s enabling the tremendous move toward home-based business, toward individual entrepreneurial efforts … among women. … That’s what permits people to have this freedom from ‘The Organization Man’ way of life, in which individuals were completely dependent on large organizations.”

Helgesen on the wage gap between men and women: “Of more concern really is the wage gap between those who have … something to offer the knowledge economy and those whose services are not as in demand.”

If you were a kid back then, odds are good you’ll recognize a mom or two here.

So: My interview with Sally Helgesen, talking about Everyday Revolutionaries, aired Jan. 25, 1998, on the late WNUA-FM, Chicago.

Enjoy this flashback? Catch the full Meyerson podcast experience on iTunes or through this RSS feed.

How the Fantastic Four radio series disappointed Stan Lee in 1975

Meyerson@gmail.com (Charlie Meyerson) — Thu, 28 Dec 2017 14:21:00 -0600

1975: I was just beginning my radio career at college station WPGU-FM, hosting an investigative mini-documentary radio series, Probe.

What would be more natural to “investigate” than my passion for comic books—with what became the first of several interviews over my career with Marvel Comics impresario Stan Lee?

Presented here far more for the value of Lee’s remarks—including his disappointment in the then-new Fantastic Four radio series and his enthusiasm for Howard the Duck—than for my own stuffy and waaaay-underdeveloped on-air presence: Stan Lee on WPGU Radio’s Probe.

Enjoy this? Check out these much-more-polished later encounters with Lee, here, here and here.

(1975 photo: Alan Light.)

The time I interviewed ‘Chickenman’ creator Dick Orkin in 1976

Meyerson@gmail.com (Charlie Meyerson) — Tue, 26 Dec 2017 14:52:00 -0600

Radio production, comedy and advertising visionary Dick Orkin’s death Sunday sent me back into the archives—waaaay back in the archives—to my days learning radio at my college station, WPGU. (Image: 2016 Radio Ink cover.)

Aired Feb. 2, 1976, here’s my journalist-in-training report from the time I interviewed Dick Orkin, a man whose creation of the hilarious serial Chickenman led me to love—and seek a career in—radio.

David Simon—before The Wire in 1997

Meyerson@gmail.com (Charlie Meyerson) — Thu, 30 Nov 2017 15:48:00 -0600

Twenty years ago, journalist David Simon, author of the book that inspired the TV show Homicide—and later the creator of HBO’s acclaimed The Wire, among many others—joined me for a discussion of the then-new book he’d co-authored, The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood.

Simon’s time spent on an urban corner in Baltimore had persuaded him then that the war on drugs was a failure—that the concept of “lockin’ ’em up” was a losing battle that served only to further isolate neighborhoods where the vast majority of residents are victims of drugs.

What’s old is new again. Here’s the interview with David Simon as broadcast Nov. 30, 1997, on the late WNUA-FM in Chicago.

(Photo: Simon in 2004 at the Peabody Awards.)

If your school kills your student newspaper—or you’re laid off—you can keep going. Cheap.

Meyerson@gmail.com (Charlie Meyerson) — Tue, 25 Apr 2017 18:46:00 -0500

[Headline revised July 15, 2020, to include “or you’re laid off.” Because, well, you know.]

If you were asked to lecture 600 high school journalists and their teachers on the state of journalism, what would you tell them? When the Northern Illinois Scholastic Press Association (NISPA) invited me to deliver the keynote address at its annual conference, we agreed to title the talk “Journalism on a (Really Cheap) Shoestring.”

But the underlying message was more subversive: If your school kills your student newspaper, you can continue the mission on your own. Cheap.

You can see the presentation as a YouTube video here. Or hear it as a podcast at the bottom of this page.

Or you can read this essay based on those remarks, delivered at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Ill., April 21, 2017:

If you love journalism—learning stuff and sharing it with other people—odds are good that one of these days you’ll find yourself in a position where you’re not getting a regular paycheck for that work and you don’t have much to do. Maybe you’re on break from classes; maybe you’re a graduate looking for your first job; or maybe you’ll find yourself laid off or otherwise underutilized.

And if you’re one of those people who love journalism so much you just can’t quit, those are times you’ll want to know how to do it on a shoestring.

I’ve found myself in one or another of those categories a number of times since I graduated from college about 40 years ago. Including just a few months ago.

Yes, I’m vice president of a news startup, Rivet Radio. But here’s how being a vice president of a startup sometimes can feel: While you’re waiting to find out if a company’s going to become profitable and become an ongoing concern, the pay’s not always so great—and you can wind up with a lot of free time.

In January, as a new U.S. president took office, I was getting, let’s say, restless.

And so were some of my friends. One of them, a working mother I’d known since she—like you—was in high school, sent me a message on Facebook:

“Every time I looked at Facebook or Twitter today, terrible things were happening in our government. Is there any news source that is keeping track of things that are happening day by day? Just in a bullet-point form? … I need to stay informed, but I need to work, too. If there is a resource you have found or you are doing one, please let me know.”

Well, that’s basically a newscast, right?

I’ve always been something of a newscaster. For instance, here’s something I created at the age of 7.

It was delivered from my living room to another part of my living room by Beany Copter.

I went on to work for my high school newspaper, the Carl Sandburg High School Aquila.

For the first 20 years or so of my adult career after graduating from the University of Illinois, I was a radio newscaster—at an AM/FM combination in Aurora, not far from here; at legendary rock station WXRT in Chicago and later at WNUA, a now-defunct “smooth jazz” station in Chicago.

And in 1998, I made the leap from radio to the internet, with the then-new thing called “chicagotribune.com,” where I launched and produced a daily email newsletter called Daywatch—revolutionary in its time because (1) it was conversational (it read like a radio newscast, surprise, surprise) and (2) it dared to link to websites that weren’t part of the Tribune family.

For the last more-than-a-decade, across several jobs, I’ve continued that tradition of learning things and then linking to them on Facebook and Twitter.

So when my friend—one of several friends with the same concern, in fact—asked after a “news source that is keeping track of things,” I had two thoughts:

Hey, I know how to do that.
What have I been telling job-seekers and others with too much time on their hands to do?

And the answer to that question for more than a decade almost always takes this form: Don’t wait for someone to pay you to do what you love doing. Start a blog and Just Do It.

So, I just did it. I’m going to take you step-by-step through what I did, and how I did it. And as you’ll see, there’s nothing here you can’t do, too. We’ll keep a running tally of what it cost.

I created a blog with a working title of Chicago Public Square on Blogger.com and on Wordpress.com; I wanted to compare the two, both of which are free. (The hard part is picking and tweaking a design—a process that offers near-infinite possibilities and can be hard to quit.) I picked Blogger because I liked the interface better and was able to tweak the design at almost no cost. (I bought a private design, but I could have used one of Blogger’s free designs, too.) Cost of that design: $10. (But it could have been $0.)
I registered the name. ChicagoPublicSquare.com cost $12 a year from Google Domains.
I plugged my Blogger blog into that domain. Cost: $0.
I signed up for a MailChimp service that lets you send up to 12,000 emails a month to 2,000 or fewer subscribers for free. (You can manually create your email in MailChimp, or you can have MailChimp “scrape” your website each day at the same time and automatically send whatever it finds.) Cost: $0.
I made sure a MailChimp “subscribe” box pops up when people visit ChicagoPublicSquare.com. Cost: $0.
I printed up 1,000 business cards—because why not? Cost: $28.65.
I began publicizing it. Basically, this meant telling friends and asking them to tell friends. In my case, some of my friends happen to be in the media biz: Justin Kaufmann on WGN Radio (to my right in the photo), media blogger Robert Feder and Larz, the mystery man who runs the Chicagoland Radio and Media website. But the principle is the same: Your friends can be—and can grow—your audience. Cost: $0.
Actually, I left out a Step 0: Get a lot of friends. If you’re not now building a huge list of connections on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest or wherever your friends are hanging these days, get to work on it.

There’s a reason I’ve given my journalism students extra credit for every 20 Twitter followers they gain. Those connections are golden when you apply for a job or launch a new project. Employers look at your followings and see dollar signs: “10,000 people this person could bring us? Cool.” And in my case, my thousands of Facebook and Twitter friends provided the core audience for my startup. Cost: $0.

OK, so where are we? Total expenditures to launch Square: $50.65. That’s lawnmowing or babysitting money. And, as you’ll remember, even those expenses were optional.

And that’s it. Oh, one more thing: Sending to that many people every weekday has pushed me into MailChimp’s tier for paid customers. So that’s $15 a month. Total costs so far, as of April: $65.65 (plus another $15 a month to come). Still: Allowance money.

But here’s the good news: At least a few of my friends get it. They see the value in advertising in Chicago Public Square, because they know it reaches smart and involved people who care about Chicago and the world. And so I have a few advertisers and potential advertisers. They don’t pay much yet, but they’ve paid enough that I can say Square has turned a profit—if you discount the value of my work to $0.

And that work isn’t easy. I decided to make Square a five-days-a-week newsletter, beamed up and blasted out by MailChimp each morning at 10. I begin around 7:30 or 8 and work until MailChimp sucks up the website and sends it out. It’s an intense couple of hours because there’s so much news to share in this Era of Trump. But one advantage of having MailChimp sweep the site precisely at 10 is that I have to stop.

One of the downsides of working on the web is that it makes real one of Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous quotes: “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” If I didn’t have that deadline, I’d have a hard time moving on.

What is the work?

I’ve created some original content—like the first video tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s newly renovated landmark Unity Temple in Oak Park (conducted with just an iPhone, a microphone and a friend to hold the camera), a piece on how to get hired in the media business, and broken news of a Chicago celebrity’s guest shot in the Dick Tracy comic strip.

But Square is primarily a newscast by email—need-to-know items from the nation and the world and the region, important or interesting for Chicago-area readers.

And how I find those items is something you can do for any subject—whether it’s a sports team, a local school, or your favorite element on the periodic table:

I follow smart and knowledgeable people on Twitter and Facebook. In my case, that includes many of the Chicago- and Washington-based journalists I know personally. But it also includes many I don’t know, but whose work I respect—like David Fahrenthold, who, as Harvard’s Neiman Journalism Lab put it, went from tweeting pictures of his notepad to winning a Pulitzer Prize.

For you, that could be experts in Ultimate Frisbee. Or reporters covering your local school board or your high school sports teams.

Whatever your specialty, follow the experts. Then let the app Nuzzel know who you follow on Twitter and Facebook, and it serves up the articles they’re sharing. And then you get to look smart by sharing them and commenting on them and eventually becoming more of an expert yourself in the process. And then, you have a blog that people who care about your subject matter will want to follow.

Side note: Nuzzel also lets you generate a free email newsletter, but you don’t have as much control over graphics and content as you do if you use Blogger or WordPress.

So, back to Chicago Public Square:

If the number of subscribers keeps growing steadily, the value of the ads I might sell—and the work I do to justify them—will grow.

So: What have I done that you can’t do yourself?

Nothing.

I’m guessing most of you are here because your schools value journalism; they have a student newspaper and teachers who advise you.

But I’m here to share a radical notion, students. The wonderful thing about this era of communication is this: If your schools cut those programs—and, sadly, that’s happening in a lot of places—or if you just find yourself not fitting in with the programs that exist, or just impatient to strike out on your own, you can keep going without them:

Start a blog, tie it to an email list, and keep reporting. (And you don’t have to do it daily; you can do it whenever the news dictates, or whenever you feel like it.)

You can do that … on a shoestring.

• • •

But before I sign off, a few words on how to do all of this well.

Writing counts. People know good writing from bad writing, even if they’re not writers themselves. Be a good writer—the most important skill of all.

Style counts. Even if most people don’t know AP style, they have an innate sense of what looks professional and what doesn’t. To anyone who’s ever read a book, newspaper or magazine, randomly capitalized words and commas and periods outside quotation marks just look weird. Develop your sense of style and stick to it. In doubt? Can’t afford an AP Stylebook? Go to AP’s website, search for a word or phrase and see how AP handles it.

Metrics count. (This is another whole speech.) Your subject line determines whether anyone opens your email; learn about your audience from those headlines that work best. And study what readers click on when they open your email; if the thing at the bottom gets the most clicks, your readers are suggesting maybe it should have been at the top, and in the subject line—or that the things higher up in the issue didn’t have the best hooks.

Remember: The sky’s the limit. Your blog and email services can link anywhere: To the competition, to your own work. To text, to video, to audio, to photo galleries you create. The hard part, as da Vinci might agree, is deciding what not to do.

Thanks for listening. Go out there, have fun and do good.

Hear this presentation as a podcast.

Marvel Comics creator Stan Lee in 2017: ‘Nerdism is the highest state of mankind’

Meyerson@gmail.com (Charlie Meyerson) — Sat, 22 Apr 2017 22:13:00 -0500

(Updated on the occasion of Stan Lee's death, Nov. 12, 2018.)

Here’s Stan Lee, the man who created or co-created the core Marvel Comics universe, sitting down during C2E2 at age 94 for what his staff said was his last Chicago comics convention appearance. As you’ll hear, he had energy and enthusiasm to betray his age.

His interviewers: Adrian F.E. and Paola Alejandra. Recorded at C2E2 Chicago, April 21, 2017. (Photo from that day: @Malcchiato on Twitter.)

More: My interview with Stan Lee in 1998, my first interview with him in 1975, and another in 1976—in his appearance at the first Chicago Comicon.

And check out my other interviews with thought-leaders through the years on this website, in iTunes, on Spotify, via your favorite podcast player, and at Chicago Public Square.