Latest Wxrt Podcast Episodes
How best to open a podcast
Charlie Meyerson interviews - June 12, 2023 15:19I 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 briefi...
Science fiction writer Greg Bear in 1994: The Internet’s future
Charlie Meyerson interviews - November 20, 2022 14:39[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...
Why I should never sing in public
Charlie Meyerson interviews - June 11, 2022 18:31Chicago 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 N...
1995: Peter David, Chris Claremont and Gary Colabuono discuss the comic book industry’s flirtation with disaster
Charlie Meyerson interviews - June 01, 2022 23:17[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 distr...
Ex-Chicago Tribune editor James Squires warned in 1993 about the corporate takeover of America’s newspapers
Charlie Meyerson interviews - August 25, 2021 00:40Back 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...
WTTW’s new stars navigate changing news landscape
Charlie Meyerson interviews - August 10, 2021 21:01Odds are good you didn’t know their names a decade ago, when one of them was just breaking into Chicago radio news and another was barely removed from an internship at Chicago’s public TV station. And now they’re two of the city’s most influential journalists. In another edition of the Chicago...
Block Club Chicago’s origin story
Charlie Meyerson interviews - July 27, 2021 02:11When a billionaire yanked the plug on a pioneering Chicago digital news site, putting a large team of local reporters out of work, some of them banded together to start another digital news site—for themselves, and for the people of the city. Block Club Chicago editor-in-chief Shamus Toomey jo...
After a lifetime at the Chicago Tribune, Eric Zorn and Steve Johnson are leaving. What’s next?
Charlie Meyerson interviews - June 29, 2021 00:04Columnist Eric Zorn started at the Tribune in 1980; cultural critic Steve Johnson started six years later. Now, they’re among the more than three dozen editorial staffers who’ve left—taking buyouts offered under the Trib’s new ownership. They join hosts Sheila Solomon and Charlie Meyerson for ...
Pulitzer winner Jamie Kalven on the news business: ‘I see no reason to despair’
Charlie Meyerson interviews - June 22, 2021 00:52Jamie Kalven—journalist, human rights activist and founder of one of Chicago’s newest Pulitzer Prize winners, the Invisible Institute—says he has “deep sympathy for those who wagered their lives and their careers on the stability of legacy media,” but he says “some of the new forms that are evol...
A ‘mouthy black lesbian feminist’ is one of Chicago’s most influential media leaders
Charlie Meyerson interviews - June 15, 2021 01:59Karen Hawkins—self-described “mouthy black lesbian feminist over 40” and “recovering mainstream media reporter and editor”—is doing a terrible job of recovering: She’s now co-publisher of the Chicago Reader, the founder of Rebellious Magazine, and a leader of the upstart Chicago Independent Med...
Did Mayor Lightfoot make things better for journalists of color?
Charlie Meyerson interviews - June 08, 2021 02:28Pulliam Professor of Journalism at DePauw University and former Sun-Times editor and columnist Deborah Douglas joins host Charlie Meyerson and co-host Sheila Solomon to launch the new Chicago Media Talks podcast—a joint production of Chicago Public Square and Rivet360—with a discussion of Chicag...
Who was Stan Lee? Two biographers discuss his life and legacy.
Charlie Meyerson interviews - February 10, 2021 21:13Marvel Comics icon Stan Lee so inspired a generation of readers and writers, a multiplicity of biographies was inevitable after his death in 2018. On the occasion of the publication of Oak Park, Ill., native Abraham Riesman’s entry, True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, the Chicago Publ...
Email pioneer Aaron Barnhart interviewed in 1996
Charlie Meyerson interviews - February 08, 2021 22:59Of 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 fut...
Chicago 7 lawyer William Kunstler in 1994: That trial ‘changed me totally’
Charlie Meyerson interviews - October 16, 2020 21:43Prepping 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 Del...
Chicago 7 lawyer William Kunstler in 1994: That trial ‘changed me totally'
Charlie Meyerson interviews - October 16, 2020 21:43Prepping 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 Del...
Charlie Meyerson interviewed … about Charlie Meyerson
Charlie Meyerson interviews - September 06, 2020 17:59This 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, ...
Barack Obama's 1st biographer, David Mendell: Michelle didn't care for the book
Charlie Meyerson interviews - November 22, 2019 21:23He’s Barack Obama’s first biographer. But journalist David Mendell doesn’t expect his award-winning 2007 book, Obama: From Promise to Power, to land a spot in Obama’s presidential library. Mendell and I were colleagues at the Chicago Tribune through much of the 2000s, but we barely exchanged hel...
Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry in 1974 and 1976
Charlie Meyerson interviews - November 07, 2019 06:01You’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 w...
'Star Trek' creator Gene Roddenberry in 1974 and 1976
Charlie Meyerson interviews - November 07, 2019 06:01You’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 w...
1988: Chaos in the Chicago City Council
Charlie Meyerson interviews - September 05, 2019 22:28This 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...
Journalists Lois Wille and Linda Lutton discuss Chicago's urban development in 1997
Charlie Meyerson interviews - July 23, 2019 18:17The 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, ...
How to get your story on the air in Chicago
Charlie Meyerson interviews - June 24, 2019 18:30Do you have a story, an issue, a company or a person you’d like to bring to the attention of Chicago radio and TV newsrooms? Stand by for news you can use. Ava Martin, Stephanie Tichenor, Justin Kaufmann, Stacey Baca, Charlie Meyerson (Photo: Maggie O'Keefe.) The Publicity Club of Chicago, onc...
Science fiction, Radicalized: An interview with Cory Doctorow
Charlie Meyerson interviews - March 24, 2019 22:11Wanna know what terrible technology is headed your way in the years ahead? Journalist and science fiction author Cory Doctorow says it’s not hard: Take a look at what The Powers That Be are foisting on prisoners and students. Doctorow joined the Chicago Public Square Podcast for half an hour o...
We were warned in 1997 of 'underground prejudice'
Charlie Meyerson interviews - November 18, 2018 19:00In 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 ...
Marvel Comics creator Stan Lee in 2017: 'Nerdism is the highest state of mankind'
Charlie Meyerson interviews - November 13, 2018 04:13(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 enthu...
Leon Lederman, science education hacker, in 1997
Charlie Meyerson interviews - October 05, 2018 03:14The 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...
Newspaper editorial boards: Cracking the code
Charlie Meyerson interviews - September 17, 2018 23:37How do you get the attention of newspaper editorial boards? How do you get them to see things your way? Are editorials as valuable as they used to be? Every once in a while, the Publicity Club of Chicago takes me up on my motto, “Will Moderate for Food,” and invites me to lead a panel discussion...
How Steve James overcame doubt—his and others'—to create 'America to Me'
Charlie Meyerson interviews - September 14, 2018 04:21Filmmaker Steve James’s work—including the Oscar-nominated Hoop Dreams and Abacus—has won him critical acclaim galore and goodwill in the town where he lives, Oak Park. But when he set out to create his 10-part documentary series America to Me—about Oak Park, its historic commitment to integrati...
Food Network star Jeff Mauro talks about that time a guy in the audience died
Charlie Meyerson interviews - May 18, 2018 19:13Something different for the Chicago Public Square Newscast (and Podcast) series this time: A visit with Food Network star and Chicago native Jeff Mauro. He joined the Wednesday Journal Conversations series May 15, 2018, to talk about his life and times—including that time he was performing imp...
Anna Quindlen, talking out loud in 1993
Charlie Meyerson interviews - May 05, 2018 17:55Approaching 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 n...
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