Charlie Meyerson interviews

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.)

[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.

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.

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

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.

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.)