PUBLIC SQUARE CHARLIE
C
harlie Meyerson has been a part of the Chicago media landscape now for four decades as a newscaster for WXRT , WNUA , WGN , the Chicago Tribune and more . Just last year he brought home an Edward R . Murrow award for a report he did at Rivet Radio .
“ One night at Rivet ,” he explained , “ we had a couple of people working overnight , and the glass desk just spontaneously exploded . And that is the technical term . It exploded . We had two staffers in the report explaining when this happened they were worried they would get blamed . Turns out that small imperfections in the glass , little flaws , with a slight change in temperature can expand or contract , and that can be enough to shatter the lattice of the glass surface . And that ’ s apparently what happened . The report walked the listeners through the experience , and we got this lovely award .”
Afew months ago Charlie launched a brand new venture . He is now the editor-inchief of Chicago Public Square , a newsletter ( and website ) that provides daily news headlines and links to a Chicago audience . “ It goes back to what I am as a professional . I ’ ve worn so many different hats , and had one job after another that I really truly enjoyed . One of the things that launched my career was being a newscaster on the radio . The great thing about being a newscaster , particularly on a music station , is that for two minutes , three minutes , four minutes , five minutes whatever you got , it ’ s your chance to provide your view about what ’ s important in the world . For me , being a newscaster , learning things and sharing them with people is central to who I am . That ’ s really all I ’ m doing here .”
Charlie is a pioneer in the e-newsletter headline business . In the late ' 90s and early ' 00s , his Chicago Tribune Daywatch newsletter was a must read . “ When I joined the Tribune in 1998 , the idea was ‘ here ’ s a newscast via e-mail .’ It wasn ’ t an easy sell at the time in that I believed it should be written conversationally , have some degree of personality , some sense of humor , and those things were not common in newspaper e-mail newsletters in the late ' 90s . So I was delighted , honored and privileged that the Tribune let me do Daywatch for close to a decade . And I missed it . As I told many friends over the years , when you have some free time , you should take advantage of the internet ’ s ability to let you do it . Chicago Public Square lets me do that . It is very much like Daywatch with a few exceptions . First of all , technology has advanced to a point that it ’ s much easier than the hand-coded HTML that I had to work in once upon a time . Also , because Chicago Public Square is independent of other news organizations , I can point people wherever I think the best or most rewarding development of a story is . And that ’ s tremendously liberating . Chicago Public Square can point anyone anywhere . It ’ s a much more ecumenical approach .”
Charlie Myerson
By Rick Kaempfer
The e-newsletter arrives every morning with concise and catchy headlines to the stories that Meyerson believes will most interest the Chicago audience . “ My tagline says ‘ Chicago News Frontpage ’ and that ’ s what it aspires to be . I tell people that it ’ s as much about Chicago as the Tribune or the Sun-Times in that everything in there is relevant to people who live in Chicago or are interested in Chicago or the Chicago area or Illinois . To be an involved citizen in Chicago , you need to keep an eye on Washington , on what ’ s happening in other states . But it ’ s all designed with an eye for what ’ s relevant for people in Chicago . I have a longstanding interest in technology ,
and the environment , so it does skew a bit in that direction , but I consider it tools for living in Chicago .”
These days the number of sources available is obviously much greater than they were when Meyerson was doing Daywatch a decade ago . On the other hand , there has also famously been an explosion of the phenomenon of Fake News . Charlie isn ’ t worried about that . “ As a journalist of 40 years , I have a pretty good sense of which news organization is trustworthy , which organizations are reliable , and I certainly tend to point to them . But there ’ s an up and coming cohort of news sources that not everyone is familiar with that I have through avid reading over the years come to recognize as trustworthy , or at least worthy of consideration . Another source I use is an app called Nuzzel . It surfs everyone I follow on Facebook and Twitter and it serves up one article after another that my friends are sharing and it ’ s free of the noise of Facebook and Twitter . Nuzzel is my front page , because these articles are being shared by people I trust and respect , and because of that they tend to have a high degree of trustworthiness .”
The early signs for Chicago Public Square are encouraging . “ So far we ’ re closing in on 700 subscribers , which is pretty good for just a little over a month , but of course I ’ d like more . We have astonishing audience engagement numbers . It ’ s close to a 50 % open rate every day . That ’ s well more than double the average for media and publishing newsletter . We ’ re also double the click-rate , according to Mail Chimp . I think we have a pretty compelling audience for advertisers .”
To find Chicago Public Square , visit chicagopublicsquare . com
16 illinoisentertainer . com april 2017