CBS web chief jumps to NPR as online editorial director

Originally published in Current, March 24, 2008

Dick Meyer, a CBS journalist for 23 years and editorial director of CBSNews.com for nine years, will start work April 7 [2008] as editorial director, NPR Digital Media.

He’ll help “establish NPR.org as a publication with a recognizable voice, style and approach that are distinctive yet consistent with the values of public radio,” said Maria Thomas, senior v.p. of NPR Digital Media, in a memo.

He’ll also “articulate and evangelize NPR’s digital programming strategy” to member stations and other stakeholders and develop policies and standards for the site, she said. Anya Grundmann and Joe Matazzoni, senior supervising producers, will report to him.

Meyer wrote a weekly column, “Against the Grain,” for the CBS News site and said he hopes to write a column on NPR.org.

His book, Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium, was published by Crown Publishing in August. Before turning to the Internet, Meyer was a producer of political and investigative reports for the CBS Evening News, including the Reality Check segments and three election-night broadcasts.

He joined CBS as an election-unit researcher in 1985, covered the 1988 presidential campaign as an off-air producer and filed reports for CBS Radio News. Before joining CBS, Meyer was a staff writer for Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen in 1984 and 1985 and author of Running for Shelter, a book on tax shelters.

Additional item published in Current, Sept. 15, 2008

Dick Meyer, editorial director for NPR Digital Media, is author of a Crown Publishing book published in August [2008], Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millenium, which surveys the cheesy things that many Americans dislike about their own culture — such as cell-phone blabbers and worship of self-awareness. Meyer has resumed writing a weekly online column on NPR.org, Against the Grain, that he wrote for CBS News’s website when he was its editorial director.