Features
Getting it right for 100 years
Charles N. "Charlie" Wheeler III is a third-generation Chicago and Illinois journalist. His grandfather is in the 1907 photo of the press corps at the Illinois Statehouse.
The current holder of the Wheeler franchise worked as a political reporter in Springfield on staff at the Chicago Sun-Times for 24 years before he arrived at UIS in 1993 to direct the Public Affairs Reporting program. This Wheeler brings an old-time newsman's attitude to the graduate program that includes an internship covering Illinois capital politics under the tutelage of the statehouse press corps including such venerable papers as the Tribune and Sun-Times among others as well as TV broadcasts and NPR radio.
"We don't teach any communication theory," Wheeler says. "We help our students understand what they need to know to inform their communities about issues. I'm talking about property taxes, public budgeting, school finance, the things reporters deal with on a daily basis."
Wheeler doesn't buy the death knells for journalism.
"Journalism's presentation is in transformation," Wheeler says. "But whether it's the Internet, text messaging or podcasting, there'll always be a need to gather the information in the first place, separate the wheat from the chaff and tell the audience what they need to know. Maybe it won't be delivered on dead trees, but you can't replace veracity, trust or integrity."
Wheeler still writes a column for Illinois Issues magazine with the newsman's straightforward, unadorned style. Every once in awhile, though, he'll slip in a 50-cent word -- not for its own sake but because it's the only word that will completely carry his meaning.
Last fall, Wheeler was inducted into the Lincoln League of Journalists of the Illinois Associated Press Editors Association.
"I was very grateful and accepted humbly," he said. "It's an award for service, and I look at it as a tribute to the UIS Public Affairs Reporting program.”
—Mike Lillich