Blogging goes to radio in Chicago

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Tribune Company’s WGN-AM announced the debut this Saturday (11/14) of “ChicagoNow Radio,” a weekly radio show which will feature a rotating cast of bloggers from the ChicagoNow.com local blog network. Chicago radio veteran Bill Leff will host.


“WGN wanted to create a boundary-free radio celebration of Chicago life. ChicagoNow is a collection of fascinating people who can’t stop themselves from constantly telling Chicago’s story as they see it in a dynamic, refreshing, and sometimes disturbing way. This will be a crazy collision of experiences and perspectives,” said WGN Radio Program Director Kevin Metheny.

“ChicagoNow is home to 126 of Chicago’s best experts,” says ChicagoNow Editorial Director Tracy Schmidt. “Every day they write about what makes Chicago both great and second-rate. On air, our bloggers will never be at a loss for words. We can’t wait to hear what they have to say every Saturday on WGN,” she added. More than 100 local bloggers are featured on ChicagoNow.com, covering a wide range of topics and interests.

Weekly podcasts of ChicagoNow Radio will be available at wgnradio.com, along with links to the week’s featured blogs.

What’s the format? Leff will chat with different ChicagoNow bloggers each week, “focusing on the most newsworthy, irreverent, eye-opening and entertaining topics of the week while celebrating all great things local to Chicago.” In short, local, local and more local.

RBR-TVBR observation: Some of you might be saying that WGN is foolish for giving promotion to a “new media” competitor. Au contraire! ChicagoNow.com is part of the Chicago Tribune Media Group portfolio – so this is really a multi-platform play for Tribune Company. Pretty sweet!