Christopher Lydon
Categories: American people stubs | Journalist stubs | American bloggers
Christopher Lydon (born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1940) is an American media personality and author whose work in radio includes creating The Connection for WBUR. He is a former journalist with the New York Times, former WGBH Boston evening news anchor, and a candidate for mayor of Boston in 1993. Christopher Lydon is a graduate of Boston's Roxbury Latin School and Yale University.
He and longtime producer Mary McGrath were sacked by WBUR in 2002 in a highly public falling-out after Lydon and McGrath attempted to convert their claims of intellectual property in The Connection into some kind of financial ownership. The station offered a pay package that was, by public radio standards, immense. But there was no going back.
Internet topics became a topic of The Connection, and his ChristopherLydon.org weblog became a launchpad for international broadcasts and other activities.
While a fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society in 2003, Lydon began recording in-depth interviews focused on blogging and politics, posting the downloadable audio files as part of his weblog. Dave Winer, also a Berkman Fellow, created an RSS enclosure feed for Lydon's MP3 interview files, an event often credited with sparking the growth of podcasting. He also launched the political site BOPnews for "Blogging of the President" during the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign.
On May 30, 2005, Lydon returned to the air on University of Massachusetts at Lowell's radio station WUML and Boston's WGBH with a new show called Open Source, syndicated through Public Radio International. Including a blog and podcast, the program promised to "use blogs to be a show about the world." The third episode of the show focused on Wikipedia and featured Jimbo Wales as a guest.
Lydon has also been the subject of a (humorous) song, "Christopher Lydon", by Boston band The Dresden Dolls.