Christopher Lydon
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Christopher Lydon (born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1940) is an American media personality and author. He is best known for being the original host of The Connection, produced by WBUR and syndicated to other NPR stations.
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[edit] Background
Christopher Lydon is a graduate of Boston's Roxbury Latin School and Yale University.
[edit] Journalistic History
He is a former journalist with the New York Times, and anchored The Ten-O'Clock News on WGBH in Boston, Massachusetts. After WGBH cancelled its nightly news program, he moved to WBUR, where in 1994 he became host of The Connection. In 2001, he and his longtime producer Mary McGrath were fired after a high-profile contract dispute with WBUR. McGrath's and Lydon's claim, rejected by the station, was that they, not WBUR, were the true creators of The Connection - moving it far beyond the initial WBUR template to become the successful, widely syndicated program.[1]
During his tenure on The Connection, Lydon frequently discussed Internet topics, 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. Bob Doyle built a MP3 portable recording studio for Lydon. 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 [2] 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." On October 16, 2006, in an article entitled UML drops Lydon, a Massachusetts based newspaper known as the Lowell Sun announced that "Radio personality Christopher Lydon's lucrative and controversial contract with UMass Lowell to broadcast an hourlong radio show will not be renewed when it expires in December." Upon notice of the UMass Lowell dropout, Lydon began actively seeking new funders for the program, which is now available as a podcast.
[edit] Politics
Lydon was a candidate for mayor of Boston in 1993.
[edit] Cultural References
Lydon has also been the eponymous subject of a song by the Boston punk cabaret duo The Dresden Dolls in which singer Amanda Palmer professes her love for him.
