WGN Radio today announced that Charlie Meyerson is returning to radio full-time as news director at Tribune Co.’s WGN-AM 720.

During almost 11 years since leaving the business to help lead the Chicago Tribune’s pioneering breaking news coverage on the Web as chicagotribune.com senior producer and Daywatch columnist, Meyerson has been a frequent contributor to WGN Radio News.

“This has been a quest for a rare individual who can lead our accomplished news professionals forward in gathering and delivering news through traditional, emerging, and as-yet-undeveloped technologies,” said WGN Radio Program Director Kevin Metheny. “Charlie can’t help himself from telling fascinating stories by whatever means possible and we simply couldn’t find a more perfect person to guide our mission to better leverage co-owned news gathering assets.”

Meyerson – winner of dozens of radio journalism awards, including a 1989 national UPI award for investigative reporting – has helped lead chicagotribune.com to a number of honors, including a Chicago Headline Club Lisagor Award for best news Web site in 2008.  

His decision to return to radio full-time comes 30 years to the month after Meyerson, a 2008 inductee to the Illini Media Alumni Hall of Fame at the University of Illinois, landed on the Chicago radio dial. He joined the news team at WXRT-FM 93.1 in July 1979, leaving in 1989 to serve as WNUA-FM 95.5′s news and public affairs director until 1998.

 ”I joined chicagotribune.com almost 11 years ago to help create some of the excitement, urgency and fun of radio news. It’s a thrill now to have the chance to bring what I’ve learned on the Internet back to radio,” said Meyerson. 

Meyerson also has the distinction of having been blown up in a 1991 issue of DC Comics’ “Hawkworld.” (Note: They never found the body.)

Meyerson begins at WGN Radio on Thursday, August 6.