April 20, 2007
For Immediate Release
MEYEROWITZ NAMED EDITOR OF NEW TIMES BROWARD-PALM BEACH
Robert Meyerowitz has been named the new editor-in-chief of New Times Broward-Palm Beach, Village Voice Media announced today.
A veteran journalist who has plied his craft in environments ranging from the shooting wars of Latin America to the wilds of Alaska, Meyerowitz will take the helm at the Ft. Lauderdale weekly in mid-May. He replaces Tony Ortega, who was recently appointed the editor-in-chief of the Village Voice.
Meyerowitz is an experienced adventurer, writer, editor, and manager, and most recently has served as editor-in-chief at the Anchorage Press. Under his stewardship, the Press has won numerous awards for news and feature writing, and even garnered praise from the Anchorage Daily News for producing “thoughtful and provocative journalism” that defied industry trends toward consultant-driven blandness.
In that sense, Meyerowitz is a kindred spirit to New Times BPB, whose mixture of award-winning investigative reporting, provocative feature writing and irreverent humor has earned it a regional and national reputation as one of the nation’s finest newsweeklies. In a further sign of what could be journalistic kismet, a Press story edited by Meyerowitz, Tony Hopfinger’s “Desolation Row,” won the national feature writing award in the Society of Professional Journalists’ 2003 Sigma Delta Chi Awards. The next year, Sam Eifling of New Times BPB won the same award in the same category for his story “Hot Dog Ho!”
Born at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, Meyerowitz was raised in upper New York State. He attended New York’s Bard College, an enclave of original thinking located at Annandale-on-Hudson. After getting out of school, he says, “I really needed to see what war was like, so I decamped for Nicaragua. I wanted to get shot at, and did.”
When not dodging bullets, Meyerowitz worked as a correspondent for AP Radio and NPR, as well as stringing for numerous daily and weekly publications, including the Sun-Sentinel, the Chicago Sun-Times, and Newsweek.
In 1994 he headed to Anchorage “because I wanted to live in another place as earthquake-prone as Nicaragua.” After spending three years as a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News, specializing in A-section features for the Sunday edition, he was hired in 1998 to edit the Press.
During his stint in Alaska, Meyerowitz also freelanced for Phoenix New Times; in fact, during a past life, he was even a regular contributor to the paper’s music section. Additionally, he briefly served as editor of the Honolulu Weekly before deciding that one man can stomach only so much Don Ho music.
