Knight Chair in Journalism

M.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
B.S., Kansas State University

Philip Meyer teaches undergraduate and graduate students in newswriting and advanced reporting courses. His 1973 book, Precision Journalism, was listed by Journalism Quarterly as one of 35 significant books of the 20^th century on journalism and mass communication. It was also on the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) list of 50 significant books dealing with public opinion research in the association’s first 50 years (1946-1996). The fourth edition was published in 2002. His most recent book is The Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the Information Age, published in 2004.

Meyer is a fellow of the Society of Professional Journalists and has received career awards from AAPOR, the National Press Foundation, the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center and the Research Federation of the Newspaper Association of America.

In 1967, he was detached from the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau to the Detroit Free Press to report on the Detroit riot. His application of social science research methods, learned in Harvard’s Nieman Fellowship program, helped the staff win the Pulitzer Prize for general local reporting.

Knight Ridder later moved him to corporate headquarters to apply those methods to newspaper marketing and the development of an early electronic information service called Viewtron. His 1985 book, The Newspaper Survival Book, is based on that work.

Meyer is a past president of AAPOR and the World Association for Public Opinion Research. He has served on the editorial boards of Public Opinion Quarterly, Newspaper Research Journal and the International Journal of Public Opinion Research. He is a member of USA Today’s Board of Contributors.

Office phone: (919) 962-4085
Office location: 380 Carroll Hall
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
Personal URL: www.unc.edu/~pmeyer/