Christopher Lydon

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Christopher Lydon (born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1940) is an American media personality and author whose work in radio includes formerly hosting The Connection for WBUR. The program's name and format were developed by WBUR, then Christopher Lydon was hired to host it. [1] 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.

Lydon frequently discussed Internet topics on The Connection, and his ChristopherLydon.org weblog became a launchpad for international broadcastsand other activities. In 2002, 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.

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 [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 newpaper 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.

Lydon has also been the eponymous subject of a tongue-in-cheek love song by Boston band The Dresden Dolls.