Michael Howard King (born December 18, 1962) is an American commentator, columnist and Murrow Award-winning &

Emmy Award The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...

-winning television producer.

Early life and education

Born and raised in

Gary, Indiana Gary is a city in Lake County, Indiana, United States. The city has been historically dominated by major industrial activity and is home to U.S. Steel's Gary Works, the largest steel mill complex in North America. Gary is located along the ...

, King graduated from Roosevelt High School in Gary in 1980. King attended Howard University and

Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and money ...

and was a student journalist for the '' Purdue Exponent''. His uncle Emery King was a reporter for

NBC News NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, a division of NBCUniversal, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's var ...

Career

While still a high school student, King began his first media job in August 1979 as a weekend DJ for Gary radio station

WLTH WLTH (1370 AM) is a radio station in Gary, Indiana east of the Chicago metropolitan area. It is owned by Michilliana Broadcasting, LLC. The station's current format is African-American Talk Radio. Notable radio alumni of WLTH include Steve King ...

. King worked at various other radio stations in Northern Indiana and the Washington metropolitan area in the 1980s. King moved to the

Atlanta metropolitan area Metro Atlanta, designated by the United States Office of Management and Budget as the Atlanta–Sandy Springs–Alpharetta, GA Metropolitan Statistical Area, is the most populous metropolitan statistical area in the U.S. state of Georgia and the ...

in 1994, becoming station manager for WIGO (later WALR), a talk radio station targeting black Atlanta listeners. At WIGO, King launched new programming in January 1995 such as ''Georgia Live'', a daily interview show distributed to seven other stations in Georgia and South Carolina. In one 1999 commentary for Project 21, King opposed lowering academic standards for

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...

student-athletes on the grounds that "the primary purpose for college was to get an education, not to act as a farm system for the NBA." Joining CNN Interactive in 1997, King was part of the web development team that launched CNNSI.com, the website for CNN Sports Illustrated, later that year. At the end of the 1990s, King was a weekend morning news anchor for WGST. In September 2005, King became a producer and reporter with

WXIA-TV WXIA-TV (channel 11) is a television station in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by Tegna Inc. alongside MyNetworkTV affiliate WATL (channel 36). Both stations share studios at One Monroe Place on the north en ...

Atlanta. In 2021, King moved from WXIA to Atlanta television station WUPA as a digital media strategist.

Awards and recognition

At WXIA, King was part of WXIA's news production team that won the 2011 Southeast Emmy Award for News Programming Excellence (Category 1A) and the 11Alive.com website team that won a 2015 regional

RTDNA Edward R. Murrow Award The Radio Television Digital News Association (formerly the Radio-Television News Directors Association) has been honoring outstanding achievements in electronic journalism with the Edward R. Murrow Awards since 1971. Among the most prestigious ...

for Best Website. In 2016, King won the Edward R. Murrow Award for Investigative Reporting among large market TV stations. This award was for an in-depth report on WXIA about the American Legislative Exchange Council, "Smart ALEC: The Backroom Where Laws Are Born".

Personal life

King lives in Mableton, Georgia.

References

External links

Michael King at About.me
{{DEFAULTSORT:King, Michael 1962 births Writers from Gary, Indiana Living people Writers from Georgia (U.S. state) Purdue University alumni Howard University alumni Regional Emmy Award winners Television producers from Georgia (U.S. state) Television producers from Indiana People from Mableton, Georgia Radio personalities from Atlanta Radio personalities from Indiana