Charles N. Wheeler III
The director of the Public Affairs Reporting (PAR) graduate program is Professor Charles N. Wheeler III, a veteran newsman who came to the University of Illinois at Springfield following a 24-year career at the Chicago Sun-Times.
Wheeler covered state government and politics for the Sun-Times since 1970, when he covered the Sixth Illinois Constitutional Convention. For the last 19 years of his Sun-Times tenure, Wheeler was assigned to the newspaper’s Statehouse bureau. During that time, he was elected to 16 consecutive one-year terms as president of the Illinois Legislative Correspondents Association and served for many years on the PAR program and admissions committees.
Since 1984, he has written a monthly column for Illinois Issues magazine, which has won five Capitolbeat awards for magazine commentary/analysis. In 2006, the Illinois Associated Press Editors Association inducted him into The Lincoln League of Journalists, which honors men and women who have provided exemplary service to other journalists and to daily newspapers published in Illinois. In 2013, he was chosen as the Journalist of the Year by the Journalism Department at Eastern Illinois University. He is also a regular on the panel for State Week, WUIS' weekly political analysis program that airs on public radio stations across Illinois.
Before joining the Sun-Times in 1969, Wheeler served more than three years as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in the Republic of Panama. He is a graduate of St. Mary’s University, Winona, MN, majoring in English, and received a master’s degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
Wheeler draws on the talents of many UIS faculty with expertise in such fields as public budgeting, political science, and communication, as well as professional journalists and state officials, to present students with a well-rounded program to bridge the academic and professional areas.
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The election saw disappointing results for Democrats at the state level, especially the failure of Governor J.B. Pritzker's proposed change to a...
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This week saw the virtual Democratic National Convention, the decision to remove some controversial statues from the State Capitol grounds, and the...
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This week, the major electric utility ComEd agreed to pay $200 million to resolve a federal criminal investigation into long-running bribery scheme that...
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It would be difficult to overstate how consequential the past year was in Illinois government and politics. This week on State Week , the panel looks...
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Charlie Wheeler has been covering Illinois government for 50 years. As he retires from leading the Public Affairs Reporting program at the University of...
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Illinois is investing $29 million to try to get an accurate count in the 2020 Census. On the line are two seats in Congress and the Electoral College.
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The Illinois General Assembly has just one week left in its spring legislative session, and the number of outstanding issues are beginning to pile up. A...
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Republicans are trying to get back in on next year's budget negotiations. Meanwhile, as red states compete to place more and more restrictins on...
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Illinois gets an April surprise — $1.5 billion in unexpected revenue — as lawmakers debate what the windfall means. The public also got its first look...
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Listen to a special State Week , recorded in front of an audience at the Lincoln-Herndon Law Offices state historic site in downtown Springfield. Host...