Longtime writer and columnist Walt Shepperd has joined the staff of Urban CNY he will serve as our Senior Editor.
A three-time Writer of the Year for the New York State Press Association, Walt Shepperd served for 35 years starting in 1971 as columnist, feature writer and senior editor of the Syracuse New Times. From 1965 to 1967, he was assistant editor of Chris Powell’s Home Town News, and, with Dave Prater, founding editor of the Syracuse Gazette. He then founded the Nickel Review, cited as one of the three best newspapers in the country during the sixties-era underground genre by Village Voice media critic Nat Hentoff.
Shepperd is founder, and since 1976, executive producer of the Media Unit, a national award winning hands-on training program for Central New York teens in performance and production for television and stage. Since 1979, the Media Unit has produced “Rough Times Live,” the longest running weekly television broadcast in the country totally produced by teens. Almost 80 percent of Media Unit graduates have gone on to careers in the industry. Shepperd served for a season as executive producer of WIXT-Channel 9’s “Alive in Syracuse” and was a regular panelist on Time Warner’s “Reporter’s Roundtable.”
