Michael Howard King (born December 18, 1962) [1] [2] is an American commentator, columnist and Murrow Award-winning & Emmy Award-winning television producer.
Born and raised in Gary, Indiana, King graduated from Roosevelt High School in Gary in 1980. [2] King attended Howard University and Purdue University and was a student journalist for the Purdue Exponent . [2] His uncle Emery King was a reporter for NBC News. [1]
While still a high school student, King began his first media job in August 1979 as a weekend DJ for Gary radio station WLTH. [3] [4] [5] King worked at various other radio stations in Northern Indiana and the Washington metropolitan area in the 1980s. [5]
King moved to the Atlanta metropolitan area in 1994, becoming station manager for WIGO (later WALR), a talk radio station targeting black Atlanta listeners. [6] [7] [8] 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. [9] Beginning with the 1995 All-Star Game, WIGO began carrying NBA Radio Network game broadcasts in February 1995. [10]
Joining black conservative organization Project 21 in 1996, King wrote commentaries for Project 21 from 1998 to 2005. [11] [5] [12] In one 1999 commentary for Project 21, King opposed lowering academic standards for NCAA 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." [11] [13]
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. [5]
At the end of the 1990s, King was a weekend morning news anchor for WGST. [14]
In September 2005, King became a producer and reporter with WXIA-TV Atlanta. [5]
In 2021, King moved from WXIA to Atlanta television station WUPA as a digital media strategist. [15]
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 for Best Website. [16] [17]
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". [1] [18] [19]
King lives in Mableton, Georgia. [20] [21]