Lew Irwin

"He is one of the great reporters in America today....I could make a case that he is one of the most useful citizens." Poet Carl Sandburg to ABC News Chief Jim Hagerty, 1961.

Lew Irwin has had a hand in nearly every facet of news and information broadcasting, a familiar face and voice in Southern California for more than 50 years as he anchored television news programs or directed the news operations of leading radio stations, always adding his hallmark -- a flair for humor and for pointing out the extraordinary. In 1968, he produced and hosted The Credibility Gap on KRLA Los Angeles, which integrated topical satire and music with the news. Time and Newsweek wrote full-page articles about it, and it was featured in a long segment on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.

Following that, Irwin produced and hosted more than a half dozen syndicated radio series, including, from 1972-1985, Earth News Radio, which launched independent, bartered syndicated radio. In 1995 he wrote SINATRA: The Pictorial Biography, published by Running Press.

He recently completed DEADLY TIMES: The 1910 Bombing of the Los Angeles Times and America's Forgotten Decade of Terror, published by Globe-Pequot Press. In his review of the book, Anthony Mostrom of L.A. weekly said that Irwin is “a poet in prose.” C.D. Quyn of the San Francisco Book Review called it a “wonderfully written narration.” And Publishers Weekly said that it was “masterfully” written.