Building the Trust: Chris Wheelock, the Peabody-winning producer trading global news for community conversation
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
The National Trust for Local News’ mission comes to life through the work of the teams on the ground at each of our state trusts. In our ongoing Building the Trust feature, we highlight the people at the forefront of constructing a new model for local news.
The biggest stories of Christopher Wheelock’s 44-year career unfolded on the world stage. From a control room at CNN International, he helped produce the network’s coverage on Sept. 11, 2001 and produced segments during the Iraq War. He and his colleagues won Peabody Awards for stories about the 2006 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2014 kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram. He also worked for the Armed Forces Network in Korea, where he earned the Army’s highest honor for public affairs for his work on a documentary.
Wheelock has served as a reporter, anchor, assignment desk editor and newsroom manager. He has held senior roles at news organizations and helped steer coverage during some of the most consequential moments in recent history. Today, he’s just as animated covering restaurant comings and goings, land disputes and wildlife controversies as the business and enterprise reporter for the Sun Journal in Lewiston, a publication of the Maine Trust for Local News.
Wheelock grew up moving around – his father was a diplomat with the U.S. State Department – but as an adult called the Washington, D.C. area home. After moving from network TV to multiple cities for local broadcast journalism jobs, Wheelock and his wife felt ready for a post-COVID change. Four years ago, his wife suggested Maine, and he landed at the Sun Journal.
While the stakes look a little different nowadays, to Wheelock, the reporting is just as important. At 66, after a long career at fast-paced national and international newsrooms, he’s grateful for this chapter.
“That's what I enjoy about journalism a lot,” Wheelock said. “Getting to know the community, the people that are there and having conversations with them, and sharing that with the readers.”
Wheelock views journalism as community service, best practiced through conversation, enterprising stories and reflecting what the community needs to know. His stories are manifestations of those conversations, and his unique narratives drive readers to the Sun Journal.
“I also like to focus on people and profiling business people, because I don't think enough people in the communities understand the people that they do business with,” Wheelock said. “It's a way of humanizing the businesses.”
Wheelock’s impactful, award-winning reporting has been recognized by press associations in Maine and New England. He has written about a wedding caterer stiffing brides; chronicled a years-long battle involving a wealthy homeowner cutting down trees, in violation of town codes, to improve their view; and profiled the countless mom-and-pop shops that dot Maine. All of them get his full attention. When you talk to Wheelock, he lights up sharing what he’s learned.
Wheelock’s experience is a tremendous asset to the Maine Trust for Local News, where the state’s largest newsroom covers communities that make up more than 80% of the state’s population. While he has called Maine home for only four years, he understands Mainers’ pride in tradition and community, and strives to reflect those tenets in his reporting.
“As a local journalist, that's what your responsibility is,” Wheelock said. “It’s to serve the community and be a part of it.”
