Mark Scheerer is an award-winning broadcast journalist with over 45 years of experience in reporting everything from world affairs to world premieres. As at home in a combat zone as he was on a Hollywood red carpet, Scheerer covered such diverse stories as famine relief in Sudan and Ethiopia, Billy Joel’s opening night in Moscow, U.S. military intervention in Lebanon, the Woody Allen/Mia Farrow custody case, and Live Aid.
His versatility was in evidence on the pages of The New York Times, where Scheerer wrote the weekly College Hockey Report from 2003 to 2005.
In 1983, ABC Radio News named Scheerer its Reporter-On-The-Road. He spent the next 6 globetrotting years reporting on, among other things, “A Night With Charlie Company – With the U.S. Marines in Beirut,” which won a National Headliner Award in 1984. He covered the invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada and its aftermath and returned a year later to update the story. In July of 1985, Scheerer was backstage interviewing the Live Aid performers in Philadelphia; a month earlier he was visiting refugee camps in the deserts of Ethiopia and the Sudan to assess relief efforts initiated by USA for Africa’s We Are the World. His profile of athlete Wayne Gretzky received the Grand Award at the International Radio Festival for Best Informational Programming.
As a Correspondent for ABC’s “Good Morning America,” in 1987 and 1988, Scheerer accompanied Billy Joel on his groundbreaking tour of the Glasnost-era Soviet Union, reporting on Russia’s rock scene and Joel’s Moscow performance.
From 1989 to 2001, Scheerer was a Correspondent for CNN’s “Showbiz Today.” Covering Music, Film and Television, his assignments included live remotes from the Grammy Awards, MTV Video Music Awards, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Inductions, Woodstock ’94 and ’99. His extensive background in hard news made him the lead reporter for breaking entertainment stories like Sean “Puff Daddy” Comb’s criminal case, the Nashville funeral for Tammy Wynette, the Brooklyn neighborhood “wake” for Notorious B.I.G., the concert-eve hospitalization of Michael Jackson, and the Napster controversy, among others. Madonna, Tom Hanks, Jennifer Lopez, George Clooney, ‘N Sync, Will Smith, Cameron Diaz, Mel Gibson, Tony Bennett and Paul McCartney are just a handful of the entertainers whom Scheerer has interviewed.
In the early Eighties, Scheerer hosted a weekly, late-night talk show and served as News Director at WMET-FM, Chicago. He received the Illinois Associated Press Broadcasters Award for Best Documentary by a Chicago station for “Handgun Control and John Lennon’s Death” in 1982. Prior to that, he created award-winning news departments at WMMR-FM, Philadelphia, WEBN-FM, Cincinnati, and WIOT-FM, Toledo.
After leaving CNN in 2001, he co-founded a video production company, RightSize Media; anchored newscasts on Air America radio network and WQXR-FM, New York; and is an editor for Public News Service.