Chuck Shriver rates as a sort of Forrest Gump of the media world. Sure, he’s a talented journalist. But this farm kid from Marengo, Ill., also had a knack for being in the right place at the right time.

As an NIU journalism major, Chuck worked first for the yearbook and then as a reporter and later news editor for the Northern Star. He was interested in radio news, too, working for DeKalb’s WLBK. The station owner’s connections to WLS in Chicago helped Chuck land a summer job there. That boosted him, after graduation, to a full-time news-writing job at WGN Radio. WGN radio and TV shared the same building in those days, so Chuck was in the right place to be offered a spot as producer for the late-night news telecast, “Night Beat.”

His biggest break came in 1967, when Chuck was filling in for a WGN-TV sports producer for Cubs broadcast legend and WGN sports director Jack Brickhouse. Brickhouse liked Chuck’s work and offered him a permanent job in the sports department. The station’s identity with the Cubs helped Chuck build a good reputation with the team’s front office. Brickhouse asked him one day if he’d be interested in a new position the Cubs were creating: public relations director.

Thus launched a PR career that included 10 years (1967-76) with the Cubs and seven more in two stints (1977-78, 1980-84) with the White Sox. With the Cubs, Chuck answered for fiery manager Leo Durocher. With the Sox, he reported to legendary baseball showman Bill Veeck.

One Sox promotion worked a little too well: Disco Demolition Night featuring an upstart Chicago deejay named Steve Dahl. Fans rioted, tore up the field and the Sox had to forfeit Game Two of a doubleheader.

“We had no clue how popular Steve Dahl was among teenagers,” Chuck says. “It got out of hand and we weren’t prepared for the number of people who turned out. … Maybe if we’d had a teenager working for us…”

Chuck held a couple of other front-office jobs in the 1970s and ’80s, with the ABA San Diego Sails, the Women’s Pro Basketball League’s Chicago Hustle, soccer’s Chicago Sting, even associate athletic director for marketing at NIU from 1985-88.

In 1988, Chuck embarked on yet another new career, as a copy editor for the Daily Herald. He’d stay longer there than at any other job before retiring in 2003.

“I was set for a radio journalism career, and this all came kind of by accident,” he says. “In a very roundabout way, I wound up working in the field I started out in.”