Matt Hammill is a television reporter and main anchor with nearly 20 years experience covering general and environmental news in Illinois. He currently anchors the 5, 6 and 10 p.m. newscasts at WQAD-TV, an ABC news station three hours west of Chicago.

"The heart of our coverage area is the only spot between Minneapolis and New Orleans, where the Mississippi River flows east to west - geographically we're on the upper lip right under Iowa's nose."

The river provides Hamlin abundant story-telling opportunities - from commercial fishing and clamming to the extension of the lock and dam system, chemical runoff, Zebra mussels and the conundrum of three 100-year floods in the last 40-years.

Hammill is the recipient of the Society of Environmental Journalists' Rita M. Ritzke award for excellence in environmental reporting. He also received a 2000 national Edward R. Murrow award for his half hour news special 'corn or concrete,' a mini documentary on urban sprawl in his small community of 400-thousand people.

He currently serves on an environmental advisory council for the Radio Television News Directors Foundation aimed at improving the quality of environmental journalism. He bristles at the notion that all reporters in this field are 'environmentalists.' "I'm no more an environmentalist because I report on the environment than a crime reporter is a criminal."

Hamlin began his college studies in forestry and wildlife biology. He's a graduate of Iowa State University in Ames. When he's not covering the outdoors, he's enjoying it as an avid back-packer and kayaker who spends a lot of his vacation time along the Canadian border in Minnesota and Montana.