Phil Meyer is Knight Chair in Journalism Professor at the University of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Before joining academia in 1981 he had been Director of News and Circulation Research with Knight-Ridder, Inc., and he earlier had been National Correspondent for that media chain.

A Harvard University Nieman Fellow in 1966-1967, Meyer has won numerous awards and accolades from professional journalism organizations, including the 2004 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) Professional Freedom and Responsibility Award, the Sigma Delta Distinguished Service Award, and the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) Award for Exceptionally Distinguished Achievement. He was part of a team of Detroit Free Press journalists that won a 1968 Pulitzer Prize for General Reporting involving 1967 rioting in Detroit.

Meyer is the author of The Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the Information Age (2004, University of Missouri Press) and of Precision Journalism: A Reporter's Introduction to Social Science Methods, first published in 1973, with subsequent editions. Many journalists and journalism educators consider Precision Journalism to be among the seminal books in the field, and Journalism Quarterly has listed it as one of 35 significant books of the 20th Century on journalism and mass communication.

Meyer got his B.S. in technical journalism from Kansas State University, and his M.A. in political science from the University of North Carolina.