In 1979, he joined The New York Times as the senior writer for foreign affairs, a position he held until his retirement in 1998.
During his junior year, he became the editor of The Daily Cardinal, the student newspaper, while serving as the campus correspondent of the Milwaukee Journal.
Meyer won an Overseas Press Club award for his coverage of Latin America,[citation needed] and during the Cuban revolution he interviewed Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra.
From 1965 to 1970, he was the Post's London bureau chief where he became a weekly regular on the BBC and a character in the humor magazine Private Eye.
He joined The New York Times editorial board in 1979, where he served until 1998 as the senior writer on foreign affairs and was a frequent contributor to the "Arts and Ideas" section.