Bailon joined WBEZ as executive editor in October 2023. Previously, he was executive editor at KERA public radio in Dallas. Bailon worked for 40 years at metro daily newspapers before he joined public radio. He started as a newspaper reporter before he held a number of newsroom management positions, including serving as executive editor at The Dallas Morning News and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He won the Benjamin C. Bradlee Editor of the Year award from the National Press Foundation in 2014 for the Post-Dispatch coverage of the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. Bailon is a former president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the American Society of Newspaper Editors. He graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Arizona and earned a master’s degree in history at the University of Texas at Arlington.