Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/250528
co-anchor) David Brinkley." When he was 15, he reported to his hometown radio station in Holland, Mich., to let them know he was available. Tey took him up on it. Many years later he took charge of the University of Michigan's classical station, then under threat of defunding by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and turned it into a statewide presence in news radio. During the next decade, the organization's revenue grew from $1.5 million to $6.5 million. Te audience more than quadrupled, from 100,000 listeners to 450,000. Michigan Radio was still growing, with a potential audience of six million and three regional stations to serve challenge and possibility. "I saw the station, and saw the people, and the fact that you had three formats," he says. "I mean, it's radio heaven here." Seven and a half years later, public radio news in Louisville is diferent. Nobody is arguing. Te place is crawling with reporters, including that new investigative reporting unit. Te idealism is infectious. Reynolds is leading an efort to increase collaboration among most of the state's seven public radio stations. And there's money. Since Reynolds' arrival, revenue from the station's twice-yearly on-air fund drives increased by more than two and a half times. Previously, the station ary 2010. Hart is partners with entrepreneur and 2008 U.S. Senate candidate Bruce Lunsford in the flm production enterprise Hart/ Lunsford Pictures. But he doesn't sound like a guy who runs amusement parks or makes movies. He sounds like a journalism professor. Or a reporter. A reporter fed up with what's happened to the profession. "We are starting to dumb down investigative journalism because reporters don't have the opportunity to follow up on a story," Hart says. "When a reporter has to keep churning out stories, they can't get into the meat. Elected ofcials have become their own form of plutocracy. It is essential to the "One thing I found encountering people who work in public radio," news director Gabe Bullard says, "it's a lot like encountering people in the frst few years of journalism school. We're going to do news for the public good, and that's it." them, when a headhunter asked Reynolds to apply for the leadership spot in Louisville. "I said no," Reynolds recalls. "Just go down," the headhunter argued. "It would be a fun trip." Reynolds had — gasp — never been to Kentucky. "I didn't know what it was, what it was like," he says. "I had sort of stereotypical ideas." But he came down. And, well, there was an omen. Or maybe it wasn't an omen. But as Reynolds rode the elevator at the Marriott on his way to his interview, about halfway down it stopped, the doors opened, and Muhammad Ali stepped inside. Muhammad Ali. Maybe the most famous man in the world. Appearing before Donovan Reynolds in a small enclosure at a critical moment. Shouldn't this mean something? Still, friends in the business warned him against the Louisville operation. It had a reputation for infghting. Did Reynolds really want to wade into that snake pit? But his visit assured him that the squabbling was in the past. Although the potential Louisville audience of just under a million was much smaller than the one in Michigan, and he would be a hard day's journey from the farm escape he owned on Lake Michigan in the northern part of the Michigan mitten, he couldn't resist the heady combination of 48 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 2.14 had never raised more than $180,000 in a fund drive. Now, it routinely raises in the neighborhood of a half-million and sometimes more. (Full disclosure: LPM has had a long-standing agreement to distribute Louisville Magazine subscriptions to LPM members.) Further, LPM is in the initial stages of a $7 million capital fund-raising campaign, with $1.75 million down, and $5.25 million to go, which will fund investigative reporting, upgrade transmitters and create what Reynolds calls "the digital newsroom of the future." (Star Trek uniforms? Phasers?) And all of this has happened in what may be the worst decade the news business has ever faced. As every other form of news media contracted, as it became de rigueur to bemoan our 140-character attention spans and our electronics-induced ADD, Louisville Public Media fourished. Is it something in the water? T he song of New York lingers in Ed Hart's voice after decades away from his hometown. It's an eloquent voice; he's a well-spoken guy. Fit and dressed all in black, he makes a mostly bald pate and prominent ears look stylish. He is about to reopen Kentucky Kingdom, which he owned before and then sold in 1997. Tose owners went bankrupt and closed the park in Febru- function of a democracy to hold them accountable. And to do that you have to have the manpower, the women-power, to get the story." And that's why, he says, he gave the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting a quarter-million dollars to get started. Donovan Reynolds dreamed up the center, envisioning it would employ two components important to his approach to radio: a focus on the news and an emphasis on collaboration. Te news focus was already under way. New media platforms, like smart phones, and contraction in nearly every other part of the traditional media made a place for WFPL to expand. "With these layofs in the newspaper, and with the state of commercial broadcasting, I just felt that we not only had an opportunity here; we had a responsibility to try to fll the gap in serious reporting," Reynolds says. "And so that's when I started going to the board and saying, 'I really think we need to beef up our news operation. Tis is our opportunity to be a more important community service, and I really think it's something we should be doing to fulfll our mission.'" Tat led to the expansion of daily coverage and to WFPL's decision to focus on fve areas its better-educated-than-average audience is interested in: environment, education, the