My desire to work in broadcasting started when I was in 8th grade at Jessie Clark Middle School in Lexington, Ky. I was a member of the speech team and needed a category to compete in. There were several options, including prose, poetry, monologue and something called “broadcasting,” a word I was not familiar with. I was told it involves reading news on the radio or TV. So I started practicing reading news copy and soon was ready for my first competition, which I won! I couldn’t believe it!
From that moment on, I knew I would be studying broadcasting years later in college. I majored in broadcasting at Eastern Kentucky University, always leaning toward radio news. WEKU News Director Marie Mitchell recognized my desire to get into radio news and eventually hired me as a student worker at the public radio station in Richmond. I also worked part-time at WEKY AM 1340 for several months.
After graduating college, my first full-time job was as a utility player of sorts at WHIR/WMGE in Danville in 1992. I did it all, it seems--news, sports, afternoon disc jockey and occasionally I ran the board for the morning show and weekend shifts. In 1994, immediately after getting back from my honeymoon with my new wife, Allissa, I started working as news director for WFTG in London. Three months later I was offered the news director’s position at WRSL radio in Stanford, which was the town Allissa and I were living in. I stayed at WRSL for the next seven years, serving as operations manager to general manager. But it was news that I loved doing the most and in the fall of 2001 I accepted a news reporter and anchor position at WVLK AM 590 radio in Lexington.
After two years of making the long drive to Lexington every day, I was offered a job working from home and writing news for the Danville Advocate Messenger newspaper. Having never worked for a print medium, I was nervous, but the job was something I grew to love and anticipated working there for a long time. However, about two months into that job, I was offered the position as Southern Kentucky Bureau Chief in Somerset.
My wife, Allissa, teaches kindergarten at Stanford Elementary school and we have two children. Hannah, 4, is in pre-school, and Connor is 1.
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