“Birmingham is a bright and energetic community full of stories worth telling,” says Rachel Osier Lindley, and as the news director for Birmingham’s NPR news station WBHM 90.3 FM Lindley is determined to help share those stories. “I want to work with my colleagues and fellow community members to harness that energy — and turn it into great radio.”
Lindley became WBHM’s news director in September and has big plans for Birmingham. She wants to increase the station’s news staff and produce more in-depth original reporting on topics like education, race, economic development and health. She’s also interested in pursuing more collaborative projects with other media organizations in the city. And Lindley wants to expand the station’s website to include a variety of voices.
Prior to coming to WBHM, Lindley worked for Marfa Public Radio, a network of smaller stations in West Texas.
“We regularly worked with local writers, community organizations, and non-profits to produce a wide variety of original programming,” Lindley explains. “Since we didn’t have a large staff, we had to collaborate with other people and organizations. Collaboration wasn’t a choice, it was a necessity, it was just how we did things. I plan to encourage that mindset here at WBHM, and work with more community partners.”
For Lindley a love for storytelling seems to be in her blood. “Growing up, everyone in my family wrote,” she says. Her father made educational films for Encyclopedia Britannica and was a horror story writer and illustrator in his spare time. Her mother studied journalism briefly before going into nursing, but even after going into the medical field she often wrote articles for nursing publications and local papers.
“Writing was something I just thought all adults did,” Lindley says. “Because of that influence, I’ve done creative writing for fun all my life.”
Lindley’s interest in radio grew from a love of music. Her father was a huge fan of jazz and so was she.
“I grew up just outside of Chicago, and we had a great public jazz station that a community college operated. I spent hours listening to that station,” Lindley recalls.
“I also spent a big chunk of my childhood making fake radio shows on my boom box – recording stories, reading made-up news broadcasts with my friends, creating radio plays. I loved collecting those moments with my friends and being able to listen to them again later.”
Eventually Lindley’s imaginary radio show would become a real one.
“Lucky for me, my high school had a great broadcast program,” Lindley says. “We had a TV studio, a cable access TV channel, and a radio station that played over the campus loudspeakers before and after school. I had a radio show before class each day called ‘Rock and Roll High School,’ and hosted a talk show on the TV station.”
Lindley went on to study journalism at the University of Texas at Austin.
“My first item of business after arriving on campus was to apply for a radio show at KVRX, the student radio station,” Lindley says. “I was a DJ there all 4 years of school, and was the station’s Programming Director for most of that time.”
Lindley also interned at Austin’s public radio station KUT.
“Interning at KUT during college was what made me want to work in public radio,” Lindley says. “Interviewing and reporting for radio was a perfect combination of many of the things I was interested in. I decided that’s what I wanted to do.”
Lindley believes that any students interested in public radio should make it a priority to land an internship. She also offered advice that could be valuable to journalists and writers of any age: “Work hard. Challenge yourself and get our of your comfort zone as much as possible. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Find other women who are smarter and more accomplished than you and learn from them.”
You can meet Rachel Osier Lindley and other members of the WBHM staff at Issues & Ales:Leadership. The event will be held Tuesday, Nov. 19 from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at WorkPlay, 500 23rd St. South. Representatives from throughout Birmingham will discuss the challenges with leadership, civic engagement and regional cooperation that North Central Alabama faces. Lindley will help facilitate the discussion. RSVP here.