“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.
By Javacia Harris Bowser
When Sarah Delia started college as an English and art history major she had no thoughts of one day becoming a radio journalist. But given her love for storytelling and music, Delia now says it makes perfect sense that today she’s an announcer and producer for public radio.
“I knew I liked to write, I knew I liked storytelling, and I’d always loved music and listening to the radio, so it all makes sense that it worked out this way,” Delia says. “But I didn’t go into college saying I’m going to be on the radio when I graduate.”
But residents of Birmingham, Ala., can catch Delia from 3-7 p.m. on Public Radio WBHM 90.3. Delia has served as host for “All Things Considered” and producer of local stories for the station since June.
Originally from Virginia, 26-year-old Delia became hooked on radio during her college years at James Madison University. Delia says she was a bit lonely her freshman year of college because she wasn’t looking to party like many of her peers.
“I didn’t know where to find my people,” she says. Delia father suggested she check out the crew at the college radio station.
Delia expected to find a group of snobby, pretentious people. Instead she found a group of people who became her very best friends, friends with whom she still remains close today.
“I always tell people college radio was my sorority,” Delia says.
At her college radio station Delia learned more about what happened behind the scenes and even had the chance to host a feminist radio talk show.
An internship in public radio before her senior year of college left Delia certain that this was the career path for her. Delia later spent a year in New York freelancing and working as an intern at WYNC’s Studio 360. In 2010 Delia graduated from the Salt Institute for Radio Documentary Studies under the guidance of its then radio instructor Rob Rosenthal.
After working for two years in Fort Wayne, Ind., at Northeast Indiana Public Radio, where she hosted several programs, reported, and produced various stories and shows, Delia was ready to move on. She decided that move should be to Birmingham, Ala.
“I think Birmingham has a lot going for it and I think there are a lot of stories to be told here,” Delia says. “There’s so much history here and there’s so much effort to make things better here, to make a better place, and that really appealed to me.”
Delia’s advice to other young women hoping to have successful careers in radio is to be willing to leave your hometown and go where the job leads you.
“Some of the best advice I’ve gotten is, ‘You have to go away before you can come back,’” Delia says. “You can’t be married to a location. If you really want the experience you’ll go get it.”
In college, Delia’s English studies focused on creative writing. That love for storytelling obviously comes in handy as a radio journalist. And Delia says that when she looks back at the fiction and creative non-fiction she wrote in college, much of it was in the form of short vignettes that would be very radio friendly. The conversational tone of her writing is also perfect for radio.
But Delia admits that the hardest thing for her in her radio career is editing her stories.
“I write very conversationally, which I think translates well to radio, but I’m also the wordiest person,” Delia says with a laugh.
But she doesn’t let word count limits hinder her writing process.
“Just let it out,” Delia says. Her advice is to write your story and then edit to avoid finding yourself staring at a blank screen for hours for fear your sentences will be too long.
If you have time, she says, get a good night’s rest and then edit the piece again.
When asked what advice she’d give to any female journalist, Delia’s answer was simple: “Be assertive.”
She also believes it’s important to be yourself.
“It’s important for you to not be afraid to be yourself and to be a woman,” Delia says. “For a while I was so focused on wanting to be taken seriously as a journalist that I tried to put my gender aside. But our gender is who we are. I think we should embrace it and embrace how you will come to a story differently than someone else will and that’s not better or worse, it’s just different.”
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