This blog is centered on Fishers news, but every now and then, I take a point of personal privilege.  This is one of those times and I have two things to write about on this Sunday evening.

First, for reasons I cannot explain, I was fascinated with radio broadcasting from the time my parents bought my brother Tom & I transistor radios in the early 1960s (hard to believe that was hi-tech at that time).  I listened intently just about every day to nearly all the local stations I could get on my little portable radio.

That interest in radio never waned.  In 1968 I was hired to work in a radio station just to change records and tapes (digital technology did not exist at that time) and to watch over the equipment.  There was no microphone in the studio, everything was prerecorded.

But I waited for my chance to work on the air.  I graduated from a trade school that specialized in training radio announcers.  I applied for jobs everywhere.

Finally, I landed my first announcing job.  It was WIFN Radio in Franklin, Indiana.  A man named Ron Douglas was willing to take a chance on a young kid just out of high school to be a part of his announcing staff.

Ron Douglas started me part-time, then later allowed me to join the full-time staff a few months later.  Eventually, Ron promoted me to Program Director, which is essentially the person managing the announcing staff.  Ron also allowed me to live my dream of being a sports play-by-play announcer for high school and small college sports.

Ron was not a natural salesman, but to be a radio station manager in those days, you needed to get out on the street and sell.   A strong work ethic allowed Ron to slowly grow the station’s revenue, even in tough economic times.

Ron and I didn’t agree on everything.  I didn’t like the way he treated some of my friends when they came to work at the station.  But broadcasting has always been a tough business, so that all resulted in growing a thick skin, which helped me later on in my 14-year broadcasting career.

Ronald G. Douglas died on January 7th, 2019, at the age of 74.  I suppose everyone in broadcasting remembers the first person willing to take a chance and hire them.  Ron Douglas took a chance on me.  I will never forget that.

My sincere sympathies to his wife Mary and Ron’s entire family.  I will always remember Ron.

Now, on to the second item, NUVO.

I remember when NUVO hit the local news scene in 1990.  The Pulliam family owned the Indianapols Star and News and maintained the staunchly conservative political stance the newspapers had always exemplified.

NUVO came onto the scene to provide a counter-balance to the Pulliam Press of that time.  It’s politics were decidedly liberal, but the real strength of the weekly paper was the entertainment news.  NUVO was the news source of record for entertainment in the city of Indianapolis.

The late Harrison Ullman was strident in his criticism of the Indiana legislators.  Even as a small paper, it was all over downtown Indianapolis and our Statehouse elected officials never cared for Ullman’s cutting commentaries about their work.

NUVO was a free newspaper you could pick up in most areas of Indianapolis and some suburbs.  It was an early adapter to Internet technology, long before the Star had an online presence.

Basically, NUVO provided an alternative view of the city.

That alternative view is no more.  NUVO is yet another casualty of the print media as it is laying-off most of the staff.  There will be an online news site yet to be established, but there will reportedly be no entertainment news on the new online site, and there will be a monthly charge to subscribe.  I wish them well, but it’s a competitive market out there.

I am a believer that different points of view need to be heard.  If the local newspaper is conservative, you like to see a more liberal counterpart.  If the local paper is liberal, a more conservative view should be available.  The Indianapolis Star just fired its editorial page editor and has drastically cutback editorial commentary in a dramatic fashion.  This is not good.

The loss of NUVO is a very big loss for the entire Indy metro area.  NUVO publisher Kevin McKinney has invested a great deal of his own money into keeping NUVO alive for a very long time.  But in the end, it just wasn’t enough.

My heart goes out to all the staff members that lost their jobs at NUVO, including editor Laura McPhee.  It is a tough time for journalists.  My hope is that all these unemployed writers land on their feet.