Springfield news veteran Rich Bradley retires
September 23, 2009
By Andrew Mitchell
Copy Editor
Photo Courtesy of WUIS Rich Bradley works at a typewriter in his early days at WUIS, then known as |
Photo by Melissa Conrad As decades at the station passed, technology was forced to change. Bradley sits in his office, checking email and listening to an HD radio. |
This Friday will be a day 35 years in the making for WUIS's Rich Bradley. The veteran broadcaster, a man who has been with the public radio station since it first went on the air, will read his final newscast before retiring.
And true to his nature as a journalist, he is still not sure whether or not to say anything on the air to mark the occasion or simply read the news as he has always done.
“I haven't thought about it too much,” he said of his final days as WUIS's news director.
But for the rest of the station's listeners, Bradley's retirement is quite the sea change. He has been the station's sole news director since day one and his authoritative anchoring of “Morning Edition,” and “State Week in Review,” have informed and made sense of Illinois news for many.
As a boy growing up on a farm in Ogden, Ill., a small town east of Champaign, Bradley said the closest he came to dreaming of a career in radio was when he sent away for something called a Heath Kit.
“When I was in high school, I sent away for an electronics kit that could build an AM radio transmitter,” he said. “It would only transmit about 25 or 50 feet though.”
It wasn't until he transferred from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign to Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, that he found his calling.
Unlike UIUC, SIU allowed their students to run the station, which immediately sparked Bradley's interest.
“It really was one of those situations where it was like a bug that bites you and infects you,” he said. “I just fell in love with the business.”
Bradley moved to Springfield in 1965 to work for a rock and roll station and co-founded a statewide audio news service before learning of an opening at UIS, then called Sangamon State University.
“I heard that Sangamon State was looking to start a non-commercial, educational station,” he said. “Later we'd call it public radio.”
Bradley applied the news director position and in 1974 was offered the job of WUIS's first news director.
“At the time I was 34 and it represented for me a career goal,” he said, “to get in on the ground floor and help build a radio station from scratch.”
When he started, National Public Radio was still building itself too, and WUIS had to compete with Springfield's other commercial news radio stations. But with time, public radio grew into a primary source for news and information as commercial news radio declined.
Throughout it all, Bradley has been behind the microphone, covering state politics, organizing an Illinois Public Radio network, and mentoring budding journalists. WUIS reporter Jenna Dooley remembers meeting Bradley for the first time as a Public Affairs Reporting Student in 2007.
“He's always offered creative freedom to choose the stories you want to work on,” she said, “and he'll provide background and context. That's the value and the institutional knowledge that he has.”
Upon Bradley's departure, Dooley will take over the reins as anchor for Morning Edition. She says she's not nervous about following Bradley, because as she puts it, the quality and quantity of news won't change.
“Just by nature of the fact that I'm female and younger, I know my style, without even trying, is going to be drastically different,” she said. “[But] I know how he values news judgment ... I know his tips on news gathering and how to put a newscast together. And in that way, it won't be that different from the way Rich does.”
Bradley says he looks forward to seeing how WUIS grows without him, as the station puts together a new studio and expands their digital broadcasting options. As far as post-retirement plans, Bradley says he doesn't have anything “hard and fast,” picked out yet. He would like to travel to all the Illinois Public Radio affiliates he has worked with for years from Springfield but was never able to see first hand how they operated.
Or he could celebrate his signing off by taking up an old hobby.
“Once upon a time I enjoyed woodworking,” he said, “I might take that up again. I've got a bunch of tools shoved off in a corner of the garage.”
