Marshall University’s award-winning-and-winning radio station

WMUL feels like a tight-knit family of student volunteers these days

Preface: Old stories come back when you visit your hometown

This week in Ritter Park’s outdoor amphitheater in Huntington, WV, a community theater group is performing a jukebox musical production based on Jimmy Buffett tunes. I bumped into Mary Smirl, who runs HART in the Park, while she was serving frozen margaritas to attendees.

“There’s a story about you that I still tell,” says Mary. I’m a little scared. I haven’t lived in Hutington for 26 years, which is a long time to tell a story.

“You were on the tech crew for a showcase production and went to use the bathroom before the show. All of us on the crew heard Jared’s voice in our earpieces: ‘Nathan, we can hear you whizzing.’ Your headset mic wasn’t muted.”

I’m so glad I continue to be a cautionary tale to the Huntington theater community.

But it’s true: some things probably ought to be muted. When writing about Appalachia, I am aware of the problems: addiction, poverty, a rapacious extraction industry, and so on. And I am also acutely aware of how the outside world tends to view this place. Stereotyping and pathologizing run rampant, and I don’t have any interest in fueling that.

So this blog is primarily about finding the helpers in Appalachia who are using community radio as their means of helping. There may be a time to talk about the deep structural problems. But on this trip, I’m muting the whiz, or at least relegating it way to the background.

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WMUL: Marshall University’s award-winning-and-winning-and-winning radio station

At my radio station, I like to win awards. Trophies line a pair of ledges on either side of WTJU’s stairwell. It’s good decor for first-time visitors, though somebody once remarked that they didn’t know any other adult who likes trophies as much as me.

That person should meet Dr. Chuck Bailey, professor at Marshall University and faculty manager of WMUL 88.1 FM. Dr. Bailey started entering awards contests in 1985, and he and his students have won more than 2,500 broadcasting awards over the years. The hallways are truly lined with plaques and trophies.

“Dr. Bailey set the standard for everything that happens here,” said Makaylah Wheeler, WMUL Station Manager and grad student in Marshall’s Communication Studies program. “At the time, no one believed we could win awards, so Dr. Bailey won the first ones.”

WMUL is part of Marshall’s journalism program, and Makaylah, David Adkins, and Emma Gallus sat down with me in their Classroom Studio. Journalism classes are taught in here each year - Audio Production, Radio News, Sports Journalism, and Practice in Journalism. It’s also where WMUL’s daily newscast and sports report are hosted live. “All the journalism studnts basically live here,” said Makaylah (pictured at right).

Programming includes music during the day — usually alternative, but sometimes blues or jazz. At 5 p.m., students host a daily half-hour newscast, “NewsCenter 88,” which is followed up on Fridays by “Herd Roundup” sports talk. Thursday through Saturday night features rap and r&b, while Sunday airs many hours of gospel and religious music.

WMUL has about 100 student volunteers and maintains a very active outreach and engagement calendar: 10-15 campus outreach events per semester plus five weeks of summer orientation outreach. As a free service, station volunteers also emcee & DJ loads of campus events, several community festivals in Huntington, and the occasional wedding. Plus, live remote broadcasts from live sports events, Marshall’s annual Memorial Fountain ceremony, and various other news specials.

Makaylah started at WMUL in 2017 and has led the station since 2019. Our conversation keeps refernecing how things were when she started and how they are today. The changes are remarkable:

• WMUL’s leadership board has doubled in size, now including positions for social media, continuity, training, operations, and traffic, and more, in addition to news, sports, music, and production.

• The station used to be predominantly men; today it’s about 50/50. “I just talk with [women] and am welcoming and meet them where they are before we even talk about working at the radio station,” says Makaylah.

• There used to be a disconnect between departments, with everyone only knowing the handful of department leaders. But now it seems like everyone is very close. “It’s tight knit. There’s a better work ethic. We all help each other and encourage good behavior and discourage bad behavior,” said David.

Where so many organizations sputtered during Covid-19 and are still working to reclaim the energy they once had, WMUL seems to have taken the opporunity to become more connected and set new norms.

“I didn’t want anyone to come in, just do their work, and go home. Not just a resume item for a career. I want them to grow as people. I want everyone coming through the door to feel like family,” said Makaylah. She says someone wrote that on the office dry erase board at the start of the year, and she hasn’t erased it.

There are leadership lessons to draw here. Yes, WMUL is a student radio station with a storied history, so of course students are involved. But Makaylah and her team have managed to do something that few others have: they’ve gotten lots of young people very interested and engaged in non-commercial radio. They did it by improving the station culture, turning outward to build relationships, and giving people the tools and space to grow.

“I would not have stayed in college if not for here. I wanted for people to feel like they had a place on campus,” said Makaylah. “WMUL makes so many connections for students and for people in the community. There’s so much sports and news and music and emceeing and community life that wouldn’t happen if not for WMUL.”

As for the future… These days, Huntington is undergoing something of an arts-based community revitalization. Makaylah, David, and Emma talk about continuing to grow, making more connections, creating more partnerships. And having WMUL help with that revitalization of Huntington as a bridge between Marshall and the town.