Legislative attacks on Wyoming Public Radio are misguided

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I started working at Wyoming Public Radio in 2013. I earned an internship by cold-emailing then-news director Bob Beck to ask for a job. “Come in and talk,” he said. It was one of the few instances that “hitting the bricks” actually worked for landing a job. I’ve been with the station since then, even if sometimes that was just coming in Saturday nights to manually put “A Prairie Home Companion” and then “Live From Here” on the air. I moved on to be an inaugural host for Wyoming Sounds, moving my voice from prim and proper news-speak to a folksier tone to deliver a “howdy” to everyone listening across the state. 

Whenever I sat in the main control room, often doing homework for the two degrees I earned from the University of Wyoming, I always recognized the silly-yet-awesome feeling of connection I got from numerous knobs, buttons and dials. On those solitary Saturday nights, I was alone at the wheel of a network serving 60,000 people across nearly 100,000 square miles. I would peruse the engineering room, taking in the glow of signal strength and satellite connectivity. Once, I even ventured to the roof in a snowstorm to manually unblock the satellite dish with a push broom, highlighting the reach, and fragility, of this little rag-tag station. For years, I maintained this second and sometimes third job, riding my bike or walking from my apartment to that quiet little basement. 

Wyoming Public Media (as it is officially known) was recently handed its worst news yet: a proposed cut from the Joint Appropriations Committee that would take $1.69 million out of our shoestring $4 million budget. The state is not in a fiscal crunch. The budget is balanced. This was not out of necessity, but out of a desire to hurt and harm our little corner of a university already experiencing sizable cuts. Rep. Ken Pendergraft, R-Sheridan, made his logic abundantly clear: This is something the Trump administration did to the now-defunct Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Quod sumus hoc eritis. Such as we are, you will become.

If there is a comment I get the most in my life, it’s usually “you have a voice for radio.” I got that voice from Bob Beck, Aaron Schrank, Melodie Edwards, Grady Kirkpatrick and numerous other talented individuals who are either still at the station or on to other pursuits. I use that voice to teach and to conduct research with communities, inviting people to talk about their experiences while explaining air pollution in homes. I’ve worked on it for a long time. It’s something I can quickly drop into. At Whatfest 2025, I sprinted from our camp to the broadcasting booth to hop on the air. Arriving out of breath and less than completely sober, I took one second to pause before sitting down and breaking into “radio voice.” Sometimes I go back and listen to my first stories with WPR to remember just how far it’s come. My shaky and unsure voice talking with the late Sen. Al Simpson about the anti-discrimination campaign he was lending his voice to. Something politicians in Wyoming used to do.

I’ve remained connected to Wyoming Public Radio. I hop on Thursdays to help with hosting and get all the news fit-to-air directly to a Slack feed on my desktop. Several years ago, I would let out a chuckle or a moan when particularly asinine news crossed the desk. That’s now replaced with grim silence as I read about the University of Wyoming, mental health programs, Tribal health care, lunches for K-12 students, and even the Wyoming Business Council, all receiving grievous wounds. Wounds that aren’t just line items. They’re flesh and blood. 

Wyoming Public Radio is not perfect. It also doesn’t have to be. Every program targeted has its faults. The Freedom Caucus expects a level of purity that, I am sorry to inform its members, does not exist. WPR is bare-bones as it is. No one there is making a killing; they’re all working out of a desire and passion to keep public radio a reality for the state. That’s our reporters often driving for hours to cover stories from ranchers, trona miners, Native buffalo advocates, stressed and strained wildland firefighters and national park personnel. It’s our culture and music people bringing in artists from in and out of state to keep the fire in the window just a little brighter on dark winter nights. It’s our engineers literally fitting out three horses to service our transmitters and repeaters, enjoyed by truckers, hikers, and everyday folks making long, arduous commutes for the same existence-level living the reporters are eking out. 

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was defunded entirely and, as a result, voted itself out of business. It is a service that, in fact, relies on public money. That’s because it’s a teaching station. It doesn’t just teach journalism and audio production. It doesn’t just take in National Public Radio content and attach our own little slice of life to it. It teaches someone how to be a community member. It gives you a voice. Something about the CPB ending its own existence never sat right with me. If the Legislature wants to do away with WPR, then have the nerve to just end the program. I am a tiny part of the community, but I’ll be damned if we do the nasty work for them.