A chat with WRNI's Joe O'Connor

While talk radio gets a lot of attention here in Rhode Island, WRNI, the state's public radio station, has quietly been making useful inroads after several years of uncertainty. Because of the big Summer Preview issue, this week's print-based Phoenix won't be out until Friday, but you can already find my Q&A with WRNI GM Joe O'Connor:

While he has globetrotting experience in reporting on an array of Big Stories — including the first Intifada, the Persian Gulf War, the release of Nelson Mandela, and the police brutality case involving Abner Louima — Joe O’Connor faces a more painstaking challenge while working from his smallish office at WRNI (1290 AM) in Providence.
 
As the general manager of Rhode Island’s public radio station, O’Connor is well aware of “the troubles” that preceded his arrival in May 2006. Although WRNI was launched with high hopes in 1998, its staff and programming were continually cut after 9/11. Then, in 2004, Boston University, the station’s license-holder, abruptly announced its intention to sell WRNI. The university switched course after an outcry, ultimately revealing plans in March to sell WRNI to a local group of public radio boosters.
 
WRNI has been on the upswing over the last year, with the addition of O’Connor and reporter Nancy Cook, the continued presence of news director Mark Degon, and the additional statewide coverage that came with the relaunch in May of WAKX in Narragansett (102.7 FM). O’Connor, who faces the task of simultaneously overseeing and strengthening the thinly staffed station, says it’s unacceptable that a few pockets of the state still remain beyond WRNI’s signal.

Still, O’Connor, a 50-year-old native of Chevy Chase, Maryland, whose resume includes producing experience at Good Morning America, ABC News Nightline, PrimeTime Live, and World News Tonight, and who was the senior producer for the WBUR Group’s On Point before coming to WRNI, seems to welcome his challenges with good cheer.
 
With the local acquisition of WRNI, he says, “The burden is where it should have always been — it is now on Rhode Islanders. It is not on Boston University, who is trying to set us up for success. It is up to the residents of the state to really support this. They’re telling me they want this and they want this excellence [of public radio] on a regular basis. Well, that’s going to take their support “

The Rhode Island Foundation, a supporter of WRNI, also has an article about the station in its latest newsletter.