John Rymaszewski has joined the WUWM team as the digital media and technology operations manager. He studies information studies at UW-Milwaukee and comes to WUWM after a stint at iHeartRadio in Milwaukee.
After two months on the job, he sat down with President and General Manager David Lee to introduce himself.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your role with WUWM.
I am a Milwaukee native. My role at WUWM is the digital media and technology operations manager. My core oversight includes some of our computer and technological fleet, but there’s also an audio systems component mixed in, as well as day-to-day operations. Hopefully, I’ll be a bit of a Swiss Army knife in terms of where we are presently, both technologically and otherwise, with our on-air product and content, but also where we want to be moving forward. I’m very excited to be here and have some of that in my purview.
In the last two months, what's the thing that's most surprised you about working here?
That's a good question. I would probably say the scope of some of our content and just the nuance and how much is covered on a day-to-day basis. There’s just a really wide variety, and to me, that’s something I didn’t necessarily expect coming in. I came in thinking, “OK, we’re going to probably be focused on the political side of things.” But there’s so much great news content, so much great general community programming, arts and culture—it’s all very interesting to me.
What's one thing that you're most excited to take on in the next few months?
That’s a great question because, as I mentioned, my roles and responsibilities are pretty technologically focused. But there are definitely more than a few projects on hand—not necessarily ones that would be too interesting for our listeners per se, unless you want to hear about inventories and software updates. But I’m excited about getting a sense of where we want to go, from a support standpoint, and what we can accomplish from an engineering and technological standpoint.
Last question: We have seven core values here at WUWM—trust, integrity, inclusivity, collaboration, creativity, respect, and care for community. These values drive the way we show up and how we do our work. They’re aspirational goals and all incredibly important to us. But if you had to pick one, which one speaks to you the most and why?
I have felt some of these values firsthand just in my onboarding and meeting all of you. I would say probably respect and care for community. I think we are in a wonderful city. I think we are in a city that will continue to grow in the coming years, and our role in that is to not only tell the more difficult stories and keep people informed, both on a local and national level, but also to highlight all the goodness and all the wonderful diversity and people that make up the tapestry of the place we call home. I think we’re uniquely qualified to do that.
