WUWM has been serving the Milwaukee area for over 60 years and Ann-Elise Henzl has been here for over 20 of them. After beginning as a volunteer, she slowly added more and more duties to her plate and eventually became News Director. For this segment of our Get to Know WUWM series, we sat down with Ann-Elise to learn more about her journey to this point, her philosophy to leading the news team and what keeps her motivated to keep doing this work.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
As News Director, can you walk us through what a day-to-day looks like versus more of a long-term viewpoint of your work and your role and how all that gets done?
In the most simple terms, I supervise the news department. So, we have our general assignment reporters and our beat reporters and our Eric Von Fellow, which is a year long training position, and I work with those reporters on things like their schedules and training and story assignments and editing most of their stories. That is the most simple way of looking at the job. I meet with the reporters on an ongoing basis so they can sketch out their story ideas, and we can talk about how to make those stories stronger, what kinds of people should be in the story if they're not already part of the reporters plan or missing a voice, [and] if there are opportunities for the reporters to add some more fun or some exciting digital pieces. So, there are those bigger pieces that are ongoing and involve a lot of meetings and a lot of planning. And then there’s a consistent, shorter term turn around with the reporters’ regular stories.
I'm sure throughout the years you've developed and refined an overall approach and philosophy to journalism and to storytelling and how you frame a story. Can you speak a little bit to that philosophy?
As a public radio station, we are not beholden to anything except really strong journalism. We are not beholden to advertisers who might want us to have coverage that is hitting certain points that's maybe slanted in terms of politics. We are guided by the stories that that we feel are of value and are of public service. In recent years, people in journalism have admitted that true objectivity is probably impossible because everyone comes to every story with their own experiences and with experiences of friends and family, and with an extensive background. But what we can do and what we need to do, is to be fair and accurate and to make sure that when there is a story that has multiple angles, which is usually the case, that we get those various voices represented in the segment.
Another big part of the job is to constantly be aware of what we're missing and to think about new ways to engage in the community and to think about finding new people to talk to and get out of our comfort zone. Another key element is to make sure that the people who we are talking to for interviews and for background are very clear on what our intention is with them and make sure that we're very upfront with them about that. Because not doing that is the best way to break trust with anybody who you talk to.
What is it about the work and everything that you do and experience here that keeps you at WUWM?
I really believe in our mission, and I think our mission has become more and more clear overtime. And that under our General Manager David Lee, who's been with us just a little bit more than two years, we had the first, very well defined, very well crafted process to create what a vision and value statement looks like. So, that is the biggest part of it. I also really enjoy the coworkers here. I love the work. I love writing, and I love reading, and even though I don't do much reporting now, I love the creative process of working with the reporters to make their stories as strong as they can be. And I love storytelling. I love listening and I love talking. So, all those things comebined.
