WUWM has been serving the Milwaukee area for more than 60 years. We couldn’t do the work we do as a radio station without dedicated on-air hosts. Having someone to help lead and guide day-to-day operations helps quite a bit, too.
Fortunately, WUWM has Lauri Jones, who serves in both roles as host of Here and Now and as operations director. She’s no stranger to the field, having worked in radio for more than 25 years. For this segment of our “Get to Know WUWM” series, we sat down with Lauri to learn more about her extensive professional background, how that experience impacts her work here and what’s kept her coming back to radio time and time again.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
I would like to spend a little time digging into some of your experience because your footprint in Milwaukee radio goes back decades and decades.
Well, I went to Marquette. I was a broadcast communications major, and upon graduating, I was lucky enough to be hired at FM 106, the country station here in town. I did overnights on the weekends. I had never pulled an all-nighter in college, so I used to fall asleep during that shift — and that was before there was automation. Computers basically run radio stations these days, but back then, the DJ had to physically start every song and every commercial.
So, rightfully, I was fired from that job. At the time, V100 — now known as V100.7 — had just signed on without any DJs. I just wanted to work in radio, and I said, “Well, they need DJs.” I sent my tape and résumé over there and got hired. I was at V100 for four years.
Then I left the market for five years, spending four years in Cincinnati and one in Minneapolis. After that, I came back to Milwaukee to help start Jammin’ 98.3. I was there for 14 years as the program director and on-air, which was great. But I got to the point where I was living my job more than living my life, so I decided to get out of radio for a while.
I happily worked some other jobs, but one morning my clock radio went off and Rachel Owens was announcing that they were looking for a host at WUWM. I spent a lot of time thinking about it before I finally sent in my materials. They offered me the job, and I decided to take it.
How would you describe this station serving the city that resides in and how would you describe the relationship between Milwaukee and Milwaukee's NPR?
The staff here is very intentional and thoughtful about the storytelling that we do of Milwaukee and southeastern Wisconsin, and I appreciate that. What I think needs to happen is that we raise our awareness that we exist within the community because there's a lot of people who don't know that we're here. And that's, particularly younger audiences, and audiences of color. But we're talking about it. And so, I'm hopeful that we're going to follow through on that.
What are some projects, accomplishments or just other general moments that you're most proud of in your tenure here that reflect you as a professional, as a host and as Lauri Jones?
Well, honestly, the thing I'm most proud of is Rock 'n' roll Poet, which was a one-hour retrospective that Audrey Nowakowski and I worked on last fall about Bob Reitman. As somebody who's basically worked my entire career in radio, he was a giant that I looked up to.
Part of the thrill of coming to WUWM was to be working at the same station that Bob Reitman was working at. So, when the idea was thrown out there to do a retrospective on Reitman in conjunction with the station’s 60th birthday — I raised my hand and said that I would do it. I hadn't done any long form radio production since the late 80s and that was on reel-to-reel tape.
So, when I started, I got really overwhelmed and I invited Audrey to lunch one day to just help me work through my questions and in that process, she said, “Lauri, do you want me to help you work on this?” And I said, "Yes, please.” But we had such a great time doing that. And the biggest reward in doing the work is that Reitman loved it. His family loved it. His brother reached out to me on LinkedIn after listening to it and said that it really captured his brother's spirit. I've described it as the ultimate fan letter, my ultimate fan letter to him. His daughter described it as a love letter to her dad. And I still get choked up every time I listen to it, and I've probably heard it 20 or 30 times. Audrey and I really knocked it out of the ballpark on that one. If I can, humbly or not, so humbly brag on that.
