Rick Lore is Maryland Public Television’s new v.p. and chief development officer
Lore is responsible for membership, on-air fundraising, major and planned giving, publications, outreach and community engagement at the state network headquartered in Owings Mills.
Lore joined MPT on an interim basis last fall after Joe Krushinsky left his job as v.p. of institutional advancement. Krushinsky now directs station development services at PBS.
Previously Lore served as executive director of Friends of Milwaukee Public Television, the fundraising affiliate of Milwaukee Public TV; directed on-air fundraising for PBS; and led development at New Hampshire Public Television. Lore, who began his pubTV career in 1989 in San Jose, Calif., has won eight PBS development awards and is a frequent conference speaker.
KPCC in Pasadena has hired newspaper veteran Melanie Sill as executive editor.
Sill will oversee daily news-gathering operations across broadcast, digital and social media platforms. She joins pubcasting after spending nearly early four years as editor and senior v.p. of the Sacramento Bee, the flagship paper of the McClatchy Co., and completing a six-month Executive-in-Residence program at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. Previously, Sill worked at the News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C., for 24 years, rising to become executive editor and senior vice president in 2002. Sill began her journalism career in 1981 as a North Carolina state capital reporter for the United Press International.
Three pubcasters who have anchored daytime broadcasts at Illinois Public Media’s WILL-FM/AM for decades are retiring.
The anchors of WILL’s weekday broadcasts — Williamson, at left, Quinn and Inge — are retired from Illinois Public Radio.
David Inge and Harriet Williamson of Focus, the station’s mid-morning talk show, and Celeste Quinn of Afternoon Magazine will be saying farewell to listeners and colleagues over the next three months.
In his 29 years as host of Focus, Inge has conducted more than 12,000 interviews. He started at the Urbana-based pubcasting outlet as a classical music announcer and later became a reporter. He also hosted WILL-TV’s public affairs show Talking Point from 1992 until it ended in 2001. He retires on June 30.
Williamson, producer of Focus, began at WILL as a volunteer. She joined the staff in 1996, and retires in mid-June.
Quinn signed on at WILL in 1980 as a reporter and took on hosting duties for Afternoon Magazine in 1993. She also edits WILLConnect, Illinois Public Media’s community engagement website. She retires at the end of the month.
Illinois Public Media plans to carry on the strong traditions the three veteran staffers have established over three decades, said Mark Leonard, general manager. “We’ll be hiring people for several positions to help us do that.”
Programming
Local Morning Edition host and reporter Scott Graf is leaving WFAE-FM in Charlotte, N.C., after eight years, bound for Boise State Public Radio. There he’ll join former WFAE-FM program director Paul Stribling, who moved to the Idaho station last June. At Boise, Graf will host Morning Edition and take on additional editing responsibilities, he told the Charlotte Observer. At WFAE, Marshall Terry, local Morning Edition producer, will temporarily take over hosting duties.
American Public Media has named Sitara Nieves, a member of the founding production team of The Takeaway, as the new senior producer of Marketplace. Nieves was promoted last year to senior producer of The Takeaway, the Public Radio International morning drive-time show that’s produced at WNYC in New York. Before helping launch that show in 2008, she worked as a multimedia journalist at The Economist.
Following a nationwide search, Capital Public Radio in Sacramento, Calif., has hired Emmy Award–winning journalist Beth Ruyak as the new host of Insight, its daily pubaffairs talk show. The spot was vacated last December by Jeffrey Callison, who took a job as press secretary for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Ruyak’s previous media experience includes covering six Olympic Games for NBC or CBS; three Tour de France bicycle races for KCRA, Sacramento; USA Today TV and Good Morning America; and guest co-hosting Good Morning America with Joan Lunden in 1990.
Steve Brown is the new music director at WVTF, a hybrid-format NPR News and music station in Roanoke, Va. Since joining the station in 2001, Brown has taken on multiple roles. As host of weekday morning and afternoon Classics shows from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., he handles “a lengthy announcing schedule by any broadcasting standards,” according to Rick Mattioni, p.d. Brown produces and hosts live broadcasts of the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra and WVTF’s “Inside the Music” podcast. He also directs public service for the station, a job he’ll retain as music director. His background includes an earlier stint at WUWF Public Radio in Pensacola, Fla. Brown is a composer whose work has been performed by orchestras and musical ensembles locally and around the world.
WRVO Public Media, based at the State University of New York College at Oswego, has appointed Catherine J. Loper director of news and public affairs. She’ll also serve as the senior reporter and producer of WRVO’s regional and public affairs coverage and host WRVO’s Community Forum series. Loper’s broadcasting career spans 20 years and includes recent stints directing news for the Washington, D.C., bureau of Fox News Channel; from 2007–10 she directed White House coverage for the network.
Anne Lieberman, a former producer for New York’s WNET, is the new executive director of the United States office of the World Society for the Protection of Animals, a global animal-welfare organization. Lieberman spent 12 years at WNET, from 1981 to 1993; her production credits include Homosexuality: Nature vs. Nurture, nominated for a local Emmy in 1986.
Marketing/Development
Amy Wielunski will join New York Public Radio/WNYC as fundraising manager for its classical music outlet WQXR on April 30. She departs dual-licensee WSKG in Binghamton, N.Y., where she managed membership and special events. Her previous jobs in pubradio development include directing membership at Baltimore’s WTMD and managing corporate accounts at WAMU in Washington, D.C. Wielunski also co-hosted the popular Public Media Chat, a weekly Twitter forum for digital staff and advocates at public stations, in 2010.
Rich Siden is a new account manager on the Local Corporate Sponsorship team at WGBH in Boston. Siden has 27 years of sales and marketing experience in TV and radio. Previously he was an account manager at CBS Television in Boston. He also managed group accounts at Entercom Communications, also in Boston.
Management
Tom Dollenmayer, who spent nearly 10 years at dual licensee WUSF in Tampa, Fla., is the new station manager at WFDD-FM at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. Dollenmayer served as operations manager and then station manager at WUSF. He joins WFDD following the departure of Denise Franklin, g.m., on March 22. Franklin had been with the station for 11 years, first as a news host; she became g.m. in 2007.
KSMQ-TV in Austin, Minn., has a new president and c.e.o., Eric Olson. Olson spent 12 years as a reporter and anchor for KARE-TV, the NBC affiliate in Minneapolis, and has worked in corporate communications management. He also was an executive producer of Postcards, a weekly variety show on Pioneer Public Television in Appleton that highlights artists, history and cultural heritage in western Minnesota.
Technology
NPR has formed a strategic advisory committee for its Digital Services unit, which will meet several times a year. The members are Tom Hjelm, v.p. and chief digital officer, WNYC, New York; Dale Hobson, web manager, North Country Public Radio, Canton, N.Y.; Nicole Holloway, g.m., St. Louis Beacon; Bob Kempf, v.p. and g.m. of digital services at NPR; Alexis Rapo, v.p. for broadband and interactive media, WGBH, Boston; Mike Reszler, v.p. of digital media, American Public Media/Minnesota Public Radio; Jake Shapiro, c.e.o, Public Radio Exchange, Cambridge, Mass.; Kinsey Wilson, chief content officer, NPR; and Cory Zanin, e.v.p., operations and strategy, PRI.
Lay leaders
Gara LaMarche has been elected to chair the board of StoryCorps, the national oral history project founded by Dave Isay. LaMarche is a senior fellow at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service and former president of the Atlantic Philanthropies. He replaces outgoing Chair Deborah Leff, deputy counselor for the U.S. Justice Department’s Access to Justice Initiative; she remains on the board as a director. Also elected to the board were Audrey Choi, managing director at Morgan Stanley, and Dane Holmes, managing director at Goldman Sachs.