Local journalism plays a vital role in keeping communities informed and connected. This episode delves into the world of journalism and media with Sandy Hausman, Charlottesville Bureau Chief for Virginia Public Radio. Sandy shares her diverse experiences, from her early days as a stringer reporter to her current role covering local news. She discusses the evolution of media, the challenges faced by journalists today, and the importance of local and regional news outlets like Virginia Public Radio. Discover how Sandy’s passion for storytelling and commitment to community engagement are making a difference in the world of journalism.

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The Changing Media Landscape With Virginia Public Radio’s Charlottesville Bureau Chief, Sandy Hausman

Our guest, Sandy Hausman, is the Charlottesville Bureau Chief of Virginia Public Radio. Sandy is fantastic because she’s been everything from a stringer reporter to a station manager and beyond. She has done radio, newspaper, large ABC affiliate radio, and now she’s busy bringing the stories of Charlottesville and the Charlottesville area to life. How did she get there? We’re going to hear about what it’s been like, how just media in general, and radio in particular, has shifted. The importance of local and regional radio, especially something like Virginia Public Radio, in this era of misinformation. There’s more, so read in.

 

 

Sandy Hausman is Charlottesville’s Bureau Chief of Virginia Public Radio and one of the more amazing women I’ve met since we moved to Charlottesville about three years ago. Welcome to the show.

Thank you, and I’m very flattered that you would say that.

It’s very true. It’s an exciting time to be speaking to someone who is a Bureau Chief of a public radio station. Radio station, period, but particularly public radio. We’ll talk a little bit more about that. I want to dive in about your path because I’m always smiling. The younger generation all seems to think, “It was such a clear-set, step-after-step, linear path.” Au contraire, mon frère. Was that the case with you? Shed a little light, won’t you?

From Childhood Dreams To Journalism Success

It was pretty straightforward for me. Only because I think I knew from a pretty early age what I wanted to do. When I was a little kid, I liked telling people stuff that they didn’t know. When I was in junior high school, I took a journalism class, and I wrote for the weekly suburban newspaper in Columbus, Ohio. I was on that track for a little while. In my junior year of high school, we changed communities. We moved to New York, right outside of the city. It was a very different culture.

I didn’t click in with the newspaper kids at my high school, so I dropped out of that whole scene and decided that maybe I didn’t know enough to be telling people what to think anyway. I went off to college and studied something that was interesting to me, Linguistics. I graduated very quickly. I did some intensive summer language programs and got out of there with this degree. I suddenly realized, I don’t want to translate, and I don’t want to teach. What do I do with this linguistics degree? I had to go and get a quick Master’s.

I went to the University of Michigan, which had a very practical program where we would spend some time each week publishing a little newspaper, and then we would produce some broadcast programs. I volunteered at the student radio station. By the time I got out of there, I had some tapes of myself doing radio, and I had some clips from the Ann Arbor News. I went back to my hometown, Columbus.

Rock And Roll Radio: Sandy’s Wild Start

My junior high friends by this time were in law school and medical school, but we had all stayed in touch so I had instant community. I went to work for the Rock n Roll Radio station, which was so much fun. It was a great time. It was 1974. Things were happening. Underground FM radio was the thing. I was there at that moment. I started part-time but our news director, unfortunately, was arrested for having marijuana in his glove compartment.

He didn’t bother to tell the general manager, who read about it in the newspaper. Suddenly, Sandy was working six days a week, which was wild. That was my start. From there, I started climbing the ladder, which is what you did in broadcasting. You noted what size market you were in and what was bigger, and you headed in that direction.

For a time, I was at KDKA in Pittsburgh, which was the first radio station in the country. A news talk station and very reputable. It had this huge signal at night. It was an AM station that you could get from far away. That’s when I discovered this thing that we call corporate culture. I didn’t realize that not everything was as much fun as Rock n Roll Radio. It didn’t last long in there.

Part of the problem was that I was working 4:00 PM to midnight, when people my age were all out partying. When I got up in the morning, they were all at work. It wasn’t a good fit, and I didn’t stay long. I got a job offer from this interesting experimental enterprise called Qube. It was Warner Communications test marketing. It’s this idea that they had that people should be more interactive with their TV.

Early day.

Very early. In fact, it was a little too early because cable penetration at that time wasn’t that great. People were mostly doing the three channels plus public television. Qube would sell you a subscription, and you would get this little electronic box in your home. You could order movies much as we do now with streaming services. You could talk back to the program much as we do with America’s Got Talent. You push the button for whoever you think should win.

I was doing local programming for this little cable enterprise, and that enabled me to learn television. I taught myself, I would say. I knew how to put a story together, and then it was a matter of discovering that when you tell a story for TV, you do it with pictures. That’s where I learned TV. From there, I went on to the ABC affiliate and did weekend anchoring. Terrifying experience.

When you tell us a story for TV, you do it with pictures. Share on X

I couldn’t even fathom that. You have to be so on.

Facing The Spotlight: Transitioning To TV

You learn about yourself, what you like, and what you don’t like. What I don’t like is having people look at me, so that was a little weird. I was also terrified because I don’t have great vision. I was wearing hard contact lenses, and I was always afraid that I’d have a problem while I was on the air. Sometimes, the teleprompter was too far away, I couldn’t read it. It was a discovery for me of all the things that I didn’t like in life.

I stayed there for maybe a year. During that time, I met my husband, who was a newspaper reporter in Columbus, and he got a job in Chicago. I had been courting a news director in Chicago, where I had hoped to work as well. It was interesting. I had just met Dean, and I got a call from WBVM. I went and talked to them and then ended up turning them down because I didn’t want to leave. I was having a good time in Columbus, and I’d done the KDKA thing and didn’t like it, so I was afraid of that happening again.

This music station called me a couple of weeks before we were going to move together to Chicago. This guy called me and said, “I can’t pay for your move, but I can give you a good salary. We’d like you to come and do the afternoon news.” I said, “Fine. We’ll let the Sun-Times pay for my move, and I’ll be there. What time do I leave?”

The first year in Chicago, my husband worked the night shift at the Sun-Times. He was the night editor, and I worked a day shift, and we would meet. We had exactly one hour between 6:00 and 7:00 to meet, eat dinner, smooch, and catch up. It was great. It makes the marriage very fresh, I will say. Chicago was so great. Talk about a lively, vibrant city, multi-dimensional. Unlike someplace like Washington, which is all about politics.

Chicago is all about everything. We had a blast. That first year, the trains went on strike, so people were finding all kinds of crazy ways to get to work. The firemen went on strike, which was insane. It was the dead of winter. The teachers went on strike. The school board resigned en masse. Jane Byrne was the mayor. She was this quirky mayor. She and her husband moved into a public housing project because there were shootings there, and they wanted to settle things down. It was one crazy story after the next.

You’re like, “What is going on?”

We would spend hours sitting outside of negotiating sessions with other reporters just getting to know everybody. It was fun. Yes, indeed. I did that for a bit. The other thing that I did that was so much fun in the early days of Chicago was to start two radio talk shows on Sunday night. Our sister’s station, I worked for the NBC-owned station in Chicago. Our sister station in New York had discovered Ruth Westheimer. We got our own sex therapist on the radio in Chicago, and she was a big hit, too. She was a character.

We had Phyllis Levy. I know David Sedaris wrote about it in one of his books because he was one of our listeners, and it was so comforting to him being a gay man. He must loved Phyllis because she was very open to stuff. It was called Getting Personal. We did an hour and a half with the sex therapist, and I screened the calls. That was what made it. We got the craziest calls. On to CBS, which was WBBM, the news talk in Chicago.

That had to be a different vibe after all of that.

CBS has always been the most conservative of the three major networks. It’s kind of stodgy. Again, it was not a great fit. Fortunately, I had applied for a fellowship at the University of Chicago, and I got it. I arrived at WBBM as a lame duck. They knew I would be leaving in six months. I did okay there. They were very nice to me. I made money. I did this wonderful fellowship. I just took a break from journalism. When I came back, it was a question of what to do with my life, and I decided I would freelance. Freelancing was interesting because I worked harder than I’d ever worked in my life, and I made less money than I did in my life.

That’s the way it goes.

At that time, the year that I spent freelancing, I wandered into corporate video. I discovered this whole world of people who made programs for money and traveled all over the world to do it. That was very interesting. The company that I initially worked for was the AMA’s production company. We did a lot of medical stuff. We got a lot of pharmaceutical company money to do interesting programs. I learned a lot about medicine and how doctors think about things. It was a great education for me. As I said, I just went all over the world. It was a great experience.

That’s fantastic, too.

Bold Moves: Launching A Production Company

I did that for a few years, and then I decided to start my own company. That was very interesting, instructional. I did pretty well, I think, because all boats were rising at that point. The economy was strong. The drug companies were throwing money off trucks. I knew people by that point. I took a deep breath and jumped. I thought, “I don’t know if I’ll have any clients,” but a lot of the clients from where I had been came with me.

I did that for a while. When traveling started getting to be no fun anymore, I started thinking, “What else can I do?” It was because, by this point, I was in my mid-50s. I figured, “Where am I going to finish up my career?” I was sitting in a business center in Omaha waiting for a flight. I saw this ad for Virginia Public Radio in Charlottesville. I had just been here with my daughter, who was college shopping. As we were leaving town, I said, “Let’s look at that historic downtown mall thing.” You could see the signs around town. I didn’t know anything about it. We stepped onto the mall, and I thought, “This is cool.”

This is almost identical to my experience. It is.

Finding Purpose: Joining Virginia Public Radio

It’s not well-known outside of the DC-Virginia area that this is a little nature of light. I knew I liked Charlottesville. For the heck of it, I applied for this job. I didn’t even tell my husband I did it. Within a day or two, they called me. I could see and feel that there was such great potential here. I had a sense that Virginia Public Radio didn’t realize what they had. They had this whole network of stations.

At a time when regional reporting is so important, it was pretty great. It didn’t turn out to be the job I expected. I thought I would mostly be interviewing college professors about their research. I thought I would be on NPR a lot. Not realizing NPR is right up the road and they can send people whenever they want. They have an abundance of smart, talented people. It’s been fun. This is such a great area.

The listeners are so smart and so interesting. There are so many stories to tell. I love telling stories, and working independently and not having to deal with a corporate culture, particularly. I love the people I work with. They’re very kind. I’ve always loved public radio, even though this is the first time I’ve had a paycheck from public radio. I freelanced a lot when I was in Chicago for various shows, including Marketplace.

For years, I was the Chicago person for Marketplace when it was just getting off the ground. I worked for the Midday Show, which has subsequently been replaced by Here and Now. I knew public radio. I just could never afford to work for public radio because it didn’t pay. While I was off doing TV, radio reshaped itself drastically. Back in the day when I started, every radio station had a little news department.

Everybody had news. Suddenly, these big companies were buying up stations and creating networks and playing music. They didn’t have local news anymore. At the same time, Ray Kroc’s widow left NPR a big chunk of money. Suddenly, public radio was the place. That’s about when I got back in, and I’m so glad that I did.

Which is fantastic. I think the power of local and regional is now more than ever. I think it’s going to continue to get even more.

 

 

It has to. The issues are so big and so complicated.

They’re so unique to each specific area. They are. One size doesn’t fit all, and that’s okay. Nor should it, I think. Especially with the demographic makeups being so different. When you said you always wanted to do a talk show, how do you start a talk show? You’ve done that here and there and everywhere. It just happened upon it. I know I’ve certainly chatted with you. It was incredibly easy. How did you do that?

You’ve heard other talk shows, so you know what the structure of the program is. There’s music at the beginning, and there’s an introduction by the host telling people what the show’s about and giving a phone number, and then people are supposed to call in. It was a tried-and-true format. That was not difficult. We did pilot it. We did some test shows where we had people from the station calling into the studio with their questions.

It was like Shills?

Yes, just to see how it would work. I don’t remember having any problem with going and doing the show. It was pretty straightforward and, as I said, pretty successful and the word spread.

Public Radio’s Revival: How Local Stories Matter

It took off. How is Virginia Public Radio related to NPR, too, just from an overarching structural standpoint, so people can understand in their respective states how does that all works?

NPR is a completely separate organization, but they are their own thing. They are our national network, much in the way that there will be an ABC affiliate or a CBS affiliate in your small town, but the network is the network and NPR is our network. We are what’s called a member station, which means we are entitled to buy programs from them.

We have to pay NPR for every show that we use, meaning Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and everything in between, after, and before. All those shows come with a cost, and we have to raise money in order to pay NPR. NPR also raises money by doing corporate underwriting, as do we. That’s the other funding stream, but most of the money that we need every year comes from listeners.

It’s from the fundraising, which is live and breathe by that.

It’s a challenge, and how you do it is a question for a while there, and maybe still. I haven’t listened to WMRA. There was a time when they were doing what was called More News, Less Talk, meaning that they didn’t harangue people to send money. What a lot of stations have found is that it doesn’t work as well. You don’t do as well financially. You have to hound people to contribute.

Battling Misinformation: Journalism’s Role Today

I also think in this age of misinformation, now more than ever, it seems to me that we, as active community members and conscious citizens, should be reaching out and helping support this.

We’re not in the habit, shall we say? For many years, broadcasting has been a freebie, and we’ve sat through the commercials. That’s the way it went. This is a whole different way of looking at it. We’ve seen what that’s done. Advertising has been decimated at the local level by the internet. It’s a new world. 21st century, on we go.

How does one discern truth from misinformation? Are there best practices? “Here are three questions one to ask?” If your gut makes you go, “That’s worth listening to.”

The motto of journalists back in Chicago was, if your mother tells you she loves you, check it out. Maybe this is just the bias of a baby boomer, but I would say that I still trust the mainstream media very much. I still think that The Washington Post and The New York Times and CBS, NBC, CNN get it right most of the time.

I do think that there is a certain understanding that we have between us and our viewers, listeners, readers. It is self-policing, it’s true, but the deal is, we will work hard to earn your trust, and then we want you to trust us. Unfortunately, that has broken down but I know a lot of people in the business. I know a lot of the people at NPR, and they’re very smart. They’re very well-educated, and they know their subject matter.

That place don’t let you do a science report unless you have a Ph.D. in one of the sciences. That’s what goes at NPR. If you hear something that seems weird or doesn’t quite make sense, or you have questions, then Google around and see what other people are saying about it. If you find that both The Post and The Times and The Chicago Tribune, maybe. I don’t know how good that paper is anymore, but if there are multiple mainstream sources reporting something, then I’m comfortable believing it.

You look at their sources. Who’s telling them what? Does that person have some agenda? Do they have a political track record in one direction or the other? One of the most damaging things to happen to the news world was Fox. The fact that they came in with such a strong agenda and continue to report things with such a slant is very unfortunate.

One of the most damaging things to happen to the news world was Fox. The fact that they came in with such a strong agenda and continue to report things with such a slant. It's just very unfortunate. Share on X

It is. Unfortunately, it makes everyone think that’s the way everybody does it, and they don’t. It doesn’t serve them to do that. The whole point is to encourage conversation and maybe even debate. That’s okay. That’s the critical piece. You and I had a very similar experience of experiencing Charlottesville. In 2017, there was an unfortunate, to say that is such a light statement, just a dark day. There was so much, and it was not by people that were local at all.

To me, it appears the golden part is that so much of the community has rallied together. How can we shift? How can any city, coming from San Francisco, which is going through its own renaissance, to put lipstick on a pig? A lot of cities are. Portland’s going through it. Seattle’s going through it. How does one shift the narrative so that it can give people the positive, that it’s going to be okay and we’re going to get through it, but it’s going to take everyone rolling up their sleeves?

I don’t know. I’m not too worried about Charlottesville. It is what it is. Honestly, my first thought was, “Good. Maybe people will stop coming here. We can stop dealing with traffic and the other issues that come with a growing population.” When I first arrived, when I told people I was moving to Charlottesville, they would say, “That’s North Carolina, right?” “That’s South Carolina.” “No, that’s Charleston.” I still think there’s a lot of that. I still think people don’t know.

I know one thing that changes the image of a place is sports. If UVA does well, people begin to associate the city with the university. The one thing I do find is that, despite its level of sophistication, Charlottesville remains a small town. I wish that I could sit down with everybody who does a media event to talk about how to do that, because I find that people don’t understand what reporters need, what they want, and how best to get their story out.

Through all of that change, resilience and curiosity. What are the skills that you relied on in the early days of your career? How do they differ from the ones you rely on now?

I think you hit it. Curiosity is important. You have to keep your eyes open, always be wondering and asking questions. There was a guy in my day named Charles Kuralt. He did a segment on PBS called On the Road. He was in a mobile home and he was just cruising around looking for stories. I’ve done that a number of times. It’s amazing. Almost anything that you see can be a story. People have tales to tell, and you find wonderful stories in all kinds of places. You have to be open to that.

In journalism, curiosity is really important. You have to keep your eyes open and always be wondering and asking questions. Share on X

Now that I’ve been at it for a long time, it’s not as easy because I feel like I’ve told a lot of stories. If something presents itself, my initial reaction is, “I’ve done that story already.” I may have done it 5 or 10 years ago, and maybe the listeners need to hear it now. That’s the hard thing about being at it now. At some point, I will retire, but I’m still tickled by a lot of the stories that I do.

I’m also very committed to certain topics that I feel don’t get enough coverage, in particular, prisons. This state spends more on the Department of Corrections than any other department. We spend over a billion dollars, $1.3 billion every year, which is a huge amount of money. It’s just such a hidden world. We don’t know what’s going on in these small towns with big prisons. It’s quite alarming, to be honest.

I’ve been at it so long that my phone rang and it was a call from a prison. A fellow on the other end said, “Is this the grievance hotline?” I said, “Where did you get this number?” He said, “It’s posted by the phones that if you dial #77, you will get the grievance hotline.” I thought, “Somebody at the Department of Corrections is playing a joke on me.”

I’ve spoken with many inmates. I’ve talked with many families and visited prisons. It’s something that has captured my interest and commitment to doing whatever I can to make the system better. I don’t think the head of the Department of Corrections would disagree with me when I say there’s a lot of room for improvement.

Empowering Women In Media: Advice For Aspiring Journalists

They’re so incredibly archaic. How can we best support young women who want to get into the world of media? It’s changed a lot since you and I got in. It’s broader, and that’s great. What would you suggest?

For young women, the first thing I would say is, when you have an inkling that journalism could be your thing, get involved early and try it out. Have that experience. Volunteer some time while you’re in college to work for a student newspaper or a radio station. Recognize that journalism is not one career path, but many. That is, you could be a feature reporter, where you’re going to have to put on the roller skates and try the chocolate-covered cicadas.

You could be an investigative reporter, and then people are going to hate your guts, and they’re going to give you a hard time. You’re not going to be loved, but you’re going to do some good in the world you hope. Depending on what course you’re going to take, law school might be a useful credential, or some other degree pertaining to public policy. I tell people, having some body of work that you can show when you get out of college is important because employers want to know that you can do the work.

 

 

It itself has shifted so much with the different types, either streaming or just media assets themselves, and how quickly one can tell a story. When you’re deciding on a story, what catches your eye? To your point, there are so many stories, how do the good ones come up to you?

It does come down to your interests and personality. What interests you? What seems quirky about a situation or compelling? I trust my own judgment in that respect. I was talking to a lady who told me that she went to something called a Deaf Festival.

That was a big thing and I couldn’t go.

What an idea. There’s just something. Somebody told me that there was a TEDx in a Virginia prison and that the warden, in his spare time, is a stand-up comedian. He was performing at the TEDx. I was like, “That’s wild.” Anytime something just strikes you as intriguing, you want to follow up. Sometimes things strike you as very mundane, but you think, “I’ll give it a try, go poke around, and see what I find.”

When I first got here, somebody wrote a letter to Rick Mattioni, who was our news director, telling him that his darling daughter had won a violin competition and wouldn’t we like to do a story about her. He bumped it to me because he didn’t want to deal with it. My first thought was, “If I do a story about this child, every person with a talented child, or not-so-talented child, will be calling me to do a story.” I thought, “Maybe this guy’s a donor. Who knows? I’ll go talk to them.” I went to meet this family, and it turned out that the child was uniquely talented.

Prodigy-esque.

She was lovely, joyed performing, and was very bright. The whole family was a story in a way. The dad was from the UK, and he was a big music fan. He knew a lot of rock stars from Britain. He had moved the family to Charlottesville in part because there was a teacher here that he wanted his daughter to study with. She was just teaching violin on the side. She was at the Woodbury School for Boys, teaching chemistry and doing this music thing on the side.

Anyway, Jonathan gets a call from the lead of a band called Jethro Tull that was touring North America at that point. He said to Jonathan, “You wouldn’t happen to know any very talented violinists because we’ve just lost our fiddler, and we need to replace her quickly.” Jonathan said, “As a matter of fact, I do.” He recommends this woman, the bespectacled teacher of chemistry. She meets the band, and they hit it off famously. She tours with them, and ends up in L.A. writing music for a film and playing with other huge bands.

Anytime she comes back to Charlottesville, she shares with this little girl her experiences. Whenever she’s out in the world having these amazing concerts and recording sessions, she thinks about Chloe back in Charlottesville and thinking, “What can I tell her? What can I share with her?” It was quite a fun story.

That’s awesome. Talk about see it to be it. That’s wonderful.

You just never know.

That’s so true. This is a perfect segue for this, what advice would you give your younger self, knowing what you know now?

I alluded to this earlier, but I think that it’s very important with jobs that you find one that’s a good fit. That has to do a lot with what I describe as corporate culture. In my years doing corporate video, I was able to observe the corporate world and realize that just wasn’t for me. I wasn’t going to be good at that. I also have learned, and I share this at my advanced age, that unless somebody asks you for your opinion, it might be best for you to say nothing.

I think that when you work in an organization and they’re writing you a check every week, your obligation is to try to get along with people, to be supportive, and be kind. As a young person, I don’t want to say I was very aggressive, but certainly assertive and opinionated. I probably opened my mouth more than I should have. I’m very comfortable with where I’m at now.

I’ve been a news director, by the way, so I know what it’s like to be in management. That’s very difficult. People are always complaining, and you can never give them enough praise. I cut everybody some slack now that I am where I am and in the perfect job for me. I would just say, try to know yourself and find places where you can be yourself and do what you love.

Try to know yourself. Find places where you can be yourself and do what you love. Share on X

The truth too is, there’s often more than meets the eye in a situation.

Always.

How many times have you heard from people, “We want transparency?” Do you? Do you want to know? I’ve had people say, “I want to know the budget. I want to know. We should know the financials.” I’m happy to do that, but do you have the stomach to see what this is and when to fall apart and freak out?

Very generous.

Sandy, thank you so much and for all that you’re doing over at Virginia Public Radio and also just for enlightening the community. With the prisons, that’s another conversation in and of itself. I would love to have that. On behalf of the show, I’d love to just say thank you so much for everything. I look forward to our next conversation.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

 

Important Links

• Sandy Hausman on LinkedIn
• Virginia Public Radio
• Rock n Roll Radio
• Warner Communications
• NBC
• CBS
• CNN
• NPR
• The Washington Post
• The New York Times
• The Times
• The Chicago Tribune

 

About Sandy Hausman

Sandy Hausman is the Charlottesville Bureau Chief for Virginia Public Radio — a network of public stations around the commonwealth.

She joined the team known as RadioIQ in 2008, after working in Chicago as a news director for NBC’s FM station and a news anchor for the CBS-owned all-news broadcaster, WBBM. She also spent ten years producing corporate videos and has worked for ABC TV in its Chicago bureau.

Sandy has won numerous national and regional awards for her coverage of the environment, criminal justice, research and happenings at the University of Virginia. She is a graduate of Cornell University and holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Michigan.