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Everybody Else is a podcast about the invisible people who make life happen. What began as conversations with behind-the-scenes builders in the music industry has grown into a broader exploration of how people think, work, and carry responsibility across industries and across disciplines. Hosted by Wes Luttrell, the show centers on thoughtful dialogue with creatives, leaders, and operators whose work often goes unseen but shapes the world we live in. New episodes streaming every Tuesday.
speaker-0 (00:01.292)
This is the Everybody Else podcast.
speaker-1 (00:02.616)
Podcast.
speaker-1 (00:10.39)
Most of the authors of the human story are unnamed. Invisible contributors to the greatest story ever written. So who are the invisible people writing our chapter today? Because behind every great city, industry, movement, and way of thinking are people who dedicate their entire lives to work that'll go virtually unnoticed. Work that builds on where we've been, shapes where we are, and points us towards where we're going.
There are those in the spotlight, and then there's everybody else.
speaker-0 (00:54.99)
That kid was an aspiring journalist. That kid had just finished an internship in 2000 with the Scripps-Howards National Wire in Washington, D.C., which doesn't exist anymore. One of the many casualties of the sort of shrinking journalism world that we've seen in the ensuing 25 years. But I just finished that. I did that internship in D.C. in...
the fall of 2000. So that would have been Bush versus Gore, Hanging Chads, Florida recounts, all that good stuff. And learned a tremendous amount, wrote a lot of articles, got some things picked up by national wires, which was great. was feeling really, really good about things. Cocky would be a word that I would probably use to describe that young man. I mean, I had a couple of days, I remember I got to, you know,
go to a press conference with Dick Cheney, got to do a couple of news conferences or things where I would happen to be in the Capitol building when something happened and the Scripps reporter was back in the office and I'd call him and say, hey, I stuck my head in this because I saw you weren't here. Do you want my notes? Like, felt like I got to do some really cool stuff while I was there and interview a lot of people. Though the thing about an election in DC, not that this is what you asked about, but...
The thing about an election in DC is that it's kind of like being in Switzerland during a world war. Like, you know that there's stuff happening all over the place, but candidates don't campaign in DC. They know which way that one's going to go. They're campaigning all over the country. So even though it kind of has that epicenter feel, there's nothing happening on that front in Washington. That's interesting.
Yeah, I found it interesting. It wasn't what I expected. It was still great because we still covered election night and we were still doing things for the different papers that subscribe to scripts around the country. I'm a sports fan. I got to go cover a Redskins game. I got to go cover a Ravens game and the Ravens ended up winning the Super Bowl that year. So they were really good. Just a great experience. And then I went back for my last two quarters of college at Ohio University and
speaker-0 (03:07.022)
That was maybe the most anticlimactic thing that I think I could have had happen because you're finishing out the classes and to some extent you've had the experience, right? Like I've been working and doing this and I know that I can do it now. So why am I, I've got these like last two quarters to find a job and figure it out. And luckily I connected with my wife during that time. So I would say it was worth it to go back there for those two quarters. We've been married for more than 20 years now.
Yeah, so I came to Evansville, Indiana. had been interviewed for two jobs before as I was getting ready. from originally? I'm from Cincinnati, Ohio, originally. And then I went to Ohio University and I had interviewed for a job, I think it was in Springfield, Ohio or somewhere around Springfield, Ohio, a little bit north of Dayton. Small paper, small town. Starting salary was less than $20,000 a year.
not that that's that abnormal in journalism and definitely wasn't at that time, but I had applied for a job there and had applied for a job in Evansville and several others. And I got this interview up in that Springfield area. And again, I forget exactly what the newspaper was, but was offered the position and started talking to my parents about it and talking to my then girlfriend about it and all of these things. And I got a...
phone call probably about two hours before I was going to accept the job from Charlene Tolbert, who was the Metro editor at the Evansville Courier and Press, asking me, this was on a Friday afternoon, asking me if I could come and interview with them on Monday. And I said yes. So I went in Sunday night, I did the interview on Monday, came back to Athens, Ohio.
And Tuesday morning, I got a phone call offering me the job in Evansville. As the Warwick County reporter for the Evansville Courier and Press, salary was better. It was a larger newspaper. It was kind of a no-brainer for me, really, to take that job. And after I had met with them, I knew I wanted to come here. I knew that that was going to be the job that I'd be more excited about. So... did you the business before? Just for the interview. Just for the interview. I learned, you they taught me by the Lloyd Express way. you know, taught me...
speaker-1 (05:22.626)
Jeebendevan
speaker-0 (05:31.01)
told me where I was going to be living. had a nice lunch somewhere over near Ashtar. Remember, it looked out over the river. I don't remember a lot of the details of that encounter, but I do remember that. And so I took the job and moved to Evansville in June. I think I graduated June 10th. I think I started June 14th at the Evansville Courier and Press. And, you know, the...
There was that level of, I'm new at this and all these people have been doing it for a long time, but there also was that I'd had some success in college. I'd had some success at Scripps. I definitely had a little bit of that 22-year-old arrogance or cockiness, I should say, about me when I came here.
speaker-1 (06:16.524)
you tasked with writing or were you allowed to write about whatever you wanted to write about in Warwick
speaker-0 (06:22.144)
It really was just cover the beat. I mean, I was with the Warwick County Commissioners meetings. I was at the Booneville City Council meetings. I was covering Newburgh and the town council there, any of the road projects, the schools. It was really kind of general assignment. Anything that was happening in Warwick County, I covered crimes. I covered whatever happened out there. That was sort of my job. So there was a lot of, you know, lot of days I would come into the office for a little bit and then hop in the car and go to Booneville and...
you know, spend the day in Warwick County and come back and write my stories and go home. whether it was Boonville or Linville or Elberfeld or, yeah, wherever I needed to be that day, Newburgh, I would do that. And pretty quickly also, I was a huge movie fan and asked about, know, hey, if you guys need any help with movie reviews, I would be happy to jump in on that too. And they gave me the opportunity to do that.
I think America's Sweethearts with Billy Crystal and Julia Roberts was the first review that I wrote for the Currier and Press, if I remember correctly, which was a big deal for me because there was a preview screening and it was obviously full of stars. The movie was not particularly memorable, but everybody thought it was going to be. was one of those that was really, really hyped. So I remember doing that and I ended up taking on movie reviews as well.
I covered Warwick County for about a year, year and a half. Then I became the police reporter, which I did for about a year or so. And then I took over when Jonathan Winesapple was elected mayor. I took over the city government beat. Herb Maranel, who had been at the courier for a very, very long time, was preparing to retire. And so the idea was that I would transition into that and he'd have a little time before he retired to kind of teach me how to
how to do it. Herb and I had been coaching baseball together at that point. I went to him at one point about eight months after I got there and said, know, hey, you know, I played baseball growing up. I love baseball. I'd love to get into coaching. I know that you coach a team. Do you know anybody in the league or around the city who would need help? And he said, yeah, me. So I became his assistant coach and eventually took over that team for him as well. So I got a chance to get to know him that way.
speaker-0 (08:40.468)
and then we worked out he was he was really kind of the first sort of professional mentor that I had that would kill me if he heard me say that out loud. hopefully he doesn't listen to this podcast. you
speaker-1 (08:52.142)
Did you, the beginning of your role in Warwick County, did you take an interest beyond just the covering the story? Did you take an interest in civic roles and civic municipalities? Did you take an interest in this?
speaker-0 (09:06.626)
Well, you know, yes. My minor in college was in political science. I knew that I wanted to be involved in, you know, politics and government and that sort of thing. I think what surprised me when I was getting ready to graduate, I was meeting with one of my professors and told her what my job was going to be, what I was going to be doing. And she kind of smiled and leaned back in her chair. She says, that means you're going to be, you know, you're going to be covering a lot of road improvements and sewage projects and all of this. And I thought,
God, that sounds terrible. Like, I want to cover city council. I want drama. want politics and all that stuff, you know? But, you know, the sort of nuts and bolts of it isn't something you're thinking about when you're in college. You're thinking about those big picture stories and the political battles and covering elections and all that stuff. But, you know, a lot of that work really is and it's really important stuff.
That was what I had to learn when I was out there was that, yes, I had an interest in politics, and yes, I had an interest in government, and yes, I loved when there was a little controversy in a meeting that I got to write about. But on the other side of that, there's a lot of government work that is making sure the infrastructure is there. And through my time in the mayor's office the last couple of years, that's the other thing that you see is that there is a whole army of people out there who are working incredibly hard to do all of the things that you take for granted.
And so getting to cover that a little bit and then getting to see it on this side of it and just recognizing again how many people and what it takes to make sure that when you flush the toilet, everything goes where it's supposed to, to make sure that when it rains, the streets either don't flood or if they do, they clear fairly quickly. Like the amount of work that it takes to do those things that we don't think about because it's just something that we've always had, right?
So getting to see that as a reporter was a little bit eye-opening. And then, again, getting to be in it and see it from the other side and get to know the people that are doing that work is, again, it was all kind of eye-opening.
speaker-1 (11:08.12)
How'd you get into the mayor's office?
speaker-0 (11:10.382)
I applied for a job. I got into the mayor's office when Mayor Terry was elected. actually, the communications director here at the University of Evansville, we're sitting at the University of Evansville right now having this conversation. The communications person here reached out to my office because he had been asked about if, you know, the possibility of that she needed a communications director, Mayor Terry did when she was elected.
and or Mayor Elect Terry at the time. And they were curious if there were any, you know, graduates that we'd had or anything like that who might be might be good for the job. And I got the email and I walked into my department chair's office and he looked at me and he went, you're thinking about it, aren't you? And I said, I really am. really am. Yeah. So and he could not have been better about it or more supportive. You know, I applied for the job. I think they sent the application in on a Monday morning.
I got a call from the search committee Monday night, met with them on Wednesday, then got a call on Friday saying that the mayor-elect wanted to meet with me on Monday. And we met at the party, her transition office's headquarters, and talked for about an hour, and she offered me the job in the room. you know, was really, it was a great learning experience. It was a terrific opportunity.
to be able to go and to be right there in the middle of all of that. she had, there's so much that she is doing and wants to do with the city that I'm so excited about. So those things just, it made it feel like a really good opportunity to be part of that.
speaker-1 (12:52.238)
Tell me about your first week on the job.
speaker-0 (12:56.366)
Well, you know, it's a strange thing because you walk in on the first day and I got a call from Channel 14 probably a day or two before we started. Or maybe they approached me at her inauguration, which was on New Year's Day. 2024? 2024, yeah. So most likely, I would guess they probably approached me at that, but I don't remember specifically. But they said that they wanted to have a reporter there when she walked into the office on the first day.
So I asked her, I said, when are you, what time are you planning to get there? And she told me, and I said, okay, well, I'll be there 20 minutes earlier and we'll bring, I'll meet the reporter and we'll go in and be ready for you when you walk in the door. So what I remember about that first day was one, the reporter coming in and filming and staying. While we were kind of trying to get acclimated, I was like, well, I think you got what you need. know, like we were trying to figure out where the bathrooms are and that sort of thing.
speaker-1 (13:52.546)
documentary right
speaker-0 (13:53.358)
They're shooting a documentary. So they did the report and eventually she took off. But we had the head of technology services, Vernon Lutz, was at the desk, at the front desk, pretty much 10 minutes after the mayor got there because they needed to come in and get all of our...
our access set up, we needed to have our emails going, we needed to be able to log into our computers, we needed to have all of that stuff set up right off the bat. So he's waiting to come in and do those things. You know, the mayor's setting up her desk. I start setting up my desk and they go, no, no, we've got you in this office back here. So I have to kind of move and go into that office. We had to reorient in the furniture in that room a little bit, which they did while we were in cabinet. We had the first cabinet meeting at 830.
So we've been in the office for a half an hour, 45 minutes, and we're having a cabinet meeting to talk about what's upcoming and what's expected in the administration. Some of the cabinet people there are people the mayor has appointed. Some are holdovers from the Winnocki administration that are either there temporarily until their replacements can be there or are still don't know for sure if they're going to be hired or not because she was still kind of working through a few of those hires, police chief and fire chief.
probably most notably among them because those decisions weren't made until the end of January. So all of those things are happening and it's just kind of like, I don't know, it was like we walked in and all of a sudden it's like, okay, you're in charge, go. And people have, I mean, I think it's an overused cliche to use the phrase, you you've been, you're drinking from a fire hose. But I think we were drinking from about seven fire hoses, all spraying in different directions.
Because you go in and the first big thing I remember going on camera for was there was a building in the downtown area that was collapsing and a piece of it collapsed and somebody was injured. was just trespassing in there and was injured when something fell on them. And we did interviews about it and talked about that. But then all of a sudden I'm talking to the building commission about code enforcement and about code violations and...
speaker-0 (16:07.552)
and how that process works and how many times do you have to flag somebody before you go to the next step in the process and all of that. And I'm gonna be interviewed on camera about this, so I've got to make sure that I know what I'm talking about, right? So there's just that, but with every department around the city, you're meeting with parks to find out what projects are in process and what projects are on the horizon, hopefully, and what's just finished and what are your priorities and...
Then you go to the next department and you have that same meeting. And then you go to the next department and you have that meeting again. And then they bring in a police and a fire chief and you meet with them and you get to know them and figure out where they're going. just the first few months is just, it's the learning curve is so steep for everybody involved. And the Winnocki administration was great. They had put together a transition document that kind of gave us a little bit of, this is.
what's ongoing and that sort of thing. So they couldn't have been more cooperative, couldn't have been more helpful about trying to help get us up to speed. And so I think we were as prepared as we could have been walking in that sense. But at the same time, you can't be prepared to walk in and it's like, here are the keys to the city, try not to wreck it.
speaker-1 (17:18.872)
How did, when you were thinking about the days leading up to starting your new job, how are you thinking about your sort of like approach, if there was one, based off of your years of having set in different civic meetings and things, how are you sort of thinking about your own orientation towards, when I get in there, here's what I'm gonna do.
speaker-0 (17:43.544)
Well, on the bright side, because she got elected in early November, I got hired in early December. There wasn't a ton of time to... or to necessarily philosophize about that. But I tend to lean toward transparency as much as possible. I think that people are much more likely to, whether they agree with something or not, to be understanding of it if they understand it.
speaker-1 (17:50.52)
Think about that.
speaker-0 (18:10.942)
Right? mean, like, you may not agree with this decision, but this is why this decision was made. And, you know, I think that social media has maybe disabused me of some of that notion that that's the case. But I do think that my philosophy going in was one of A, transparency. And, you know, if there's something that we're doing, let's let people know that we're doing it. I mean, there are obviously, in some cases, there are reasons why we can't.
and that's for legal reasons or whatever, and that's a different conversation. that was kind of part one for me was that this idea of transparency. So for example, almost immediately, as we're dealing with whether it's road projects or whatever, let's put a video up on social media and say, is what road projects are happening, this is what it's gonna lead to, this is why we're doing it. And do a little video that says that or do a little video that talks about...
whether it's that or a graphic or whatever that talks about, know, if you, this is how many potholes are getting filled every day by our pothole teams. If you see one that needs to be filled, this is who you should reach out to, and this is how you can make that happen. And just try and make those things as easy as possible. At the same time, I wanted to know as much as I could about what was going on in the city, because that's how you determine what to talk about, right? I think there's a lot of things that are happening. Like I said, there's a lot of those things that we take for granted. And I wanted to
really put as much of that out there as I could to some extent. Not because necessarily everybody's going to start appreciating that work, but I think recognizing that, you know, there's this office does one thing that made me mad, but here's the 17 other things that they do that I'm really glad that they do or something like that, you know. So just putting as much of that out there as we could. I started meeting with the department heads as often as I could, as regularly as I could, just to kind of keep track of what they were doing.
And a lot of times in those meetings, they would be talking about a project. I wasn't aware of that. That would make a great little social media post, or that would make a great news release that we can talk about. So again, just trying to find those things so we could highlight the work that's being done, the positive work that's being done, and again, just be transparent about what's happening in the government. And I do feel like that the more that you do that and the more you talk about those things regularly, the more likely when something comes up that maybe people aren't happy about,
speaker-0 (20:34.894)
You have a rapport at that point. have a trust line that people may disagree with it, but it's like, okay, I get it. Or, okay, I don't like this thing that they're doing, but at least there's these other 17 things that I do. And again, that comes from being able to talk about the things that you can control, because the other thing that you learn very quickly is how much people expect you to be able to control that you can't. Because the things that we heard about...
The most frequently a lot of times were things that the mayor's office really doesn't have control over. Center point being the rate of the center point rates being a great example. Those are set at the state level by people who are appointed by the governor through legislation passed by the state legislature. I told people frequently the difference between what you can do about those types of things or anything that the legislature, I use that as an example because it seemed to pop up on our social media quite regularly.
But the difference between what you can do and what the mayor can do is you can write a letter to your state legislator, to the governor, expressing your discontent and encouraging them to make a change. The mayor can have that conversation with them in person, but the state legislature and the governor can ignore you both equally. that was the frustrating part of times was definitely hearing about all of the things that we really, and by we, I mean the mayor, really did not have the authority to do
anything about. And people would still get frustrated about it. always doing the best we could to be transparent about what we could control and what we couldn't.
speaker-1 (22:12.554)
What in that light, what does the mayor, what role does the mayor play in the city of Evansville? What's like the meaning she's the CEO, right?
speaker-0 (22:23.634)
Absolutely. I mean, she's the CEO of a company with a $530 million or something along those lines budget every year. You know, you're overseeing all of the departments, the police department, the fire department, but also, you know, public transportation, public works, parks. All of those things are overseen by the mayor. They have their own department heads, but those department heads all report up to the mayor.
So, yeah, I she is the CEO there, but she's also the champion for the city, right? If we need to go to the state legislature and lobby for something, you know, that's a role that the mayor plays. If we need to have a conversation with the governor or the secretary of energy or whomever at a state level, the mayor does that. You know, she's made a lot of trips to Washington, or not to Washington, to Indianapolis, some also to Washington.
to, you know, whether it's lobby or meet with people or to advocate to try and work to make this, to get those things done at those higher levels that would have a positive impact on this community and on the people who live here. So yeah, you're the CEO and also sort of the chief champion for the city.
speaker-1 (23:41.835)
What? Ummm...
What was I going to say? on. Hold on. got it. how does information flow from you when you were in your role in the mayor? How do you guys surface what's going on beyond the department heads, but on like the street level or the citizen level? Is there a communication flow that happens regularly or how does...
If you had to describe how that works or at least the intention behind it, I know you can't talk to everybody, what is sort of this system or the approach to surface what's practically going on as a citizen?
speaker-0 (24:23.31)
Well, you know, one of the really good things that Mayor Terry has done, I think, is create things like last week, she had a city budget forum to say, you know, we're getting ready to get into the budget season. We want to hear from people and we want to know what it is that they are most interested in funding. You know, where do you want your tax dollars to go? What are the things that are the priorities for people in the city?
So that's the second year in a row that she's done that. There's also a city budget survey that is out there right now that they're encouraging. If you go on her, the mayor's or the city of Evansville Facebook page, you'll see that that can be filled out right now, talking about what your priorities are and where you'd like to see the city's budget be spent. And I think that she's done that with several topics. She did that with animal control.
animal care and control when there were some issues that were happening there. And that ultimately led to that position being split off from the Public Works Department becoming its own director level position that reports directly to the mayor. Missy Mosby is in that job now, which is, I think, one of the best hires that the mayor made. Missy is so perfect for that role and is doing such good work that, and I'm aware that I was one of her hires and I still say Missy might be the best one.
But yeah, mean, like, so that role is important. But I think that she has done a good job of, you know, having traveling city halls four times a year. I would go to the West Side Improvement Association meetings regularly. I would go to the United Neighborhoods of Evansville meetings regularly. You know, we had people going to meetings of other neighborhood associations, of the NAACP, of really any community organization that was willing to welcome us and that would hear from us.
It wasn't always the mayor going to those meetings. Sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn't. But it was representatives of the staff were going there to hear what people had to say. by the first meeting or two when I went to, for example, United Neighborhoods, I'd get up and I'd say my thing and maybe one person would come up and talk to me afterward. But by the end, they all got to the point where they knew me. I'd get up there and talk and they would ask questions, some that were related to what I talked about, some that weren't.
speaker-0 (26:40.046)
Sometimes people would pull me out in the hallway to ask for more details afterward and that sort of thing. I think we started, you know, we really were getting a good feel of where people were coming from. Obviously, you also hear a lot from people on social media. They would send direct messages. They would send, they would comment and that sort of thing. That was of mixed value, I would say. Some of it is just people being angry.
But also some of it was very, very useful and it was good information. A lot of the direct messages we would get would be, you know, people who were seeing something at the ground level that we needed to know about or that the mayor needed to know about. keep saying we. But things that the mayor needed to know about. So, yeah. So I think that she did a good job of making that public input piece a priority. And so that there was a sense of what was happening. And again,
like with animal care and control, even if there was a specific, all the way down to if there was a specific thing that was clearly bubbling up to the surface. It's like, okay, let's get everybody in a room together. Let's pull some experts in on this topic and let's have a town hall. Let's talk about it. Let's hear what people have to say. So I think that she did a good job of that.
speaker-1 (27:53.696)
Is AI being used at the municipal, in the city, in the civic?
speaker-0 (28:00.93)
Well, I'm not there anymore.
speaker-1 (28:03.85)
Sorry, sorry, sorry. As of two months ago, was it?
speaker-0 (28:07.246)
I think for research to some extent was where I saw it the most. And I wasn't in every office and I couldn't tell you. mean, there's not, there wasn't necessarily a straight up like this is what our policy and these are how we're going to use it and we're going to integrate it into our systems in this way. And like I wasn't aware of anything along those lines. I can't say it's happening or not happening. just, I wasn't aware of it. You know, for me, it was a good research tool in the sense of, you know,
if we're looking at a particular issue in the city and name your issue, right? But if you're looking at a particular issue in the city that they were struggling with, looking at, know, we're not the first ones who have dealt with that, whatever it might be, if it's, you know, roads, if it's, you know, whatever it might be. So being able to use that as a sort of shortcut sometimes for research to figure out, what other cities could we be talking to?
You know, who else can we look at and what other solutions have worked in other places that we haven't thought of yet? So I found it to be a really good research tool and But at the same time that's something that we could have done It just would have taken longer with Google and then phone calls and and making contacts and that sort of thing because we You do talk to people in other cities, you know, you have contacts and you know, whether it's other mayor's offices or yeah Because when when mayor Terry came into office, she joined the the Bloomberg Harvard
city initiative or the city leadership initiative. And so, you know, went to New York for essentially a conference. And then when she came back, there were connections with mayor of the other 40 mayors or whatever that were part of that. They were from all around the world. And there was a city leaders piece of that too. And the deputy mayor and I went to that one. And so we came back with contacts for people from those other 40 cities as well. a great idea. Yeah. And it was terrific because I
You know, I went to Nashville at one point and visited and spent time with the people there that I had gotten to know. But also they were like, hey, come meet our communications people. Come meet these people. Let's talk about what we're doing in all of these different areas. Or we could reach out to them and say, hey, we're dealing with this problem. Is that something that you guys have dealt with? And in some cases, it was. And there was a group WhatsApp that I could reach out and say, hey, know, is anybody else dealing with XYZ?
speaker-0 (30:28.066)
And they're, yeah, we're absolutely dealing with that. Okay, let's get on a Zoom and let's all talk about that and try and figure out how we can maybe come up with some solutions. So yeah, there's a lot of different ways that you go about trying to kind of figure out how to solve those problems. And I think that at least, again, for me personally, I found that that research, AI was useful.
speaker-1 (30:52.246)
After two years of being on the front lines talking to people every single day in the city, you saw a lot, I'm sure. And having been years before that, you know, capturing stories on the front lines.
speaker-0 (31:08.438)
Yeah, we jumped like 20 years straight from like, know, when you were in college to when you worked for the mayor, like there was some stuff in between there.
speaker-1 (31:11.96)
College.
If you to tell me, like let's pretend I didn't live here, if you had to tell me the story or the describe to me Evansville, how would you describe it? What would you say is sort of the identity or like the thing?
speaker-0 (31:32.782)
You know, I don't know that I have the right answer for this, I do know that I've always described Evansville as maybe America's biggest small town in the sense that, you you have, it's not a small town. I mean, it is, you know, 116,000 people. You you go out into the county, you're up around 175,000 people. So that's a decent number of people, but it's still, and you have the things that most big cities have.
I mean, we may not have as many of them. A bigger city might have seven Outback steak houses and we have one or something like that. Just pick your, I go to Outback, that's where I worked in college. I was a cook at the Outback Steakhouse in Cincinnati or one of them, right? They might have six, have one, but you have those things that they have in the large cities. We have the Ford Center. You have the Ford Center.
speaker-1 (32:26.094)
Thanks
speaker-0 (32:28.396)
But you don't have the traffic that you have in driving in Chicago, which is kind of nice. I get stuck in traffic here. It means that I have to sit at the same light twice on the Lloyd Expressway, right? Like that's a traffic jam. That's, I'm sorry, I'm stuck. Whereas you go somewhere else and stuck means something totally different. So there's that piece of it. think it is a larger city in that way, but it also feels like everybody knows everybody in the way that happens in a smaller town. So I think that...
I think that is a big piece of Evansville's identity in that you do have that kind of small town feel where everybody knows everybody and sees each other regularly. Or if you don't know somebody, you know their brother, or you know their cousin, or you know their, you know? So I think that in that way, I think Evansville is the world's biggest small town.
speaker-1 (33:18.126)
How do you choose? Going back now.
speaker-0 (33:21.91)
Are we rewinding now? Okay, all right. I'm unstuck in time here.
speaker-1 (33:24.237)
How do you
How do you choose what you're gonna make a documentary on?
speaker-0 (33:31.53)
Some of it is based on, some of the documentaries I've done have been based purely on my own interest and my own curiosity. Some have been based on things that, know, WNIN or somebody else has pitched to me and said, you know, would you be open to doing this? Now, if they've pitched things to me and I'm just not interested at all, I'm not afraid to say, no, no, thank you. But...
Yeah, usually it's either I have an interest that I bring to them or they bring something to me and I'm like, that seems like an interesting piece. So for example, know, Brad Kimmel and I sat down and talked about my first documentary and he had said, you know, I was, he was always very interested in the UE basketball plane crash in 1977.
He mentioned to me, he's like, can't, nobody's ever made a documentary, nobody's ever made a film. I've always thought that would be a great idea. I'm not in a place to do it because at the time he was the CEO at WNIN. And he said, if that were to be done, think you would do a good job with it. And I went home and talked to my wife about it a little bit. And she, I was like, I don't wanna say lukewarm on it, I was interested in it.
but what really sort of solidified it to me was I walk, you I had been on this campus for years at that point. You I've been part of UE off and on, well, mostly on, minus those two years in the mayor's office, for about 20 years now, or almost 19, 20 years, something like that. And, you know, I walk past that memorial every single day, right? To the point where you stop looking at it sometimes. You know, you do. stop, just like you walk past anything for 20 years, you stop looking at it.
And one day I was walking by and I saw the names that were etched in the stone. And I thought for some reason it hit me. like, this is the only thing that we know about them. Or is these names in stone by this fountain means that they died in the plane crash. So we know the end of their story. But every one of them had a whole story that came before that. What was that story?
speaker-0 (35:48.182)
And that's what made me go, no, okay, this is interesting. I want to tell that story. And so that was when I called Brad back and I was like, all right, let's figure this out. Let's figure out how to do this.
speaker-1 (35:59.842)
How did you do it? Where do you start? Like, let's take that example.
speaker-0 (36:02.19)
Sure. Seems like a lot. That one was a lot. And it started with having conversations with people like Mike Blake, know, Brad Bird, people, David James, people who had been here, who had been part of the news, who had covered it. That was kind of my starting point and reaching out to some others. But really, I think the thing that started the project really moving for me was they dedicated
the memorial that's in the Ford Center. If you've been in the Ford Center, you know, there's a wall off to the side when you come in that is, has pictures of all the players and photos from the team and that sort of thing. And it's kind of the monument within the Ford Center to that basketball team. And it is, it is. So when you first like walk in the doors there, when you kind of veer to the right, you know, the left is the escalator and there are the stairs and the escalator and the right, they have that little kind of like.
speaker-1 (36:47.138)
I didn't know that was in there.
speaker-0 (36:58.542)
passageway. And right as you go there on the wall on the left is all the pictures of the players and all of that. they were dedicating that and Joe Ellsworth was leading the committee and Joe called me. He knew I was thinking about doing this project and he called me and he said, know, we're doing this dedication and a lot of people are coming in for it. If you want to bring a camera and see if you can get any interviews or anything like that, might be a good place to start.
So I did, and I think I got four interviews that day. Yeah, I spoke to Stafford Stevenson, who was an assistant coach on that team who was on a recruiting trip. So he wasn't traveling with the team. He was in Florida. I spoke to Lois Ford, who was Bobby Watson, the head coach, his sister. Ed Siegel, whose son Mark, was a freshman point guard on the team.
speaker-1 (37:30.072)
from family or from direct people experience.
speaker-0 (37:54.534)
and Chris Weaver, who was the student body president at the time. So I did those four interviews and that, A, obviously gave me different lines of question to go and other, to find other people to talk to because it was just a really good education into kind of who all was involved and who to talk to and what happened. But also there were moments in that. There was one moment, I don't even remember.
I do remember what the conversation was. was talking to Ed Siegel, who was a high school basketball coach in Indianapolis, and he had coached his son, Mark. And he was talking to me about after the crash, he was debating whether to continue coaching. He just didn't know if he could walk back into that gym. He didn't know if he could do this again. And he said that he talked to his priest and there was pastor and he said,
Ed, tell me this, if Mark Siegel were here and if he were in this room having this conversation and you were discussing it with him, what would he say to you? And he said, Mark would tell me, dad, get your butt back in that gym. And the pastor said, well then dad, get your butt back in that gym. And he went on to coach for another 20 years or something like that. I think he's in the Indiana basketball hall of fame as a coach. And in the middle of that conversation,
Joe Ellsworth came walking in the room briefly, and I saw him walk in, just feel whatever the vibe was in the room, and immediately walk back out. And he told me after he said, I felt like something was happening there that I just didn't need to be a part of. And I was like, no, it was just, was a good interview, but again, it gives you that feeling of if this story is gonna be done.
because of people like this, I want to make sure that it's done right. And that made me go, okay, I think I know how to do it right. And, I was approached at a film festival at one point after this film screened by somebody who probably could have helped with distribution and that sort of thing and had been through this. And he was like, you know, if you really want this to go farther, you're going to have to cut a lot of those backstories about the players and the parents and that sort of thing and really just emphasize the crash and that. And I thought back to why I started doing it.
speaker-0 (40:21.068)
which was to tell the story of what happened before the crash. And I thought about the conversations that I'd had with the parents and what I am. And I told them, like, we want to tell your kids' stories. We don't just want to talk about the crash. mean, that's part of it. But that's the end of their story. And we want to talk about the rebuild that came after. But we also want to talk about who they were and what this team was beforehand. And it just felt to me like that I would have been lying to them if I made those cuts and if I had done that. So...
speaker-1 (40:48.11)
It almost became a different project once you got those interviews and it became focused on the people.
speaker-0 (40:56.034)
100%. 100%. And there's so much of it. I did 76 interviews, about 42 hours worth of interviews. And they, you know, I still have all of that, but the movie's an hour, hour and a half long. You know, there's an hour-long version, one on NIN, and an hour and a half version that played in theaters. So there's a whole lot of stuff that had to get left on the floor, too. But I just, think, I hope that it is a fitting tribute to that group of people.
who were killed in the crash. hope it is.
speaker-1 (41:27.054)
You guys obviously never watched a Ken Burns documentary.
speaker-0 (41:32.238)
But it's entirely possible. But I think people think about the, We Are Marshall, which is a good film, but it's about the guy that rebuilt it. It's not about the crash. It's about the guy that rebuilt it afterward. And I think they were maybe seeing that story of, the crash. But I wanted to kind of freeze that moment, you know, what came before, what came after, what the team meant to the city. Because the connection between the city and the team and the UE basketball team back then was, I mean, not that it's not...
tight in some circles now, it was such a part of the city's identity that this was
speaker-1 (42:06.35)
Right.
speaker-0 (42:08.726)
And this is a team that was this was their first year of Division one basketball. They'd won five national championships in the college division. It was such an interesting year. I you take the crash out of it. Yeah. It's still in April. Jerry Sloan comes back and is announced as the head coach of the UE basketball team. Four days later, he resigns and they have to start the search all over again. They bring in Bobby Watson, who looks like he's going to be a great coach.
and then they were going and they're playing Division I for the first time. You know, they play three, four games, they win one, they beat Pittsburgh, but they played against Larry Bird, they played against Mark McGuire in those four games. I mean, just so much about that season before the crash is an interesting story in and of itself. So I did that film and I did a series of TV episodes called Top Nine.
where we ranked the top nine of different things from high school basketball coaches to our high school basketball teams to public officials and leaders and all that stuff in the city's history. So we did all of, we did those things and then Brad and I sat down again and we were having, I think one of the things we did was the top nine barbecue restaurants. So we got together for lunch and we had barbecue and he pitched me three or four different ideas for things to follow up with.
And at this point, I think that cocky 22-year-old was back because I just looked up and I went, I don't want to do any of this. Like none of those sound interesting to me. And, you know, he kind of sat back a little bit and he's like, all right, well then what is interesting to you? And at the time I had just read James McCloud's then new book, Evansville in World War II, which was about all of the...
you know, planes and ships and bullets and everything else that was built here in that era. And I said, you know, I'd be really interested in working with James to try and turn this into something that looks like a documentary. And Brad went away and I had not spoken to James about this yet. I James and I are friends, but I had not spoken to him about this. just, read his book over Christmas. This conversation happened in January and I was like, this is interesting to me. So Brad went back to his office and he called me.
speaker-0 (44:25.332)
not too long later. And I called James on the way back from that lunch meeting and I was like, hey, so I just pitched this to WNIN. If you're interested, I would love to work with you on it. not, obviously we won't do it, but I'd love to, you know, if you're interested. And so he went and thought about it a little bit and he came back and we sat down with Brad at WNIN week or so later and
They had an idea for what they were looking for. I had an idea for what I was looking to do. James and I had kind of talked it through and we all decided to move forward with it. And for me, the interesting thing about that one was James' book does such a fantastic job of talking about everything that this city did during World War II. And if you have a chance to read it and you haven't, and you're interested in that sort of thing at all, it's a great story. And I would pick up that book and I would read through it.
speaker-1 (45:20.078)
She kind of gave you a script to start with or an outline of some sort.
speaker-0 (45:24.224)
It did. It gave us a really good outline. He'd done so much research. And I said to him, said, you know, the one thing that I would love to add to this in the documentary is, you know, talking to people and getting a sense, you know, having all of that history and all of the things that are in your book and all of that stuff. But also, what was it like to live here? What was it like to be walking to school in the morning and have the truck with the P-47 wings come whipping past you on the way to Republic Aviation? Like, what was that like? Right?
speaker-1 (45:54.35)
better get it quick too, we're running out of time.
speaker-0 (45:57.174)
Well, and there was that. mean, it was, it was, mean, some of those people were not young. We spoke to some people, we spoke to, I know of at least three people who we interviewed who did not live to see the program air. So it was, mean, we were in that place, but you know, but also to talk about what was it like when your mom went to work at the shipyards? What was it like when, you know, the Fort Campbell soldiers came up on the weekends? And what that do to Evansville? Because this was a huge population.
just boomed forever. And so all this industry came in and the population skyrocketed. They couldn't build housing fast enough to house all of these people who were coming in. People were staying with family. They were staying with friends. They were sleeping wherever they could. They would rent beds in eight-hour shifts in some parts of the town where somebody would work a shift and then come and get into a bed that somebody else just got out of to go to work. That's what was happening. This population boom was very real.
being told what was it like to live in that environment, right? And we got some really interesting stories. There was actually one of my favorite parts of the piece is watching these older gentlemen all when I ask them about the red light district, watching all of them kind of like chuckle and like they're teenagers again about the red light district. you got those stories in it too.
That's one of my favorite things that I've gotten to do is work on that project and work with James, who was just such a pro and so good and got very good at setting up lights. You know, for a historian and author, he knew exactly where those lights needed to go and how they got set up. So he didn't just show up on set and sit there and be like, all right, let me know when you're ready to shoot. He got his hands dirty, which was great. Loved working with James. And yeah, I just was really, really, really proud of that project. And there were some moments that I will never forget in doing some of those interviews.
I remember sitting with a gentleman named Bill Cook, whose uncle was one of the people that went and lobbied in DC to get the shipyards to Evansville. And that's what we were interviewing him for. But he went into the service in 44 and was starting to go heading overseas right at about the time that the war ended. And he started talking about that. for some reason, James and I, we didn't stop him. Because we were...
speaker-0 (48:17.26)
well past what we needed to talk about and that sort of thing. But he kept talking and we're like, yeah, okay, let's see where this goes. He says, you know, we were on our way to Japan when they dropped the atomic bomb. And he said, you know, so we were the first Americans to land on Nagasaki. And like all of a sudden, the room just goes silent. And he tells us this story, which is in the documentary. We did end up using it. afterward, and this wasn't the first time that happened, this happened.
afterward his, I think it was his nephew was in the room with us. As he's walking us to the door afterward, he said, I've never heard that story. And that happened so often that these were people who had never told these stories, had never been open to talk about it. My own grandfather was the same way. While I was doing this, my mom was like, you know, your grandpa served and we don't know anything about it. It'd be great if you could interview him. And I was over there one night and he happened to be
in a chatty mood and I was there with my mom and one of my aunts and my grandma. And I got him to let me basically turn on my phone and record him telling his World War II stories. How he got shrapnel, how he was in the Battle of the Bulge, how, you know, my mom, we were driving home and my mom's like, I knew like 10 % of that, you know? So that was one of the-
speaker-1 (49:39.694)
beautiful to be able to capture those things indirectly for the family members. But also, as people like me become more interested in the place that I live, and I'm like, how did all this shit get here? How did this happen? It's nice that somebody's been out there cultivating. I'm here for you, Wes. I'm here for you. That's what this was all about.
speaker-0 (50:03.214)
What am I going to do when Wes gets interested in Evansville? So we've got the history of the LGBTQ community. We've got the history of the war effort. got the basketball program. We've got the all these top nine episodes that are like little micro histories. We got the brewing history of Evansville. I've done all of those.
speaker-1 (50:08.45)
Go watch Ducky.
speaker-1 (50:22.542)
This is your syllabus. Thank you. It's great. One more thing. Sure. I do want to add.
speaker-0 (50:25.486)
I'm here for you.
speaker-0 (50:30.542)
I'm happy to talk to you anytime.
speaker-1 (50:33.043)
is your new venture, Newsroom.
speaker-0 (50:36.902)
News Lab. The Evansville News Lab is a project that started about two or three years ago here at the University of Evansville. Some members of the community, Steve Berger and Guy Sides, I believe, came in and had concerns about the state of local journalism. And when I say local journalism, I don't mean that to just mean the people here in Evansville, because local journalism as an industry
around the country has seen a tremendous decrease in resources, in personnel, in expenditure. So you're seeing that happen across the country. And Evansville is not an exception to that. In fact, we're actually in good shape compared to they have, know, the Listening Post Collective has done a, a look at what they refer to as news deserts.
which are places that don't have communities that really don't have anybody covering them and don't have media outlets.
speaker-1 (51:36.366)
It's so funny because almost every person in that community has a device connected to the internet with a camera and a microphone and all the space you could ever want to write notes and share stuff.
speaker-0 (51:47.982)
Yep, but they don't have an outlet. So I mean they're getting stuff from social media. They're getting stuff, but they're not that that outlet So in that sense, we're in good shape because we have three TV stations. We have a newspaper. We have a magazine We have we have our time. So we have two newspapers. Yeah, and we have And we have a PBS station an NPR station. So we have News outlets that so we're not a news desert. We're not in the shape that some places are but
At the same time, we do see the Courier and Press size-wise, the people that are there, they're working hard, they're doing everything they can, but there's the number of them who are covering things compared to when I came here in 2001. I was trying to count how many people were in the newsroom back then. I got up around 30. I think there are six or seven now. that's happening all over the place. So through no fault of the people who are working here, who are doing, again,
Yeoman's work trying to cover more with so much less. You're seeing gaps be created in what can be covered, right? So this project was created to try and help identify those gaps and try and find ways to fill some of those gaps. So they've spent the last couple of years doing research, doing listening sessions, talking to the community and saying, you know, what are your priorities? What's not being covered that you'd like to see covered?
And they had a grant from the Lumina Foundation. They got the one from the Listening Post Collective to kind of do those listening sessions. Now they have one from the Lumina Foundation. The Lumina Foundation is a private entity that funds things in education and in media and that sort of thing. They funded us, they funded our times both to do as a partnership to start moving some of these things forward.
speaker-1 (53:25.782)
What's the Lumina Foundation?
speaker-0 (53:43.522)
really, and then hiring a director was one piece of that, which is where I am now. I'm in that role. So my job is to work with partners, to work with the local media. We're not looking to build like a new media outlet or anything along those lines. We're looking to figure out, to take where those gaps have been identified and figure out how we can help the existing local media, the existing entities that are there.
to fill those gaps. What can we provide that is missing? So, you know, some of the gaps that have been identified at this point are things like consistent coverage of meetings and knowing what's happening and everything from city council to the county commissioners to the parks board to school board, all of those things. Investigative reporting, just again, with the fewer resources you have, the harder it is to do that story that takes a month to report. Yeah. Right. So like that, that's not a thing that can be done right now.
So really it's that sort of depth piece and then making sure that we're covering everyone in the community and that we're doing that accurately. there's, yeah, so there's some work to be done. We're working on putting together kind of an action plan and again, wanna work with the local media who exist to figure out, you know, how can we fit into what you're doing in a way that helps bolster what you're able to do.
speaker-1 (55:08.896)
I can already sense that I'm sure there are people out there like myself who are interested in like just hearing what's going on from the people in roles doing stuff. Okay, let's just figure that out and just capture it and then share it. And then I'm sure that there are other people who would have an interest in sitting at city council meetings, just taking notes and sharing what that is back.
People sit at basketball games and track high school basketball games and track stats. I'm sure somebody, I saw a guy in St. Louis watching the Cardinals game on TV and had a newspaper. It filled with handwritten notes about what was going on in the game. I know there are people who would love to track stuff and then turn that into whoever would be willing to share.
speaker-0 (55:55.296)
And that's one of the things we're working on. That's one of the things that we're working on right now is, yeah, right, that kind of meeting coverage. There are programs like that. And again, we're not alone. There are programs like some of these things that exist across the country. I I visited the Reynolds Journalism Institute at Mizzou, where they have a $30 million grant to help communities nationwide solve some of the problems by creating new products that can help to fill those coverage gaps.
visited the Nebraska Journalism Trust up in Omaha where they have created, I think there are up to three new publications right now, each of which is covering certain areas or certain parts of the Nebraska communities, certain communities and certain pieces of it. some of that is arts and entertainment and some of that is government and some of it is public safety and all of those things, just finding ways to make sure that you fill those gaps.
It's a huge challenge. It's a nationwide challenge. So we're talking to as many of those other communities as we can to find out what they're doing. Just that doesn't mean it's going to work in Evansville. You what works in Omaha or in Columbia, Missouri is not necessarily going to fit the city of Evansville, but figuring out what other people are doing, what's working, what isn't working, and then what makes sense for this specific community. Because Evansville is unique in a lot of ways, in the way that I guess it
probably every community is unique in a lot of ways. And we need to find that solution and that option that fits the environment that we're in and the community that we have.