Dedicated volunteers build the news team at KEPW

Dedicated volunteers have been building the news team at KEPW. Recalling the last six years at KEPW News, Julie Lambert and Sam Broadway.

Sam Broadway (KEPW Newsday): I’ve been with KEPW now about six years and going on strong. But Newsday was not Newsday when I started. I got to be invited by Julie to be a part of what was a new show with her and Simone way back when. Simone used to play Ozzy’s ‘Crazy Train’ to open it, and then you two would read whatever, pretty much it was events and things going on around town.

[00:00:44] It wasn’t much news as it was, you know, what’s going on and what was happening. And then I started by reading the CALC events calendar during the end of that show that you guys put together. And I think the show was about a half hour or something like that. So that’s how it started.

[00:01:11] Julie Lambert (Legalize Survival): There was a little chunk of time between (Sam Broadway) was coming on, and Simone was still there. Simone and I, we can’t stand Trump and he was looming on the horizon.

[00:01:25] And so I started bringing in political humor into the show. I would write things and quote things play Randy Rainbow songs.

[00:01:36] And there’s plenty of others, artists who were making songs that were just hilarious. And we always had one of those songs to end the show. We started with ‘Crazy Train’ and then ended it with some bizarre thing about Trump.

[00:01:52] And this came about eventually. And the satire portion of it, we—I don’t know, I think I spent probably only 10 minutes. It took me about an hour to edit it, but about 10 minutes of copy, just something funny about Trump because I love political satire and that’s the thing I love to do. I miss the political stuff a lot. So yeah, I need to jump back in here.

[00:02:20] John Q: Station Manager Jana Thrift encouraged more public service news, covering the pandemic and local wildfires.

[00:02:28] Sam Broadway: And then we got to this (fire season) time of year, with fires breaking out everywhere, people not used to it, and all of this. And I believe (Station Manager) Jana (Thrift) asked if we could have somebody start reporting on the fires. So I volunteered to start doing that. And then I ask Jana if we could just put it together as a regular news broadcast and do regular news and so Newsday just kind of developed out of that.

[00:02:59] When I started doing Newsday, I started doing a lot of it using clips from the different news shows. Instead of me reading it, I let them do it. It was their story, I figured I could just do that and give them credit once they were done telling what they were saying.

[00:03:18] John Q: Another station volunteer said he would need permission because those stories were copyrighted.

[00:03:26] Sam Broadway: And he had a cow over that. He did not like that at all, made it known, said you can’t do that, and so forth and so on. And I stopped doing the news then for about a month and almost quit entirely because he was so irritating. But at the end, I came back and Newsday took the present form that you hear now, where it’s no clips.

[00:03:58] Julie Lambert: It just started out: ‘We should do some news. We should let people know what’s going on in the community, what local events are happening, how can you participate, how can you be part of your greater community?’ Sometimes we would focus on a nonprofit that could use some publicity and feature them on the show. We did that actually quite often, we would feature someone.

[00:04:24] And then when (Sam Broadway) came on, it changed and evolved and I basically moved over to Legalize Survival. I’ve been doing most of my reporting for that show—for example, the interview I did with Jetty. It’s too long, though, to put onto the regular news.

[00:04:45] Sam Broadway And Legalize Survival has taken that community aspect and had interviews with very interesting people and places and so forth. And also had one of the—if not the interview of KEPW—when she got confronted by the police officer for having a camper outside her house while she was trying to move and had an electric cord hooked up to the camp.

[00:05:14] Julie Lambert: That was Bernice Pogue and that put legalized survival on the map because during that interview, she was on her phone and she had to take it outside to answer the door and it was the police— when that was what the whole interview was about was about the police harassing her— and she had the phone in her hand and it recorded everything he said so now our show is monitored (laughing). That’s okay, but…

[00:05:43] Sam Broadway: Yeah, everybody jumped on that, especially in Lane County government, there wasn’t official or underofficial or anybody that was in Lane County government that did not want to hear that. They all wanted that. And so that got spread all over the county and made it to the local news here.

[00:06:06] When did I start doing the weather? Well, I took it upon myself to add it to Newsday because it was damn important that people knew what the weather was. If you know what the weather is, then you know where the fires are going to start and so forth.

[00:06:21] And it turned out to be something I do and still do for every broadcast. And I do it for Legalize Survival as well. It’s important for people too, especially our listeners, more than half of our listeners are unhoused. And this is really important when you have events like today with the smoke and all of this coming in. It’s just important to report upon that.

[00:06:49] What keeps me going? Nobody else can do Newsday. If I left tomorrow, that would be the end of that. There’s nobody that can jump in and do Newsday, and that’s what I have feared for the longest time. And I know I can’t keep it up forever. You know, I’m getting more ill as I move along through life and trying to do it through smoke and haze today was hell. But like I said, nobody else can do Newsday and if I leave it’ll be dead and there’s a lot of people (like I heard at our KEPW party) that rely on what I do. So I don’t want that to go away. You know, we have a loyal audience. I don’t want to disappoint.

[00:07:38] I gather more news than I end up using because it’s important to have enough stories to do Newsday for an hour.

[00:07:49] I’m always on Facebook. I’ve got every news and information source attached to my Facebook. So local, regional, you know, local KEZI, KVAL, all of that, then regional: Fox12 in Portland, KOIN in Portland, KGW in Portland, I got all that. And then, you know, of course, the big ones: CNN, CBS, NBC. I’ve got them all there. And then some others mixed in with all of that.

[00:08:24] I also use those info reports through Flash Alert. So I get a lot of those through Flash Alert. And as soon as those start coming in, it depends on what it is, but a lot of the time, that supplies a good chunk of my news.

So I start gathering it and I’ll just save it to Facebook and then come get it by Sunday. I’ll come start putting it together and seeing how much I’ve got and what I need and whether I’m short or whether I’ve got enough. And a lot of times, it’s, well, lately it’s been so much local news that I never get through it all.

[00:09:09] So I put it together on Sunday, and it’s funny, then I’ll put it together, and Monday will come along, and there’s a whole bunch of more news that will come, and though there are more of what will come on Monday is even more either interesting or shocking or what have you, then Monday, I’ll have everything ready, and then I have to get a song together for the end of the show.

[00:09:36] And so that takes me time as well. And I am usually ready to go on Tuesday morning and just pick out the stories that I’m going to do and pull them up and get her going.

[00:09:50] And I have the weather from the National Weather Service at my fingertips. So I always use that.

[00:09:58] John Q: What stories are coming up on Newsday?

[00:10:02] Sam Broadway: Where we’re at with LEAGUE (Lived Experience Advisory Group for Unhoused Engagement), where we’re at with the Human Rights Commission’s Poverty and Homeless Work Group and the others, where we’re at with everything right now, as far as I’m concerned, is because of this (Supreme Court) ruling of Grants Pass, we need to find out, and we need as a news organization, as small as we are, to push for the answer of: Where can people go? Where C-A-N can people go?

[00:10:34] It’s time that question was answered. It’s time that question was not deferred. It’s time that we’re not told anymore that that’s impossible to determine. It’s time to get the answer to that question. If you’re going to just relocate people and relocate people—

[00:10:52] And by the way, they’re doing this without the Shelter Finder. They’re relocating people and when the Shelter Finder was proposed by LEAGUE, and then subsequently in the Coordinated Entry Committee, we had multiple representatives of the Eugene Police Department visit us and say, ‘We want that. Yes. That’s a great idea, Shelter Finder.’ Now that it’s out there, it’s not even in their cars. They’re not using it.

[00:11:29] John Q: And one final question: How can listeners share news tips?

[00:11:35] Sam Broadway: Through KEPW.org or through email or through phone calls, we don’t have anyone manning the lines, but people can leave a message if they have something important.

[00:11:47] John Q: Sam Broadway and Julie Lambert talk about their experiences over the last six years as part of the News Team.

KEPW Newsday airs Tuesday through Friday at 12:30 p.m. and KEPW News airs Sunday through Friday at 1:30 p.m. Legalize Survival can be heard Wednesdays at 6 p.m.