Maassen to leave WYSO

WYSO General Manager Paul Maassen will leave the station in March.

By Lauren Heaton

After two and a half years of building bridges with the community as the general manager of WYSO, Paul Maassen has announced he is leaving the station in March to take a job as the general manager of a public radio station in New Orleans.

“I’ve enjoyed working here with a great staff and great volunteers who have built a lot of momentum and excitement here, and I’ve been honored to be a part of that,” Maassen said on Tuesday. “But a good opportunity came along, a growth opportunity for me, and my family and I decided we should do it.”

Maassen came to WYSO in 2005 with the support of the community to replace former station manager Steve Spencer, who had been involved in conflict over issues such as local programming at WYSO. According to Larry Halpern, a member of the community organization Keep WYSO Local, Maassen made great strides to reunify the station with the community and reincorporate some of the local programming that has been so important to many Yellow Springs residents.

“Paul reengaged the station with the community. He was good with radio, but he was also good with people,” Halpern said.

Maassen, who lives in Bellbrook with his wife and children, is proud of the relationships he was able to develop while he was here, especially those in Yellow Springs, he said. His goal was to add more local content and news coverage to give the station’s programming the “flavor of the region.”

During his tenure the station began local blues, jazz and eclectic music programs on weekday evenings and also began WYSO Weekend, a program that featured discussions with regional residents about issues, culture and events in the area. The station also ran local pieces with Jerry Kenny in the morning and Emily McCord in the evening to grow its news and public affairs department, Maassen said.

With seven full-time staff members and 15 on-air volunteers, in addition to 50 behind the scenes volunteers, Maassen said the station has grown slightly over the past few years to 55,000 weekly listeners. And Maassen hopes the station continues to build on the momentum its current staff has established.

“There’s a lot of talent in the area and a lot of creative people,” he said. “The station has a bright future, a lot of good things are happening.”

Though it is not clear with the college’s uncertain future what Antioch University will choose to do with the station, currently it is overseen by university chancellor of finance Tom Faecke. But Maassen said his reason for leaving was “not necessarily a reflection of anything that might be going on at Antioch internally,” but rather it was a “good opportunity and a difficult decision to make.”

The station he is going to manage is WWNO, a National Public Radio station with a bigger market and a bigger budget, Maassen said.

The university will take the next two weeks to discuss with staff and the WYSO Resource Board how to proceed with what will likely be a national search for a general manager to replace Maassen, Faecke said, adding that it was too early to say how local input would be incorporated in the search.

“Paul has made the station stronger, everything has grown under him, and as they say, we have peace in the valley,” Faecke said. “We are sorry to see him go.”

Halpern hopes that the university will be sensitive about choosing another manager who has both the radio skills as well as the strong people skills that made Maassen such a successful leader at WYSO.

“He really engaged and excelled at working with people — it made him stand out — and we hope they will look for that in future candidates,” Halpern said.

Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com