Executive Q+A: Caryn G. Mathes of KUOW

At 19, Caryn G. Mathes parlayed a deep, resonant voice and considerable journalism chops into a weeknight anchor position on WTHI-TV in her hometown of Terre Haute, Indiana. Mathes moved to commercial radio before transitioning to public radio at WDET in Detroit for 21 years and WAMU in Washington, D.C., for eight. She came to Seattle in January 2014 to be president of Puget Sound Public Radio and general manager of KUOW 94.9. Mathes instituted programming changes and it was on her watch that the University of Washington, KUOW’s license holder, tried to buy KPLU from Pacific Lutheran University. She presides over a $12 million operating budget and a workforce of about 100 people focused on making KUOW a trusted content provider on multiple media platforms.

EARLY YEARS: My dad was a firefighter for more than 20 years. He retired from that and got another job as inspector for the state fire marshals office. My mom was a stay-at-home mom. I have two siblings who are younger by a fair amount eight and 10 years. Maternal grandparents lived right next door. I kind of had that proverbial village. It was a great childhood.

JOURNALISM: If you can imagine, our town of 70,000 people had two daily newspapers at that time [the late 60s]. And one of the papers dedicated an entire section of the Sunday edition to youth news. I was writing for publication from age 13.

WORK ETHIC: I thought I was going to be a print journalist, that I was going to write for The New Yorker. Somewhere along the way, I got diverted into electronic media. As the youngest person, I always got the worst shifts, but as I tell students today, shine wherever you are because you never know whos watching.

RACISM: Sometimes, youre thrown into situations where you do feel threatened. A county sheriff once leveled a shotgun at me inside my car and asked, What are you doing here, girl? I think as a black female I had a slightly easier time of it than a black male would have had. When people are lashing out like that, its because theyre terrified. And they dont know. I grew up in a town thats barely 2 percent black, and I kind of got in this mode of being comfortable and a little like it was my job to be an ambassador. Oh, youve never talked to a black person before? Well, get to know me. Were great.

CHANGE AT KUOW: There isnt a single component of the station that we arent blowing up and remaking. My staff what champions! Ive put a lot on them. In the four years Ive been here, weve totally reenvisioned our editorial strategy and weve reorganized the newsroom so that we have this audience-first mindset.

LEADERSHIP: I was six or seven years into my tenure as a manager before I got any management training. I had a couple of employees who were very courageous and came in one day and said, You know what? Youre a great boss, youre a great idea person, but follow-through? Not so good. I went out and got a Covey time-management system and I did training in that and how to prioritize my work. That was a transformational thing. I still use that system.

KPLU: The opposition to the purchase wasnt a surprise. People hate change. I guess what was a surprise was how wounded this community is by media contraction and the media outlets that have been lost. It didnt help that our potential seller, PLU, wasnt listening to us. We were telling them this is going to be bad; people are going to freak out at the point it becomes public. The leadership at PLU didnt feel they needed to address it, and Ill leave it there.

LESSONS LEARNED: The KPLU kerfuffle was good for us. I had been kind of saying, You know, guys, I dont feel like were really engaged in the life of the community. Were winning awards, were doing these beautifully crafted features, but I feel like sometimes the news of the day is just whizzing past us. Well, when we started to hear it from the general population, our people were stunned. That pie in the face helped them more than anything I could have ever said. It made them stand up and take notice and made them more open to start examining.

PROGRESS: People will be able to take the most hard-to-hear feedback if they trust your motivation. I want to know them; I want them to know me. The risk-averse culture here was an issue. And there are still some cultural things where I feel like Im turning an ocean liner. But were getting there.

THE ECONOMY: Listener-sensitive income is not only sensitive to the money that people have, it is also sensitive to their perception. Is it a time of plenty or a time of scarcity? Thats always in the back of our minds. The best hedge against that is a broader base of contributors. When I got here, I think our contributor base was about 27,000 people actively giving within a 12- or 14-month period. Now, were over 40,000. I would like to push it to 60,000. Even when times get tough, if were important to people, they may ratchet back what they give but theyll still give something.

PUBLIC RADIO: Your rights as a citizen are never going to be fully protected unless theres independent media in the mix. In most markets, public media is the last thing standing thats not part of some media conglomerate. I believe Thomas Jefferson was right: You need a well-informed population to be trusted with their own government. Its important for us to talk to each other as a society, hear each other, see each other, so it isnt so easy to broad-brush whole components of the society. Public radios mantle that we have assumed is to make sure were convening the conversations that matter and that try to cross ideological divides, cultural divides, geographic divides. When Lyndon Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act in 1967, he talked about how weve got to master these miracles of communication because we have important things to say to one another. And boy, do we ever!

TAKE 5
Get to Know Caryn G. Mathes

HOBBIES: Im a total dirt nerd. I garden. If I dont have a place I can play in the dirt, I am melancholy.

PETS: A cat named Sabrina.

GUILTY PLEASURE: A bowl of buttered popcorn and a horror movie.

DREAM VACATION: I just made my first trip to Hawaii Maui and it was magical.

FAVORITE RESTAURANT: Green Leaf Vietnamese Restaurant in the International District. I was new in Seattle. It was my first heavy rain a cold, dank day. A friend was in town and I said, Lets go in this place. It was warm and the food is amazing. It just had an impact. It was such a welcoming thing.

Executive Q+A responses have been edited and condensed.