In October, KDNK Community Access Radio announced that Marilyn Gleason would return to the station as its next news director, following the departure of Hattison Rensberry. Gleason said she has many goals she would like to see come to fruition, starting with building out KDNK’s news team.
“I’d like to attract more freelancers, and develop people who are already involved with the station who may have an interest in doing more news,” Gleason told The Sopris Sun.
Then, she emphasized the importance of community voices on the radio. “I want to be bringing voices to the air of people who are in the midst of the situations that we’re reporting on,” she stated. “I think that’s something that radio has a unique ability to do.”
For some listeners, Gleason’s voice will strike them as familiar. She first became involved with KDNK after graduating from the University of Colorado Boulder’s journalism school in 2000. From there, she went on to develop the news program at the station.
Before all of that, however, while working at a convenience store and providing a plethora of tunes for her customers, one suggested that she look into DJing for KAJX (now Aspen Public Radio). From there, Gleason got her start in radio working for KAJX under then-Station Manager Sy Coleman.
“Sy saw potential in me and started having me do more things around the radio station,” she recalled. “I think public radio acts as a magnet for certain kinds of people — or it fills a certain hole in people’s lives. I see that around KDNK, and I would say that was happening for me at KAJX at the time.”
She credited Coleman, who passed away in 2020, for encouraging her to study journalism when the opportunity to go back to college came about, referring to him as her “unsung hero.” She was working part time at KAJX at the time.
“Sy told me that he thought I should study journalism and that is what I ended up doing,” she stated. “In many ways, he set me on this path.”
Over the past 12 years, she spent some of her time driving school buses during activity trips for Roaring Fork School District. She described that experience as fulfilling, but, all the while, she missed the world of radio
and journalism. It was at the tail-end of this period when she was contacted by a former KDNK news director, Amy Hadden Marsh, regarding the opening earlier this year.
“It’s definitely a bigger news department than when I was last here,” she explained. “We have this fantastic network with community radio stations across the region (through Rocky Mountain Community Radio). So those are useful tools now that we didn’t have in the past.”
“I think there’s great partnership or cooperation opportunities,” she continued. “For example, with the Andy Zanca Youth Empowerment Program [and getting] those kids producing news stories for us — maybe reporting on things that they’re interested in.”
On expanding news reach to the Colorado River Valley, she said that she hopes to bridge connections with news outlets like The Citizen Telegram and KSUN to help cover more in-depth stories relevant to folks in that area.
“Downvalley from Glenwood Springs, I see that we have some underserved communities. There’s a lot of media from Glenwood to Aspen, [where] we have many radio stations and newspapers. But we have very little down in this area,” Gleason pointed out. “Moving our reach a little more down [there] is another one of my goals.”
Anyone who is interested in trying their hand in radio news coverage is encouraged to stop in at the station or email marilyn@kdnk.org To stay in the loop on all things KDNK, visit www.kdnk.org or call the station at 970-963-0139.