Paul Westhelle
Executive DirectorPaul Westhelle oversees management of JPR's service to the community. He came to JPR in 1990 as Associate Director of Broadcasting for Marketing and Development after holding jobs in non-profit management and fundraising for a national health agency.
Paul grew up in northern New Jersey just outside New York City. As a student at Seton Hall University he developed a love for live music romping around Greenwich Village clubs. He traveled west in 1981 to attend San Jose State University where he graduated with a B.A. from its School of Journalism and Mass Communications.
Paul believes the meaning of life can be found in public radio and baseball. He’s coached several of Ashland's outstanding youth baseball teams and served as Head Coach of the Ashland High School Varsity team in 2012.
Paul and his wife, Patti Grant, live in Ashland. They have two adult children, Kelsey and Evan.
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This past September, a coalition of 22 donors announced a national initiative to strengthen communities and democracy by supporting local news and information with an infusion of more than a half-billion dollars over the next five years.
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In a fundraising break during our Fall Fund Drive, JPR News Director Erik Neumann and I got to talking about the role JPR plays in mentoring and developing early-career journalists. Erik reminded me that I once described this role as being similar to that of a teaching hospital, albeit in a different field. I’ve been thinking about this lately because we’re in the midst of recruiting and hiring a new regional reporter for our news team. -
It’s budget season in Washington, D.C. and that usually means some amount of drama. While the season is still relatively young, already the House Appropriations Committee may soon consider a draft bill that would call for the elimination of all federal funding for public broadcasting.
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An email from NPR this week announced that NPR is “actively engaged in developing a framework and set of principles to guide its decision-making on all aspects of AI (Artificial Intelligence) investment and usage.” The email went on to say that NPR would be consulting with experts across a wide range of areas, including editorial, legal, security and data governance, to evaluate how AI might be used at NPR and across the NPR Network.
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The JPR newsroom received a series of awards in 2023 from the Radio Television Digital News Association, the Public Media Journalists Association and the Society of Professional Journalists. Listener support makes all of this high-quality, local journalism possible!
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Exactly what caused Twitter to reclassify NPR as "state-affiliated media" earlier this month remains a mystery.
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The recent shakeup of the newspaper business in the Rogue Valley has created quite a stir.
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As we turn the page on another year, JPR’s service to the region continues to evolve.
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After the announcement that charges against April would be dismissed or dropped, one social media post suggested that April should have followed the orders of police that day as a way of showing “respect for police officers … trying to do a dangerous job.”
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In Southern Oregon and Northern California, summer is the season for floating rivers, enjoying music at outdoor festivals, harvesting gardens, and taking jaunts to the coast. For JPR, it’s a season for tracking wildfire activity, covering local events and making progress on the many projects we have underway to improve our mountain-top transmitter sites before the snow flies.
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Long ago, as a college student studying media relations, I learned that no self-respecting communication professional would answer “no comment” to a reporter asking a question about virtually anything.
