I'm not easy to pigeonhole. My background is so diverse it’s almost a disservice to defer to a single job title at the expense of my many other skill sets, skill sets so broad, versatile, and proficient that I'd be willing to bet few applicants can offer the kind of depth that I can. Not that I couldn't work in a single "pigeonhole" but I'd like to think any media operation would find a candidate with my background valuable both from a practical and financial standpoint. I began my working life as a college teacher, trained as a musicologist (a fancy word for music history, scholarship, and research). Early on I changed careers to go into radio, a foolish decision, some would say (okay, everyone would say), but I had wanted to return to New York. I gave myself five years and made it there in about half that time, landing the role of producer for Scott Shannon and Ross Brittain at Z-100 when the morning show was reaching its zenith. I learned everything there was to learn about doing a morning show and applied all that knowledge when I went off to host my own morning shows. Always a news junkie, I eventually transitioned to talk radio. Along the way, I took on and/or simultaneously added other duties. A highlight reel:

• Five years as a scriptwriter and producer for a globally syndicated music radio program.
• More than 20 years as content manager for a daily digital news digest for some 150 radio stations worldwide. Written conversationally, or what I like to call, “shirtsleeve English,” I wrote roughly half the day's content (appx. 40,000 words) on all things newsworthy and topical, supervised a team of contributing writers, editing and proofreading their materials, and also managed the website. I did this while also preparing my own daily four-hour morning radio broadcast.
• Six years writing opinion columns and Sunday news analysis and feature pieces for The Sacramento Bee, other McClatchy properties, Gatehouse media and more. Some samples remain archived on The Bee’s website (here: https://bit.ly/3aM9zw0). Some more recent pieces are here: goo.gl/xVCGHY; https://bit.ly/2O2H2J3.

And somewhere else in all that I launched a non-profit community football organization, which I ran for seven years, building it from a single team to eight, from pee-wees to adults, all while coaching the semi-pro unit. I did this while working in New York, which actually led to the happy accident of meeting John Madden, Bill Walsh, and Bill Parcells. I guess I should add here the happy accident of meeting and interviewing President Clinton, which occurred thanks to what we were doing while hosting a morning show in California at the time. These are all stories to share should we ever meet for an interview. If I had my druthers, I'd be hosting a talk radio program. I'm pretty good at it -- a careful researcher, a good storyteller, someone with an enormously broad range of interests (well beyond politics) who is more interested in what listeners have to say than what I have to say. But like my career, my politics are also difficult to pigeonhole, and that leaves decision-makers a bit gun shy if they're just looking for another ideological clone of the stereotypical foam-at-the-mouth name-calling hosts known to dominate the format. My on-air work has also always been accompanied by a broad range of tasks and activities, including award-winning production, multiple public speaking events, substitute teaching (because I do enjoy working with students) and an extensive amount of writing that has also included copywriting on behalf of account executives and station clients (spots for which I’ve won both corporate and industry awards), press releases and promotional copy for morning show appearances or station events. Bottom line: I have a broad range of interests cultivated from a diverse background and working life, and I imagine it’s readily apparent you’d also be getting someone capable of spinning a lot of plates while wearing a lot of hats. I just need a place to wear them. Right now, I'm sort of like "The Man Without a Country" the short story by American writer Edward Everett Hale; I'm a talent without a home to use them. You’ll find a fair amount of my work on a Google Drive page (here: https://goo.gl/JEFeRk), impelling enough that you'll perhaps consider giving me the opportunity to put my skills to work for you. Thanks for your time and consideration and I look forward to interviewing with you.