For nearly three years, the reporter who brought Wyoming Public Radio listeners stories such as the breaking news coverage of the death of Matthew Shepard in 1998 and the feature about the bullfighters at Cheyenne Frontier Days in 2015 has been absent from state airwaves.
For more than 30 years, Bob Beck was the familiar Laramie voice on KUWR who often accompanied NPR programs such as “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.”
Beck, the station’s news director, retired in October 2022 to follow his wife east to Syracuse, New York. But his retirement is now a “rewirement.” He has his headset back on, manning a microphone at Syracuse University’s public radio station WAER while he’s helping teach broadcasting students.
“I got a call from the NPR editor who handles the East Coast, she’s been a friend over the years,” Beck said. “And I figured she just wanted to talk about freelance, that was certainly on my list of options as well.
“She called up and said, ‘I just told the news director at the public radio station in Syracuse that you are there. They are desperately in need of some help.’”
That help came in the form of providing practical guidance to Syracuse University broadcast students about the craft of reporting, writing, producing and going on air with a measured voice to communicate their stories.
Beck said Syracuse has one of the top university broadcast programs in the country. The station has nearly 30 interns who do sports broadcasting and another 15-20 interns who do news, he said.
“It was very fun teaching them the ropes, showing them how to write and things like that,” he said. “And then it led into a summer teaching gig.”
Meanwhile, the station needed help anchoring around the NPR news programs, so he has found himself back doing something he has invested most of his life into — public radio journalism.
Paying The Taxes
The 64-year-old’s retirement now includes about 16 hours a week on the air and work as a fill-in instructor for the university’s broadcast department.
“It pays for my taxes out here in New York which are enormous compared to Wyoming,” he said.
Other than the taxes, life in mid-state New York has been enjoyable.
The Illinois native said after moving to Wyoming in 1983 for commercial radio jobs in Sheridan and then Laramie early in his career, he quickly learned to adjust to the realities of the wide-open spaces, wind, long Wyoming winters and small towns.
He also has rediscovered something he almost forgot about despite growing up in the Chicago suburbs — amenities. He’s enjoying concerts like Bruce Springsteen, P!nk, and he’s planning to see O.A.R. this month.
Syracuse is about the size of Fort Collins, Colorado, but without the sprawl, he said. He lives in a suburb of 400 people outside the city close to farm stands and adorned with green grass, trees — and in the winter snowplowing on all the side streets.
Although he still follows the University of Wyoming Cowboys sports teams, he said that he is enjoying checking out the ACC games at the university that begat NBA greats Dave Bing and Carmelo Anthony and NFL legends Jim Brown, Larry Csonka and John Mackey.
“I’m sorry Wyoming fans, but the upgrade in teams is pretty good in the ACC,” he said. “I can go watch Duke play in basketball and things like that. I’ve been to a Buffalo Bills game — that’s two hours away.”
Teaching Wyoming Values
But on the more serious side, Beck said his decades in Wyoming have informed the way he teaches his broadcast students about dealing with small town law enforcement, city councils, and he tells them stories from what he learned covering Wyoming politics.
He said most of the students will start in much smaller markets, and he shares a lot about how relationships matter and that they need to focus on developing connections with schedulers and secretaries who can help them gain access to the local power brokers.
Beck said he also talks with them about objectivity, balance, and working hard to ensure that every side of an issue is reflected in their stories.
“Working for a public radio station in Wyoming, that was just critical to do that because everybody was more suspicious of us,” he said. “They love to hear my yarns from back in the day because I just experienced so many crazy things.”
Beck said living now in New York State, it’s clear that the media in Wyoming enjoy “amazing access” to newsmakers in ways that just don’t happen in New York.
Over the years, he collected a lot of numbers of Wyoming politicians and other power brokers on his cellphone. His old station still occasionally reaches out to him for help finding one.
He tells his students to keep a “cordial relationship” with the people they cover and develop a “trust” with them.
“I covered the guy who was the vice president of the United States for many years, he was my congressman,” Beck said. “I knew John Barrasso for many years before he was U.S. senator. These are relationships that you make in a smaller place.”
Beck said he continues to root for Wyoming PBS TV and radio stations and believes those who watch and listen to them will step up their support now that the Trump administration has cut funding.
Where he lives in central New York as well as upstate New York, Beck said politics typically swing to the right. Unlike Wyoming, he said there are a lot of contested races that occur that keep both the Republican and Democratic candidates from taking extreme positions on either side.
“You are going to need independents to come alongside you,” he said. “They are the ones who decide the elections out here. … For me, this is fun, because I don’t think I’ve seen a contested election in a long time.”
Valued Part-Timer
With the looming budget cuts in public radio, Beck thought his part-time gig would be in jeopardy, but that is not the case. His experience in Wyoming is something the Syracuse station news director seeks as she asks for advice.
Beck said as part of his new gig, he helps critique student stories in broadcast classes and enjoys working with the younger generation.
“My favorite thing to do is working with the ones that struggle a little bit and watch their improvement,” he said. “There is a camaraderie in the classroom when you are all put on the spot all semester. And in all the classes I’ve taught, that always comes through.”
Students have gone online to check out his credentials. They’ve commented on the stories that he has reported for NPR over the years “and that adds to my credibility a little bit,” Beck said.
As he looks back over the years and miles to Wyoming, he said he misses the Pole Mountain Trails in Laramie where he enjoyed running, riding his mountain bike, and walking his dogs. The gym where he worked out also is fondly remembered for the relationships he developed.
And then there is the politics.
“There were a lot of times when I was covering the legislature that I had a lot of fun,” he said. “Which is a little sick, but I did. I came at a time where we had some giants in the legislature. I used to really enjoy the debates.”
Beck said he enjoyed covering governors over the years from Gov. Ed Herschler to Gov. Mark Gordon as well as getting to know other reporters in the state.
He also had fun reporting on Cowboys football and basketball games and doing feature stories across the state.
A Favorite Story
Among his favorite stories was a feature about a pair of bullfighters at Cheyenne Frontier Days that won an award — he took video for it that he remains proud of, making him a multimedia reporter, an achievement for an older news veteran.
“I just love getting into worlds that I don’t know anything about,” he said. “And have this amazing access with people.”
On the more dramatic side, it was his coverage of the Matthew Shepard death and subsequent events that put WPR in the national spotlight. He also remembers covering a story in Grand Teton National Park and realizing how “cool” it was to have that opportunity.
Mostly he enjoyed stories where he could use his sense of humor. He recalls doing a story on a researcher who was trying to develop a suture by putting spider silk through goat’s milk.
“It’s the craziest idea I ever heard of in my life, and I got some amazing sound,” he said. “I had an angry goat in the story, and it was just a lot of fun.”
When he first moved out to New York, his yearning to stay connected to what is happening in Wyoming led to him watching the Governor’s State of the State address. He decided that was not necessary anymore.
From time to time, he hears about conflicts in the Wyoming Legislature and will pull out his cell phone to look for a contact to call just to get the inside scoop. He sees a Wyoming Legislature that has lost its “sense of humor.”
He thinks they need to get it back.
When people see Beck’s “307” area code on his phone out East, that often starts a conversation about Wyoming and triggers for him memories accumulated over 40 years in the state. He still logs some late nights trying to watch Cowboy football and other sports in the Eastern Time Zone.
He confesses a continued “love” for Wyoming and appreciation for the loyal listeners, friends, and professional sources he left behind.
“I just can’t thank people enough for all their courtesy over the years,” he said. “You’ve got to bother some people sometimes in difficult moments and sometimes not difficult moments. It was just a really fun place to work, and I grew as a person in my time there.”
Contact Dale Killingbeck at dale@cowboystatedaily.com
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
