WKSU announces a year-long examination of entrepreneurship in Northeast Ohio. With a grant from the Burton D. Morgan Foundation, the WKSU newsroom has hired two Kent State University interns to work with reporter and local host of NPR's All Things Considered Jeff St. Clair on stories that focus on business creation in the region. Kellie Nock and Lucas Misera will work with St. Clair on a variety of news coverage on the topic of entrepreneurship.
The project will result in long-form features airing as part of St. Clair's Exploradio series, as well as shorter pieces broadcast in newscasts throughout the week. The entrepreneurship reporting team will take a 360 degree look at business creation in the region and examine the resources available to start-ups, the market opportunities, and impediments to success in the local business climate. The reporters are also going to look at the entrepreneurial mind-set and what makes entrepreneurs unique.
The project will include profiles of local entrepreneurs as they navigate the challenges of starting a new business and promoting an innovative idea or product, thus humanizing business creation statistics. All reports from the entrepreneurship team will be posted online at WKSU.org under the title The Entrepreneur Beat.
Burton D. Morgan Foundation champions the entrepreneurial spirit, contributes to a robust entrepreneurial ecosystem, and leads in the burgeoning field of entrepreneurship education. Find information at www.bdmorganfdn.org.
WKSU is an award-winning public radio station and service of Kent State University that broadcasts to 22 counties in Northeast Ohio from the station’s primary signal at 89.7. WKSU content can also be heard over WKRW 89.3 (Wooster), WKRJ 91.5 (Dover/New Philadelphia), WKSV 89.1 (Thompson), WNRK 90.7 (Norwalk), W239AZ 95.7 (Ashland) and W234CX 94.7 (Mansfield). The station adds WKSU-2 Folk Alley, WKSU-3 The Classical Channel and WKSU-4 The News Channel over HD Radio and as streaming audio at www.wksu.org.
BIOS:
Jeff St. Clair is a former chemist turned radio journalist. Jeff earned a B.S in chemistry from the University of Akron in 1987, and worked as an analytical chemist at labs around the region until joining WKSU late in 2000.
Jeff served first as WKSU’s fund-drive producer, and then transitioned through nearly every position at the station - from classical and folk music host, to hosting weekends, Morning Edition, the midday show Here and Now, and now local host of NPR's All Things Considered.
With a background in science, Jeff specializes in reporting on research and business innovation in Northeast Ohio in his award-winning weekly series Exploradio. He earned his M.A. in Media Management in 2012 from Kent State University.
Kellie Nock is a senior journalism major with a women’s studies minor from Cleveland, Ohio. She has experience in print, online and radio journalism. She serves as a blogger for The Burr Magazine at Kent State and a writer/DJ for Black Squirrel Radio, and has previously worked with The Kent Stater and KentWired. Her goal is to create stories that will have an impact and be remembered by readers.
Lucas Misera is a senior majoring in both economics and finance from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Prior to this internship at WKSU, he interned at the Lake County Ohio Port and Economic Development Authority as a research intern. He currently serves as the opinion editor for The Kent Stater. Along the way, he's also held several jobs within Kent State, from working as a tour guide to conducting research with professors in the economics department at the university.
After his time at Kent State, he hopes to continue on to study economics at the graduate level and, in the long term, conduct actionable research focused around inequality of opportunity.