URBANA—You’ve probably noticed a new voice on Morning Edition on Illinois Public Media, weekday mornings on WILL-AM 580 WILL-FM 90.9 and Illinois Soul FM 101.1. Alex Barton is the new local host for Morning Edition. IPM News’ Jim Meadows spent a few minutes getting to know him.
JIM MEADOWS: You’re coming here from the St. Louis area. I understand you grew up there?
ALEX BARTON: I did, yeah. I grew up in St. Louis County, lived there for all 24 years until it was time to come here.
MEADOWS: And the last few years you were working in television news, I understand.
BARTON: Yeah, for just over a year, I was working at the Fox Affiliate in St. Louis, and it was television news, but I did more of the digital side and behind-the-scenes web content, social media management, stuff like that.
MEADOWS: Was the news business something you always wanted to be a part of?
BARTON: No, not necessarily. When I had initially started school at SIMO, Southeast Missouri State University, I though that I was going to do middle school history teaching, so I thought I was going to do that. I wanted to teach for a little bit. Then after that first year there, I kind of took a step back and thought of it as something that I would be good at. I enjoy learning about history, but is it something that I wanted to do for the rest of my life? Not necessarily. And I felt like if I was going to be a teacher that you need to be in it for the long haul.
MEADOWS: And so how did you turn from that to the news business?
BARTON: Yeah, so I like to do some freelance voice work on the side. I started doing that in my first year of college, and I talked to a career counselor, academic advisor about what I could do with that passion in terms of real world work. And they recommended the multimedia journalism program, and that’s kind of how I got into this.
MEADOWS: Moving from the work you were doing in TV to what you’ll be doing here as host of Morning Edition, what are you looking forward to?
BARTON: I’m looking forward to going back into public radio. I guess that’s something I have not touched on yet was the fact that in my final year at SEMO, I worked at KRCU Public Radio, which is the NPR affiliate out there. And I worked in a part-time capacity as Morning Edition, co-host, reporter, producer. So a lot of different hats that I would wear there, but I was only able to work 20 hours a week. And so balanced that on top of school. And so I’m glad that I can step back into public radio now. After being away from it for a little over a year, I realized it was time to come back into it.
MEADOWS: So these early morning hours, it’s not your first ride in this sort of thing?
BARTON: It is and it isn’t because I was only doing it on Friday mornings. So the other days of the week when I would go into KRCU, I would come in at pretty loose hours whenever I wanted to or whenever they needed me. But the early morning rise was only one time a week. So doing it every day now is going to be a whole new thing to get used to.
MEADOWS: What do you look forward now as a newly transplanted central Illinoisan, what do you look forward to as far as living around here?
BARTON: I think I just am looking forward to experiencing the culture here and as well as just checking out some really good sports. That’s one thing being in the Champaign Urbana area is just being able to go to some of the basketball games, some of the football games, and just meeting new people and hopefully continuing to play slow pitch softball here because that’s something that I enjoy doing as well.
MEADOWS: Well, Alex Barton, welcome to Central Illinois and Illinois Public Media.