Matt Martinez worked is way up the chain at NPR’s All Things Considered until he was the Senior Producer (the person who runs the show from day to day). He was happy and living the NPR dream in Washington D.C. until he came to Tacoma to visit a friend and fell in love with it.
Matt got his new job as Content Director for KPLU 88.5FM and moved to Tacoma’s Proctor District. Unfortunately, this was right before Pacific Lutheran University’s leadership decided to sell off KPLU to a Seattle station on November 12th. The sale was stopped after an outcry from the community – and KPLU now has just a few short months to secure funding to buy itself from the university.
The cost to purchase the station is $8,000,000. The community has until June to help them raise that money. The crazy thing is, they’ve already raised 1.5 million dollars!
Join us as Matt talks about the importance of locally sourced news for Tacoma, and why saving KPLU is good for Tacoma, in Part 2 of this episode we will talk about what losing KPLU would mean for public radio, news programming, and music programming in the puget sound region and what you can do to help.
Click here to learn more about how you can help support KPLU.
Visit the following link to attend a Save KPLU event:
To listen to Part 2 of this interview click here:
Why Saving KPLU Matters for Tacoma with Matt Martinez Part 2