The exceptional storytelling skills of Susan Richard are evident from her ability to deliver the news as an anchor for Audacy’s 1010 WINS. She has achieved unparalleled success within the station’s 58-year history, climbing the ranks over 25 years. Her greatest strength lies in her ability to remain true to herself, even when delivering heart-wrenching news to the people of New York.
Richard was broadcasting live on December 14, 2012, when an armed individual entered Sandy Hook Elementary School and tragically killed 26 individuals, including 20 children. Recounting the incident, she vividly recalls the moment as if it occurred just yesterday. The memory of the producer’s voice in her ear, directing her to relay the information verbatim from the chat, remains etched in her mind.
After the incident, a listener emailed Ben Mevorach, the News and Programming Director at the time, to express gratitude towards the station and Richard for her real approach to delivering the news. This experience helped Richard realize the significance of authenticity in news reporting.
It’s worth noting that unlike many media brands today, 1010 WINS delivers straightforward news reporting, just the facts. The brand holds great importance in the community, given that it serves a city with a population of nearly 20 million people. WINS has evolved in its commitment to delivering news around the clock, earning it numerous accolades and credibility in the industry.
Richard, who initially wasn’t interested in news, started her career at WFAS FM/AM. In 1994, she was named Program Director. She may not have known then that she was making history as the first female program director on the FM side of the station. Coming from a two-parent household, she was taught that hard work and determination can lead to success.
Years later, at 1010 WINS, she expressed to Chris Oliviero and Ben Mevorach that she wanted to break the glass ceiling as the first female, top-of-the-hour morning news anchor in the station’s history. She believed she deserved the job based on her skills and abilities, not just for the sake of history and legacy.
During an interview with Barrett News Media, Richard discusses her recent promotion, the distinctiveness of New York City’s radio market, the importance of radio writing, the significance of storytelling in her daily communication with listeners, the relevance of 1010 WINS’ social media presence, and her involvement in animal rescue advocacy.
Ryan Hedrick: Your promotion to the top-of-the-hour morning news anchor for 1010 WINS is a tremendous achievement. As the first woman to hold this role in the station’s 58-year history, could you share with us your thoughts?
Susan Richard: The radio station is six months younger than me. For many, many years, radio, TV, and broadcasting, in general, was a man’s business, and that’s just the way it was. The playing field is much more level now. At 1010 WINS, we have a 50/50 split, both men to women, on the air and off the air. I will say, thanks to Ben Mevorach (Vice President of News) and Ivan Lee (Brand Manager), we also have a more ethically and culturally diverse on-air and off-air staff than we have ever had, and I have been at the station for 25 years.
RH: What makes New York City radio unique besides being the largest market in the world?
SR: New Yorkers are very in your face, right? We are unashamedly in your face, in a great way. We may have a reputation, but it comes from a place of love and joy oflife. 1010 WINS really embodies that in an audio way, in an audio sound. I liken us to a Top 40 station doing the news. We give you the hits, we give you the most important news of the day, and we do not waste your time. We crank it out; just like three-minute songs, we are cranking out those stories. The news that you need from, as we say, ‘The people that you trust,’ in a way that is so New York.
I love that about our station because it’s got that high energy, fast-moving vibe. It’s like you can always tell when a New Yorker is wadingthrough Times Square. They are weaving in and out of the tourists. They’re like, ‘Get out of my way.’ It’s like that on the air for us. We don’t mess around with it [the news]; we don’t waste your time. I can’t speak to the other philosophies on other radio stations, but that’s the vibe on 1010 WINS, and it’s a very New York vibe.
RH: As a resident of New York, how does your connection with the city influence the subjects you choose to cover in your reporting?
SR: Our editorial staff does the [news] lineup. Our editor, Jim Maloney, who’s fantastic, does the lineup. I’m not doing story choices, but we have a conversation all the time. I’m writing the news; I write all my own news. Having spent my entire career in the tri-state area, whether it was Westchester, Long Island, New Jersey, or New York, I have a real understanding. I think I can be more on the pulse of the various communities of the Tri-State, which differ.
I lived in the suburbs, I lived in Westchester for six years, and I worked on Long Island; it’s different, and people’s priorities may be different than somebody who grew up in Queens or now living in Manhattan or somebody that may be living in Brooklyn, Bronx, or Staten Island.
Having spent my entire career here and going to NYU, I get it. I can go with the flow of different stories and understand the needs of the listener in communicating that specific story to them. That gives me an edge as opposed to someone that may be an out-of-towner.
RH: Could you provide some insights on why writing for radio is essential and the challenges that come with it, especially compared to other forms of journalism?
SR: The thing about writing for radio is that as much as we can, it’s most interesting to the listener when we let the sound that we use help to tell the story. That is a very specific art form that is different from television, where it’s mostly the visuals telling the story. They can’t see it on the radio, so it’s theatre of the mind. We need to do it with our descriptive words, the facts we’re conveying, and the use of sound.
There will be times when I have a story, and I’ll ask, ‘Can I get the cut where Joe Shmoe says this’ because that cut tells the story in a more interesting way. We also use music underneath stories or sound effects or whatever because it is theatre of the mind, and that’s unique to audio, not just radio, but any audio communication. That kind of sculpting of a story is not something that AI (Artificial Intelligence) is going to be able to do. When it comes to human communication, which is what we’re doing here, you need humans for human communication.
RH: What has been the driving force behind your motivation and engagement in your career with 1010 WINS since 1998?
SR: I go to work every day, and I don’t know what the work of the day is going to be. I don’t know what the news stories themselves are. The specific lineup is fresh every day. So, every day I go in, and the show is a brand-new show that I get to sculpt because I’m writing my ownnews from scratch. And so,the 20-25 stories in my half-hour lineup is an opportunity to create as part of this art form every single day. You never know what’s going to happen, you never know when a story is going to break, and so I’m certainly always on my toes.
RH: Can you share your experience of 9/11 and describe your role at 1010 WINS on that day?
SR: I was a part-timer on 9/11. I wasn’t working that day, but when I saw what happened, I immediately called the station and was told to stand by. It was just a big scramble. You have to realize that in 2001, everything was on carts; you had to cart-up sound. We had paper scripts; we were writing in digital software, but then you literally printed the script. In some ways, back in 2001, it took a little longer for the news to get on the air because everything wasn’t digital. Now, it’s all digital, and if sound comes in, I drop it in my newscast and play it; there’s no time lag.
I remember calling the station, and they said stand by, and I remember telling myself I can’t just stand by. So, I grabbed my Sony Walkman, I had bought a special one with a mic input. I grabbed my little RE-15 mic, plugged it in, and ran outside. I was on the Upper Eastside and ran around the corner to the Food Emporium, and the line was halfway around the block.
There were a million people in that supermarket, and nobody wanted to talk to me. So, these two guys came out of the Food Emporium, and it turns out they had evacuated the Citicorp building. I talked to them, got some good sound, and ran back upstairs, and I literally held the speaker of my Walkman to the phone to feed the sound through the phone [to the radio station].
After that, I went to the station, and I just started pulling different angles of the story as sound was coming in, writing a script with the cart, and running it into the studio. A lot of it [coverage] was just live. We had reporters at the scene; we had various people interviewing live on the air.
I ended up being on the air that night at 9 o’clock. What was interesting about 9/11 was we went wall-to-wall with no commercials for two weeks. We didn’t play a single commercial, and they simulcast us for two weeks on 102.7 FM at the time. The format clock, as it exists now, completely got upended. We weren’t doing sports; we weren’t doing business reports; we were wall-to-wall with this story.
You have to remember that in 2001, not everybody and their uncle had a Blackberry. Did phones even get internet back then? I don’t even know. But not everybody necessarily had a computer. At:15 and:45, when we were normally doing sports at the time, we were literally reading phone numbers on the air or places where they had addresses of family information centers for people to go to report somebody missing, just basic information that people needed.
It wasn’t giving out websites; it was giving out phone numbers for things. I remember at 12, 32, and 52 when we usually do the Accuweather forecast, we were doing special anchoring. We had special anchors in, so it wasn’t just the person on the air anchoring; we had other anchors doing the national and international angles of the story. So, the clock, within a couple of days, to then Mark Mason was the head of programming and, to his credit, quickly became a different format clock, and it was all about 9/11.
That, really, to me, is the beauty of 1010 WINS. In the 25 years that I’ve been there, the same happened when we went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. We had a war-format clock. The station, when it needs to, can completely upend its normal format, and still be 1010 WINS, and still be the brand.
So, when people tune in, they know what they’re listening to because the brand is still the same, and that takes excellent programmers like Mark Mason, Ben Mevorach, and Ivan Lee. It takes talent that understands the brand and knows how to be on the air and ebb and flow, depending on what’s happening in the news today.
RH: Social media has drastically altered journalism. Share your perspective on the impact of social media on this realm and how it affects your duties at 1010 WINS.
SR: Social media can be an incredibly positive thing. As somebody who blogs about animal rescue, I will tell you it has been great for the animal rescue world. Like everything in life, it can be for good, or it cannot be for good. It depends on how you use it. The opportunity for outlets like WINS is tremendous because every year, people are aging in and out of your target demo, so you need to make sure that those younger people who are aging into your target demo know about you. Where are they going to find you? Probably on social media.
So, it’s a great way to make sure that your branding on those platforms is on point and interesting and inviting enough that they then come around to the broadcast side and then meet you on the radio. We have to be on social media, and we have to do a good job. We have to have a slick, professional presentation that is still on brand on social media. I think the challenge on social media, in terms of news, is still misinformation and fake news, which makes me crazy.
It makes me crazy when I hear somebody that saw something on TikTok that is completely false, and they take that as gospel; that really makes me crazy because It’s dangerous; it’s just dangerous. To that end, for legitimate media brands like 1010 WINS to double down and make sure we have our act together on social media, make sure that we are getting in people’s faces on social media so they know this is what we say on the air, it’s not just a line, ‘The station you know, the people you trust.’ That’s not just an imaging statement; that’s got to be who we are.
RH: Have you noticed any changes in your audience since WINS switched to the FM dial?
SR: You would have to talk to Ben [Mevorach] about that. It’s my understanding that the ratings are up, and the audience is growing, I don’t have the specific numbers about demographics. But I am so excited that we are on the FM! For me, that was the greatest moment to be on the air, the moment we switched. It’s so exciting, and it was so exciting on July 4. We broadcast music every year, and it sounded so great on 92.3 FM. It wasn’t like Rice Krispie, snap, crackle, pop, radio. Being on the FM is just fantastic.
RH: What advice would you give aspiring journalists and broadcasters looking to make a name for themselves in the field?
SR: Learn how to write, learn how to tell a story. For broadcast, learn how to write a story that is verbal storytelling. It’s a different kind of writing than print. The second thing is, don’t wait until you graduate from college to get your first job. Whether your school wants you to do an internship for credit, do it!
Work for free. That’s what I did. I was Shelli Sonstein’s intern at WPLJ, and that was the first thing that I did. She wrote the news out of the WABC newsroom when WPLJ and WABC were sister stations, and that’s how I got my first desk assistant job at WABC.
From that, I sent out my first airchecks from WNYU to WFAS and got a stringer’s job at WFAS. While I was a stringer there, there was a breaking story about an abandoned chemical warehouse that was about to blow.
I covered that story for WFAS, and I remember telling the news director at the time of WABC, ‘Hey, I’m covering this story for WFAS. Do you guys want wraps for tomorrow morning?’ That was how I got onto the air in New York. I did college radio wraps and put a WABC outcue on them.
I remember, Gil Gross was doing the morning show, and I went into the radio station that morning. I believe I was the desk assistant that morning, and so I hadn’t slept at all. I was pissed off because my story was not the lead story (laughs).
RH: Are there any projects or events that you are currently working on and would like to share?
SR: My website is susanrichard.com. You can hear a whole bunch of audio from 1010 WINS. You can hear my most recent interview with Mayor Adams, which by the way, was quoted in the New York Times. You can check out my acting work that I do. There’s some video on there of some stuff that I’ve done. Also, check out allforanimalstv.com.
