Laura Hoover, student station manager for 91.1FM The Globe, has a lot on her plate in the 2018-19 school year.

In addition to keeping up The Globe’s quality radio product, Hoover is station manager during a year that is sure to bring many changes to media at Goshen College as Globe Media is unveiled.

 

What is your year, major, and official job title?

I’m a senior broadcasting major from Chesterton, Indiana. My official title is student station manager of Globe Media.

How do you feel about being station manager?

Stressed, but really honored. We are a college station, but we present like a professional station to the rest of the world. Not everyone gets the opportunity to be station manager of something this big at 22.

When did you start doing radio? How have your interests changed since?

I got my start as a freshman in high school with WDSO, one of the most powerful radio stations at the highschool level in the country. I broadcasted four years of high school football, basketball and baseball. I hated casting baseball and I was absolutely livid about doing it solo. I love the game, but watching it and broadcasting it are two very separate things. I did it all four years anyway. Now it is one of my favorite sports to broadcast.

How is this year shaping up?

The first thing I realized this year: I’m the only senior currently at The Globe who has been there four years. Going into freshman year, Jason told me that I could be station manager one day if I wanted to, and I said: “No thanks. I’ll stick to sports.” By my junior year, Brad Stoltzfus, Spencer Buttermore, Sam Horsch and I more or less co-ran the station.

Are there any perks to being station manager?

My interests are sportscasting and sports producing, so it is nice that I’m able to transition some of my duties to Kadie Spoor and Riley Friesner. Activities like production work and music which I am not particularly interested in, but they are, so it is good to have people passionate about that.

How many hours a week do you spend at The Globe now, and what do you do?

About 42 hours a week, or six hours a day on average. If I have more than one game a week, that adds multiple hours — from two hours of prep for volleyball up to six hours for baseball. This is purely because I write all my stats down by hand, with individual notecards for every stat I might need to talk about. Aside from casting, I am also editing the documentary for the 60th anniversary [of WGCS] which involves a lot of fix this, tweak that, re-listen and repeat. On top of those, I am preparing contest pieces from all of our baseball and basketball [from] the previous year, editing them down to the impressive bits.

For those who don’t know, how successful has The Globe been as a college station?

Individuals working at the station have won over three hundred awards, and the station itself has won three national titles.

When was The Globe founded? What was it like back then?

October 2, 1958. Fun fact: it was only on air roughly between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. as a classical station. Then, they would shut off the transmitter until about 4 p.m. and were on air until around midnight. That happened all the way into the mid nineties, when they moved the transmitter. From then until 2004, we were technically on the air 24/7 but only broadcasted 6 a.m. to 1 a.m. In 2004, we changed the format. At that point we started running 24/7 music. And here we are today!

What is the biggest challenge the creation of Globe Media presents?

In a nutshell: getting everyone up to speed on everything while still trying to produce content. In the past two to three years everyone doing T.V. was also doing radio, so it’s not like the workload has changed… but it has.

What is your opinion on this merger?

Everything is front-loaded on this year and nothing is back-loaded, so it will definitely be worth it in the long run. One immediate benefit: since the Globe already covers GC athletics, we often supply the Record with statistics for articles and video and audio for clips on the website, so this transition will make that process even smoother. We are also developing a new website specifically for Globe Media, and it is going to be beautiful. It should be up and running mid-to-late October.

Do you think you could beat Jason in an arm wrestling match?

Nope. Jason works out and is jacked.

 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.