// This is a machine generated transcript. Please report any transcription errors to will-help@illinois.edu.

[00:00:00]
Reginald Hardwick: From Illinois Soul, this is Dialogue. I'm Reginald Hardwick, news and public affairs director at Illinois Public Media. Dialogue is an exchange about culture straight from the soul. You may have noticed a new voice on Morning Edition on Illinois Soul FM 101.1 and WILL AM 580 and FM 9[0].9. His name is Alex Barton, and he joins me in the studio right now. Welcome to central Illinois, Alex.

[00:00:38]
Alex Barton: Thank you. Happy to be here.

[00:00:39]
Reginald Hardwick: Tell me a little bit about yourself. Where did you grow up?

[00:00:43]
Alex Barton: So I grew up in St. Louis County, lived all 24 years up to this point there, uh, in Baldwin, Missouri, and uh, went to high school there, then I went to college at [SEMO,] Southeast Missouri State University. And uh, after that for one year, just over a year, I worked at the Fox affiliate as a digital content producer before coming here.

[00:01:05]
Reginald Hardwick: Tell me about growing up in Missouri. What were you interested in as a child?

[00:01:10]
Alex Barton: I was big into baseball. St. Louis is a pretty big baseball town or city. Um, and so I played a lot of that. Um, up until, uh, early high school, and then also did some rec basketball throughout the years as well. Uh, so I was big into sports for quite a while, you know, various phases of other things like, you know, NASCAR and things like that. But, uh, I think sports has always been something I've been passionate about. Uh, and so on top of just, you know, spending time with friends and and things like that, I, I particularly enjoyed sports and video games and stuff like that as well.

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Reginald Hardwick: And you attended Southeast Missouri State in Cape Girard[eau], correct? That's right. And did you go there on a sports scholarship, or did you go there to pursue sports, or, or what did you study?

[00:01:59]
Alex Barton: No, by, by the end of high school, I was done with organized ball. So I went there to do secondary social studies education. So I thought I was going to teach, you know, middle school history, and that was the kind of the plan going into it. Uh, I sort of felt the pressure like I needed to declare a major in my first year of school, um, even though you don't have to, you can always go in undecided, figure it out later, but that was something that I was passionate about. And after one year, even before I really had classes that were for that major, I was doing a lot of gen ed still after my first year. I kind of took a step back and realized that that is probably not something that I have enough heart for to do until the time, the time would come to retire. So I wanted to kind of switch avenues a little bit. And so I talked to a career academic advisor and they recommended the multimedia journalism program at [SEMO] to kind of keep my love for talk, like speaking and voiceover work, going professionally.

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Reginald Hardwick: What do you enjoy about journalism? Why is it important?

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Alex Barton: Well, it's important because you have to hold the people, uh, in, in power accountable — is one of the biggest things about it. But also just being able to have such a large megaphone and talk to so many people about things that you're passionate about, things that they are passionate about, and it just makes you a really informed individual. Uh, I think that even in my first year, uh, in some change there working at, uh, Fox 2 in St. Louis, I always just seemed to know about what was going on, whether it was uh directly or indirectly. If I was hanging out with friends and they talked about what was going on, uh, in the news, like I, I, I would know it. So I think it makes you a really informed person and, uh, it also just opens you up to certain demographics and people and culture that you otherwise just would not have if you weren't into it.

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Reginald Hardwick: You were a Morning Edition host at the station there at the university. Tell us about that experience. How did that come to you?

[00:04:03]
Alex Barton: Yeah. So I, in my second to last year of school at [SEMO], I realized I needed more than just my classes. I needed a portfolio. I needed something that would help me, you know, stand out to get employed after school. And so I wanted to do play-by-play. That was what I initially thought I was going to do. Um, you know, maybe I could be good at it, who knows? Um, but that's something that I wanted to do and, uh, it ended up falling through because I fell ill during one of my semesters. And then whenever I came back, uh, whenever I returned the next year after doing an entire semester virtual, I, I kind of realized, well, you know, there's a lot of professional athletes that you'll be competing with for jobs there, you have to be kind of the best of the best. Not that I was doubting myself, but I was kind of just thinking practically in terms of how I could, you know, use that, that passion and, uh, get a job after I graduated. So I started off at KRCU Public Radio, their NPR affiliate, and was doing uh Morning Edition on Fridays and then reporting and producing. So a lot of stuff I was involved with there.

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Reginald Hardwick: We're talking with Alex Barton, the new Morning Edition host locally on Illinois Soul and WILL AM and FM. And Alex, what was it about public radio that attracted you?

[00:05:25]
Alex Barton: Yeah. So I, I realized that, uh, I think in my first few years at [SEMO] I had no idea that there was an NPR station on campus, as did — there was probably a lot of people in that program there that didn't even know that. And so I was looking for jobs in the area in general for what I could do, uh, and it, the radio station job came up and I was like, that seems, seems kind of perfect. You know, I was already kind of wanting to be behind the microphone doing play-by-play, but this is, you know, a play-by-play of real world events that are happening around me. And so it seemed kind of like the perfect opportunity. And so I went ahead and applied and then, uh, and then got involved.

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Reginald Hardwick: In addition to hosting Morning Edition, you also reported on some stories. What were some of those? Do you want to share any of those that come to mind?

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Alex Barton: Yeah, off the top of my head, I was — my, my parents would follow along with the reporting that I would do. And for a while they would call me, you know, waterboy because I did a ton of reporting on local water infrastructure. So that ended up being my capstone project. Uh, the, the big, the grand finale project as a senior, um, that's supposed to be kind of a highlight of your greatest work, was a piece about the future of the aging water infrastructure in Cape Girard[eau]. So that was one of the biggest ones that I did, maybe not the most, in my opinion, the most exhilarating thing ever.

"For KRCU Public Radio, I'm Alex Barton. Cape Girard[eau]'s water treatment plant is aging. It's been in use for almost a century, and while it still produces clean water, some key equipment is beginning to fail. In February, one of the plant's two clarifiers stopped working. Clarifiers are massive circular tanks that help filter sediment out of the water. Cape Girard[eau]'s assistant city manager [Trevor Poley] says the failure came without warning and without a cheap fix."

[00:07:15]
Speaker 2: Clarifier one had a mechanical failure.

[00:07:18]
Alex Barton: Um, but I also really enjoyed covering the Honor Flight at the [Cape] Charter Regional Airport, where you got to see the World War II veterans and even younger veterans be able to go to Washington, D.C., and visit the monuments and things that are dedicated to them.

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Reginald Hardwick: What are you hoping to see and explore here in central Illinois?

[00:07:39]
Alex Barton: [We'll] absolutely be checking out the, the basketball team or teams, both of them. And, uh, as well as football games, and come spring, get involved in the slow-pitch softball, uh, avenue because that was something that I had just got done with and [was] big into when I was in St. Louis, so I don't want to stop playing when I'm here.

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Reginald Hardwick: And when you say the teams, you mean the Fighting Illini or others?

[00:08:05]
Alex Barton: Yeah, absolutely the Fighting [Illini,] um, and [I'll go with] college football as well because I have always been an avid NFL fan but never a college football fan, because from the outside in I always thought that there's so many teams, how do I keep track of everything? I think it's time to actually start somewhere, and so I can finally — I think it'll be easy to get passionate about it with all the, with the games going on here and the students and just being here. I think [that] will help me get involved with that.

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Reginald Hardwick: Do you think you'll leave the Cardinals for the Cubs or the White Sox?

[00:08:36]
Alex Barton: Absolutely not. That is not going to happen. I will always be a St. Louis Cardinals fan, even though in the past couple of years the team's struggled a little bit. Uh, yeah, you can't possibly shake that, that out of me.

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Reginald Hardwick: Do you have a favorite food or any kind of restaurant that you're hoping to try?

[00:08:52]
Alex Barton: Yeah, I'm, I'm big on Mexican food. I've done quite a bit of that thus far when I've been here, um, but I also do, uh, I do like, uh, any kind of Asian food as well. And so I know that there are a lot of options locally, so I will be checking those out, hopefully not breaking the bank doing so, um, trying to cook for myself and whatnot, but I, I will absolutely be checking that out as well.

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Reginald Hardwick: And what about music? Illinois Soul features R&B and neo-soul and some jazz. What kind of music do you like?

[00:09:23]
Alex Barton: I do like R&B primarily, a little bit of rap as well, but I do like R&B right now. If I could name three artists that I'm big into, it would probably be Kevin Ross, Leon Thomas, and then I always go back to [Ne-Yo] as well. You know, funny enough, uh, whenever I was coming here, he has a song called "Champagne Life," and so I was like, you know, that's — maybe that'll be a song that I'll [adopt] whenever I come here. Obviously not talking about the same kind of champagne.

[00:10:28]
Reginald Hardwick: He's very, very talented.

[00:10:30]
Alex Barton: Yeah, absolutely, and even uh my younger brother, there was a phase where he, he must have just wanted to be just like [Ne-Yo] because in the scrapbooks there uh there are pictures of him wearing a fedora, so I had to put him on blast, but that — he, he was definitely into that as well. Everybody wanted to be [Ne-Yo] for a while.

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Reginald Hardwick: Is anyone else in your family or friend group broadcasters?

[00:10:50]
Alex Barton: Uh, not too many. There is, uh, I do have a friend who I believe right now is still in the Cape Girard[eau] area, uh, [Chandler Jansen]. He was working at KGMO, the, uh, rock station down there. So he was, um, met him through the, through my classes at [SEMO] and so he's still, uh, involved in it. But as opposed to people that I grew up with, they're, uh, not really broadcasters, all just doing something else.

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Reginald Hardwick: Things that we're hoping to have you do is go to different communities and set up at the libraries to kind of learn about the folks who live there and what's happening in those communities so we can bring those stories back to our station.

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Alex Barton: I think I am absolutely excited to do that because that's an aspect of public radio and public media that, that I was just not getting in in TV news. So, just kind of you're talking about me getting acclimated to the area, I mean, me going out there and actually just soaking it all up just like that is going to be, uh, amazing, and then being able to just go, meet a bunch of new people and get life experience that I otherwise would not have, um, just whether it's about the people, the culture, maybe some of their struggles — that's stuff that I would never otherwise get. So certainly looking forward to that.

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Reginald Hardwick: Well, Alex, we are so glad you're here, and we welcome you, and we are so excited that you're here and you'll be waking folks up with the first news and weather in the morning, and um, we're again excited to have you here.

Alex Barton: I'm excited as well. Thank you.

Reginald Hardwick: That was Alex Barton, the new Morning Edition host on Illinois Soul FM 101.1, WILL AM 580 and WILL FM 90.9. And if you want to learn more about Alex, you can go to IPMnewsroom.org.