Is this thing on?
By Frizell Bailey
The view from Ben Merens’ 23rd floor office is spectacular. It sweeps the eastern half of downtown, with the river and the lake as bookends. Admittedly, not at all what you’d expect from the offices of a public radio station; a ClearChannel office, maybe. “It’s a little embarrassing,” Merens says with a smile. He explains to visitors and would-be public radio members and underwriters that Wisconsin Public Radio got the space at a steal when occupancy in the building was low.
Merens is the host of a call-in talk show that airs from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. on the Ideas Network, broadcast in Milwaukee at 90.7 FM. The show covers current events and includes expert guests, policy makers and commentators. It’s a perfect fit for Merens. But it took a while to get there.
Merens studied Public Relations at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He admits that he didn’t really know what career he wanted to pursue while studying at UW. He recalls one of his professors hinting that Public Relations might not be for him.
“She said ‘you’ll never practice a day in PR.’ I don’t know why she said that; I didn’t know it, but she was right. I never really have.”
After graduation, he took a year off from school to study with the Second City Theatre Group in Chicago. He got a job doing singing telegrams to pay the bills. He eventually went back to school and received his Masters from Northwestern University’s Medell School of Journalism. Over the next few years he worked in print and radio in Long Island and Chicago, but he still hadn’t found his niche.
In the late 80s, Merens was teaching at Chicago’s Columbia College. He remembers telling his class that it was not enough to simply get your degree without a plan for what you wanted to do once you completed your studies. He challenged them to think about what they wanted out of their career. They, in turn, challenged him. He had to admit that he didn’t know what he ultimately wanted to do, but he promised them that he would have an answer for them by semester’s end.
He soon realized that what he liked most about journalism was asking questions and conducting interviews. “I was the kid in school who was always asking questions. My teacher would say ‘what is going to become of you, you’re always asking questions?'”
Fast forward. Merens has been with Wisconsin Public Radio for twelve years, a job he might not have noticed had his wife not brought it to his attention. “I was looking for work and my wife said ‘have you read the paper today?'”
It was Sunday night and he was in no mood to sift through the classifieds. But he took the paper from her and noticed the ad for a host/producer for a nightly business show on Wisconsin Public Radio. Ben landed the job, and in an industry widely known for constant turnover and shifting loyalties, has been with WPR ever since.
Whereas much of commercial talk radio is about getting in as many zingers as possible and shouting down the other guy, Merens show is more subdued, more concerned with sober discussion. So he listens. And unlike some call in shows, his callers are not just props, but equal contributors to the discussion.
“The show is not about me. It’s about the views of the guests. The callers are there to bring out points.”
Don’t ask. Ben won’t tell.
Don’t ask Merens about his politics. Well, you can ask him, but be forewarned that he’s not going to tell you. “I can’t tell you. I like the fact that nobody knows my political views,” says Merens.
But why? What does Merens have to hide? Is he a communist, a government hating radical of the Montana militia group ilk, or worse yet, a right-wing religious fundamentalist? Maybe it’s personal. No, not even his wife of 17 years is quite sure of his politics.
Actually, it’s not that he has anything to hide. He just doesn’t think that his views have any place in his show. Rush Limbaugh, he is not. Merens isn’t in the business of telling his listeners what to think. He prefers to remain objective, a quality that seems to be falling out of favor in talk radio these days.
“Someone said to me once, ‘I’ve listened to you for twelve years and I have no idea what your politics are.’ I think that’s the role of all talk hosts. We’re all on the public airwaves. If we don’t expose a variety of opinions, we’re not serving the public on the airwaves that belong to them.”
Objectivity in talk radio?
What a novel concept. Merens feels that the role of the host is to shed light on tough issues in order to help his listeners make informed decisions and perhaps more importantly, it’s a matter of trust.
“I don’t have an agenda. And people know that. Not having an agenda allows the audience to trust you in a way that having one does not.”
For Merens, journalism is craft. And after twenty years in the field, he sees himself as a skilled craftsman.
Words to live by: Sell hammers.
Merens may have no political axe to grind, but he does have a hammer. He says the best advice he’s ever gotten about practicing the craft of interviewing and being a talk radio host from was Clarke Webber, a local radio personality in Chicago.
“He said ‘Ben, sell hammers,'” he remembers. Not exactly sure what to make of the statement, Merens asked Webber to explain.
And this is what he told Ben. “If you’re working in a hardware store and someone comes up and they have a ball peen hammer and they need a flat head hammer, you wouldn’t say ‘you stupid idiot, you don’t know anything about hammering. Get the hell out of my store!’ What you say is ‘Sir, you’ve got the wrong hammer.’ And that customer will buy the right hammer, and will come back to your store and he’ll tell others to go to that store because of the way you treated him.”
“So, I sell hammers.”
