This week we’re hearing from Gina Hays, born and raised in Anchorage. Hays works for KRUA, the University of Alaska Anchorage’s college radio station as the marketing coordinator.
HAYS: We didn’t really have a lot of money for me to go out of state, and it’s just incredibly expensive to go out of state. For my parents, they were like, “you’re probably gonna stay at home. You’re gonna go to college at UAA.” And I wasn’t really happy about that, to be honest. I really wasn’t because I really wanted to go somewhere else that wasn’t my home state.
I wasn’t happy my first year being here, but after a little while and just understanding UAA and how unique it is, just as a college. I was taking a class, and we had a guest speaker who said, “Liberal Arts schools are pretty cool. They’re pretty fun. I had a great time going to a Liberal Arts school. But, the thing about UAA is it’s so much like reality, the real world,” which I thought was really interesting.
I’ve always been into radio personalities. For me, I was just never into having the camera on me, like TV news. I jsust always found that really intimidaiting like, what if I mess up? What if someone sees a really weird reaction in those news reel blooper reels. I don’t want to be a viral meme.
We have college students who are volunteers, and we also have community members, too who just like to be… just wanna have a show. And they can pretty much do what they want on the show. We have people who have their own talk show. We have people who just play their favorite music. They just have a lot of fun with it. And I don’t think it’s dead. I think if you’re having a lot of fun with it, and you’re really ambitious, then you’re gonna get a following, and you’re gonna get some people to listen.
Wesley Early covers Anchorage life and city politics for Alaska Public Media. Reach him at wearly@alaskapublic.org and follow him on X at @wesley_early. Read more about Wesley here.
Ammon Swenson is Alaska Public Media’s Audio Media Content Producer. He was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska. He graduated from UAA in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and integrated media. He’s previously worked for KRUA radio, the Anchorage Press, and The Northern Light.
