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Hard-Driving News

General manager Paul La Camera pushes WBUR to national prominence.

By Art Jahnke

Paul La Camera had one small concern when he accepted the job of general manager of Boston University’s WBUR Group in October 2005. La Camera (COM’66), who had spent thirty-three years in the rough-and-tumble world of commercial television, was not 100 percent certain that people who choose to work at a public radio station have the kind of drive he was accustomed to. Now, almost two years later, La Camera has a different idea.

 

“These people,” says La Camera of his staff at WBUR, “are the most dedicated, serious, hard-working, and committed individuals that I’ve ever been around.”

 

The accuracy of La Camera’s opinion can be seen in nearly every aspect of Boston University’s National Public Radio station: awards for editorial excellence, listenership numbers, and fundraising. La Camera himself has received an award indicative of the esteem in which he is held by the local community — he was inducted into the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce’s Academy of Distinguished Bostonians in May for his significant contributions to greater Boston. La Camera is involved in such local organizations as Catholic Charities, the Boston Public Library Foundation, and the United Way of Massachusetts Bay. Before joining WBUR, he worked at WCVB-TV, Boston’s ABC affiliate, for more than three decades, including almost twelve years as president and general manager.

 

John Davidow, WBUR news director and managing editor, is not surprised that his boss was honored for his commitment to Boston. “Paul recognizes that local news is every bit as important as the national and international coverage that WBUR is known for,” says Davidow, who worked with La Camera at WCVB-TV. Toward that end, he says, the radio station has hired reporter David Boeri to host a weekly hour-long show focused on Boston.

 

“We are taking this show very seriously,” La Camera says. “We are adding five people to the news staff. It’s going to be very substantive.”

 

Davidow describes the new show as a key part of La Camera’s vision “to make the station a local news power as well as a national and international news resource.”

 

That resource has been racking up editorial awards. Earlier this year, WBUR was honored by the Associated Press, winning top placement in five news categories for large-market stations in Massachusetts and Rhode Island: general news, documentary, sports program, public affairs, and use of sound. The station also captured four Edward R. Murrow Awards in the New England Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) large-market division competition. Another indication of the station’s success is increased listener numbers. Data released last year by the broadcast ratings agency Arbitron show that an average of 475,000 people in the Boston metro area tuned in to WBUR during the final quarter of 2005, an increase of nearly 14 percent from the same period in 2004.

 

What’s left to do? La Camera would like to produce more documentaries, encouraged by the success of a recent series on Boston Medical Center and by the promise of an upcoming series on end-of-life issues in teaching hospitals. And, he says, he is looking forward to bolstering the station’s Web presence. In other words, he plans to keep his hardworking staff busy.