WHCP-FM, Mid-Shore Community Radio has named award-winning journalist Jim Brady as news director. The new position is the FM station’s most recent step in its continued expansion since becoming a National Public Radio member station last year.
Brady will continue his work as WCHP’s lead investigative reporter and will oversee the news desk, identifying interview assignment needs and coordinating the daily Mid-Shore MidDay lineup of news, reports and features. He will work closely with Shane Walker, WHCP’s local host of Morning Edition and the Mid-Shore Morning Groove, and Doug Schuetz, operations and production director.
“We are thrilled to have lured Jim Brady out of retirement to take on this vital role at the station,” said WHCP General Manager Mike Starling. “His experience, energy and fresh insights will elevate our news operation from the ground up as we grow into being a full-service regional NPR station.”
Brady brings decades of frontline reporting as a print journalist at major newspapers, starting with the Washington Post and Greensboro News & Record (North Carolina). After moving to Texas, he worked as a news and features writer for the Dallas Times Herald, unearthing investigative pieces and human-interest angles in award-winning deadline stories. Later, as a features writer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Brady earned awards for topics ranging from criminal investigations to the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Many of his articles on the struggles of tragedy and poverty revealed enduring personalities from all walks of life.
He left print journalism for an opportunity to work as a producer for the Oprah Winfrey Show in Chicago and later served as executive producer of Oprah.com. Inspired by Oprah’s advice to “follow your dream,” Brady went on to start his own company, Earthcomber, and was awarded five key patents for his work developing early mobile GPS search technology.
After retiring, Brady chose to return to Maryland, where he had earned his degree in American Studies from the University of Maryland’s College Park campus. Long enamored by the Eastern Shore, he and his wife, Julie Gilberto-Brady, bought their home in Cambridge in 2015 – the same year that WHCP Community Radio first went on the air.
Impressed by WHCP’s mission and spirit, Brady joined the dozens of volunteers at the station who provide show content, operate and run the station, manage the website and more. His most recent investigative pieces for WHCP have focused on Dorchester County’s financial reporting and controversy with the Cambridge Waterfront Development Inc. project.
“This opportunity is a thrill and a privilege.” Brady said. “It’s exciting to be part of WHCP’s expansion covering so many communities on the Mid-Shore, and we expect our news coverage will grow along with it. I look forward to being part of WHCP’s mission to amplify the voice of our community and share the spirit and culture of Maryland’s Mid-Shore with a much broader audience.”
Brady has always been actively involved in the communities in which he has lived. He currently is president of the Nanticoke Historic Preservation Alliance and has volunteered covering city council meetings for Cambridge Association of Neighborhoods. In River Forest, Illinois, he coached his sons’ and daughter’s youth baseball and softball teams and chaperoned his church’s youth summer service trips.
In 2022, the same team that founded WHCP-LP won a rare new broadcast license from the FCC to expand from a low-power station reaching 10 miles around Cambridge to a more powerful station reaching all of Dorchester, most of Talbot, Wicomico and other counties on the Mid-Shore. The station is predicted to reach up to 193,000, including across the Chesapeake Bay in Lexington Park and vicinity. Launched on July 15, 2023, WHCP-FM incorporates the best of WHCP-LP and much more, providing information and inspiration that helps Maryland’s Mid-Shore flourish.
