When Sheryl Worsley began her career at KSL Radio, news producers were still physically "cutting tape." A lot has changed since then — so much that many people believe news organizations like KSL are doomed to extinction — but Worsley has a lot of hope for the future.
KSL's director of audience development will talk about what legacy media can do to stay relevant in the digital world when she presents the first Morris Media and Society Lecture of 2018 at Utah State University.
The series, designed to bring diverse media voices to the university's Logan campus, is sponsored by the Department of Journalism and Communication and supported by a by an endowment from DeAnn Morris in honor of her late brother, former journalism professor John Morris.
Worsley's visit comes as news organizations are facing significant shifts in how their audiences access journalistic content.
"For really obvious reasons, this shift is an important subject for our students to explore and understand," said journalism professor Matthew LaPlante, the facilitator of the series. "That's why we brought the Wall Street Journal's social media editor, Natalie Andrews, to Utah to present a Morris lecture last year, and it's why we're excited to hear from Sheryl Worsley this year. These are journalists who are surviving and thriving in the midst of a lot of chaos, and helping keep their news organizations relevant."
A Utah native — she grew up in rural Emery County and attended the College of Eastern Utah before graduating from the University of Utah — Worsley has been working for KSL since 1999, when she was an intern on the television side of the multimedia enterprise. Although she initially wanted to be a TV reporter, she switched to radio when she recognized it was a faster route to reporting.
But reporting is irrelevant without an audience, and so these days Worsley's job is to support the reporting and other programming at KSL and its associated stations by identifying and engaging consumers.
Her lecture, which is free and open to the public on Monday, April 23, and will begin at 11:30 a.m. in room 101 of the Stan L. Albrecht Agricultural Sciences Building.
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