WUNC looks for leader

North Carolina public radio station WUNC-FM is forming a search committee that will ultimately determine who fills two of the top positions at the station.

Former general manager Joan Siefert Rose -- who joined the station in 2001 and changed the format from news/classical to news/talk -- stepped down in May to take a position as president of the Council for Entrepreneurial Development, a nonprofit organization at Research Triangle Park that nurtures entrepreneurs. Now, with the abrupt and unexpected resignation of program director George Boosey in late June, there are two jobs to fill, and whomever the search committee picks as general manager will basically decide both.

"I want to let the general manager do the work of [hiring] the program director," says Nancy Davis, associate vice chancellor for university relations at UNC-Chapel Hill. "I think that's an important decision for the general manager to make."

For now, the interim general manager is chief operating officer Robert Levin, and the acting program director is news director Connie Walker. Boosey declined to comment on his reasons for leaving.

Davis says that these changes don't signal any kind of financial stress or future shake-ups at the station, but that there will be "a little bit of belt-tightening this year. We're looking at operating budgets, but we're not cutting people."

She says there's a need to build up reserve funds for contingencies.

"We have about a million dollars in reserves so we're focusing on rebuilding those," she says. "We made some investments over the past few years that caused us to draw down a little bit."

Those investments include new studio facilities at American Tobacco Historic District, and the 2005 hire of "Connection" host Dick Gordon, now the host of WUNC's "The Story," which is carried by American Public Media nationwide.

According to figures supplied by Davis, the operating budget for fiscal year 2008 was $7.8 million. When Rose came on board in 2001, it was about $3.5 million.

All of the station's revenue sources -- including individual giving, major giving, underwriting, car donations, foundation giving and matching gifts between companies and individuals -- increased between 2007 and 2008 by a total of 14 percent.

The goal for the multiyear Capital Campaign was $3.25 million, and that was exceeded early by a $3.3 million total.

A political look at N.C.

Veteran News & Observer political reporter Rob Christensen sat down recently with public television interviewer D.G. Martin to discuss the often puzzling dichotomies of North Carolina politics.

Christensen talks about his book "The Paradox of Tar Heel Politics: The Personalities, Elections and Events That Shaped Modern North Carolina," airing at 9:30 p.m. Friday on UNC-TV's "North Carolina Bookwatch." An encore episode will run at 5 p.m. July 20.

Now in its second printing, the hardcover book released in March by The University of North Carolina Press has sold about 3,400 copies. Ten years in the making, the book answers a baffling question: How can a state be represented by Jesse Helms and John Edwards at the same time?

"It's a history of 20th-century North Carolina politics and how it worked -- how we got to where we are, and all the major figures of the state," Christensen says. His research took him back to the powerful Tammany Hall-styled machine of U.S. Sen. Furnifold M. Simmons at the dawn of the 20th century, and continues through stolen governor's elections, a gubernatorial candidate who turned out to be a KGB agent, and a governor who was nearly lynched, among many other amazing stories.