Story by Isabella Sherk
Photos by Jailyn Neville
Leoneda Inge is not new to public radio. She has worked for WUNC — the station licensed to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — since 2001. Her distinctive presence and voice have been carried over the airwaves to North Carolinians ever since.
It makes sense that she seems to come alive behind the microphone.
“This is the studio I’ll probably be doing the show in,” she said, gesturing to the room around her. “This studio may not look that big but they have actually had bands in here before. They can make this room anything it needs to be.”
In the small studio filled with microphones and audio equipment, Inge commands the room. Her voice is clear and powerful — something she will bring with her when co-hosting the station’s new daily show , which has been missing from WUNC since it stopped broadcasts of “The State of Things” in 2020 after longtime host Frank Stasio retired.
Inge has been a fixture at the station and holds the distinction of being the first public radio journalist in the South to hold the position of Race and Southern Culture Reporter.
“It’s not that other places were not covering race in the way they wanted to cover race, but at least this station made it a full-time job,” Inge said.
Before landing in North Carolina, Inge grew up in Florida and then attended Florida A&M University, where she studied broadcast journalism. She remembers walking into the student newspaper in freshman year, wanting to write for them.
“They looked at me like I was crazy,” she said.
She had not taken a writing and reporting class yet, so they initially turned her away.
After that rejection, she walked over to the radio station, which was on the same floor as the paper, and got a gig on the radio playing jazz music. Even then, people told her she had a powerful presence in her voice.
“Why fight what you do well, anyway?” she said.
She worked as a public radio reporter for a few years out of college in Michigan and Wisconsin before becoming a Knight fellow at the University of Michigan. She said the experience was “wonderful.”
“I stayed there for graduate school,” she said.
Inge had only been married around a year when she entered graduate school at the University of Michigan. She got pregnant with both of her sons while she was attending, and found she could not focus on school with all that was going on in her life.
She wanted to stay at home with her kids but also knew she had to work full-time and support them.
“Something has to give here,” she said.
That’s when she found WUNC and came to North Carolina.
Inge liked the station because people were moving to the Triangle, and the area and the station were growing. It was also halfway back to her hometown in Tallahassee, Florida.
She found the job posting the day it closed. So she called the station, hoping she didn’t miss her chance.
“I promise I’ll FedEx it today,” she said.
They told her to send her application in any way.
The old program director at Michigan Radio happened to be the new president and general manager of WUNC at the time. When Inge was flown in as a finalist, the president remembered Inge — and her work.
“I’ve heard Leoneda, she’s fine,” they said.
“That’s how I got the job,” Inge said, laughing.
At first, she was brought on as a changing economy reporter, but much of her reporting was centered around people of color and Southern culture even then. She covered things like North Carolina’s once-prominent textile industry and the fast-growing Latino Community Credit Union.
When she and her husband decided to divorce, she got another job offer in Los Angeles. The station was up and coming and she would make more money. There was just one problem — her sons and her husband were in North Carolina.
“I had to stay here,” she said.
Once the divorce was finalized, she earned the prestigious Knight-Bagehot Fellowship at Columbia University, which would allow her to study in both Columbia’s business and journalism schools.
This time, she decided to go. She tried to find ways to bring her sons with her but ultimately had to leave them behind with her ex-husband while she studied, remembering how hard graduate school was with kids the first time.
“I don’t think I would have gotten out of there if I had the boys with me,” she said.
Inge graduated from Columbia in 2008, earning her Master’s in Journalism. At the time, the recession was overhead and they held her job at WUNC, so she came back. It was around this time that Inge began to push for a new title — Race and Southern Culture Reporter.
“All of my stories were very Southern-based and race-based anyway because at that time I was the only Black reporter here for over a decade,” Inge said.
She thought the title change was important, so she pushed for it.
“I thought about how there are a lot of journalists not of color that were doing race stories that I didn’t appreciate,” she said. “I can do them better.”
Her title has been Race and Southern Culture Reporter ever since.
Inge has been reporting for WUNC for over 20 years. Her reports and distinctive voice are prominent at the station. Listeners will hear that voice later this year in a new daily show with co-host Jeff Tiberii that will cover “North Carolina news, politics and Southern culture.”
The station is undergoing a new chapter — it hired a new president and general manager in Paul Hunton last fall and has been without a daily show since 2020.
“It’s a great time,” Inge said. “They should really exploit it and take advantage of that. Especially because we know a lot of public radio stations aren’t doing as well as our station.”
The station is doing well — its cash reserve increased by over $2 million in the 2021-2022 fiscal year, now amounting to over $21 million. Meanwhile, NPR laid off 10 percent of its staff earlier this year — about 100 people.
During a tough time for public radio, WUNC is growing.
Hunton said that the show will meet people where they are. That means reaching new audiences through social media and making the new show available to listen to on podcast platforms.
“We want to have pieces of it existing all the time,” he said. “What this day and age demands is you’re always on — the show is always existing somewhere on some platform so that the audience out there can find it wherever it may be.”
Hannah Gage, a member of the WUNC LLC Board, said the board is excited for the impact the show will have on local listeners.
“There’s an abundance of national news options in today’s world but the news that really impacts people’s lives more directly is local and regional news,” she said. “That’s the space WUNC’s new show will fill.”
Inge wants the new show to be popular and dynamic, and to continue telling great race and culture stories.
“I think it can be done if our station stands up and just takes all the pride in the world with being the largest, best-funded and dominant Southern public radio station in the country,” she said.
She envisions content eventually coming from all over the South. People should be able to laugh, cry and be pissed off while listening, she said.
“That is, I feel, my job,” she said. “To remind people of good Southern culture and the culture they keep spitting on.”
The show should premiere before the end of the year, Inge said.
Jeff Tiberii, Inge’s co-host and politics reporter at WUNC, is excited to get the show off the ground. They have worked together before and said that having Inge as a partner will benefit listeners.
“There are very few Black women who are hosts of these daily shows,” he said. “Her talents, her knowledge and her experience are going to have somewhat of an enhanced microphone. And our listeners are going to get to benefit and experience what I get to experience on a regular basis in working with her.”
Back in the studio, Inge brags about her now grown-up and successful sons. She gives details on a couple of stories that she is currently working on. She talks about a few names they are workshopping for the show. All behind the microphone she will use to take on this new chapter.
With years of experience under her belt, she is up for the challenge of hosting the new show.
“I know it’s not going to be easy,” she said. “And I am prepared for that.”
