Jack Footer is the first recipient of the Blaire E. Feulner Integrity in Journalism scholarship. The scholarship is in honor of the KPCW Radio's founder, Blaire Feulner, who unexpectedly passed away last October.
KPCW signed on the air July 2,1980, and while Feulner had a lot of help and financial support to start the station, she was the one responsible for securing the FCC permits and piecing together the equipment to get the station on air.
This first scholarship has been funded by former Park City School District teachers, Tommy Tanzer, Betsy Bacon, Teri Wiss and Feulner’s widow, Susan.
Tanzer says the scholarship will be awarded annually and Jack seemed like the perfect first recipient.
“He's a local kid, and he is a reporter,” Tanzer said. “From the minute you see him, he looks like he's going for the story. And he's a beautiful person from a really neat family.”
Back in the 1980s, Tanzer served as the school district’s teacher union representative. He says he’s grateful for Feulner’s friendship but also the good advice regarding negotiations.
“My personality would have been in the 1980s to fight with the people at the school district,” Tanzer said. “Blaire said no strikes, no negativity, and Blaire was just so calm and so smart about it and then it worked. So, we got, over a 3-year period here, a 43% raise for every teacher, teacher's aide, cook, custodian, bus driver, secretary, everyone but the superintendent. And it really changed my life too. Because that negotiating led me to a whole different career. I stopped teaching and went into sports contract negotiation.”
Footer says he’s thrilled to receive the scholarship.
“It just goes to show that, you know, all the work I've done this year and with my internship at KPCW -- everyone at the station and everybody on the review committee, they appreciate the work that I'm doing, and appreciate that I'm diving into the realm of journalism and want to continue it,” Footer said. “And I've just been super honored and just super excited to win this because I'm just super excited to pursue something that I truly love.”
Eventually he says he hopes to get into sports broadcasting.
“One of my dreams is to become a sports broadcaster, calling sporting events, different sporting events, or hosting sports programs, like Sports Center on ESPN or something," Footer said. “By doing radio, and also journalism, it's kind of given me two different avenues to kind of play with and, you know, with this degree, is journalism the way I want to go down, or maybe some other door will open.”
Jack Footer will work full time this summer as a day camp counselor before departing for college. You can catch his final show on KPCW Saturday, May 27, from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m.
