Bob Beck
News DirectorBob Beck has been News Director of Wyoming Public Radio since 1988. During his time as News Director WPR has won over 100 national, regional and state news awards.
In addition to duties as News Director, Bob is the co-creator, co-host and producer of the news magazine Open Spaces, which has won nine national Public Radio News Directors Inc. (PRNDI) awards. Bob has personally won four PRNDI awards for reporting and four regional Edward R. Murrow Awards. He has also won numerous Associated Press and Wyoming Association of Broadcasters awards in his career.
Bob was given the WEA School Bell Award for education reporting and was honored by the Governor’s Council on Impaired Driving for his reporting. On the television side, Bob has been part of two Emmy Award-winning PBS telecasts.
In his career, Bob has covered the legislature longer than any Wyoming broadcaster. Additional coverage as a reporter includes events such as the Mark Hopkinson execution, the Jessica Dubroff plane crash, the Matthew Shepard murder and a drunk driving crash that killed eight University of Wyoming Athletes.
Professionally, he has served on the PRNDI Board and has been state coordinator for the Radio Television Digital News Association and Project Vote Smart.
Bob taught broadcast news at the University of Wyoming for 20 years and twice was honored with a Top Prof award by the UW Mortar Board.
Around Laramie, Bob is active in community events. He co-chaired the 2009 Albany County United Way Campaign, served as President of the United Way Board, and has been involved with other non-profit organizations as a board member and volunteer.
Prior to coming to WPR, Bob worked as a News and Sportscaster at stations in Wyoming and Illinois. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Radio-Television from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and is a native of Wheaton, Illinois in suburban Chicago.
Email: btwo@uwyo.edu
Phone: 307-766-6626
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The Wyoming Legislature will hold a three-day legislative session to craft legislation that opposes COVID-19 vaccine mandates. -
It's that time of year when the legislature starts heading into the home stretch as it prepares for the upcoming budget session in February. In the meantime, a number of legislators and the governor are discussing a special legislative session to pass bills to protect Wyoming businesses and health care facilities from federal COVID-19 mandates. All Democrats are voting no on the proposal. House Minority Leader Cathy Connolly joined us to talk about that and issues from education to juvenile justice.
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The legislature's Joint Education Committee has given support to a slight increase in funding for school districts across the state.
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Last year was a tough one for musicians of all sorts and that includes the University of Wyoming Symphony Orchestra. Not getting audience feedback is difficult. This year it'll be different. The in-person symphony season kicks off on October 7 at 7:30 p.m. Longtime Symphony Director and Conductor Michael Griffith joined Bob Beck to preview the season and discuss how they plan on having a safe performance.
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Wyoming has roughly a 39 percent vaccination rate against COVID-19 and is seeing its hospitals fill up. State health officials say that approximately 96 percent of those in the hospital have not been vaccinated. Another fact is that by the time many reach the hospital they have serious cases of COVID-19 because they didn't seek treatment when symptoms first arrived. Dr. Donald Lloyd Jones is the President of the American Heart Association and the Director of Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. He tells Wyoming Public Radio's Bob Beck why Wyoming's numbers concern him.
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Hamid Khan is a Judicial Education Attorney at the Federal Judicial Center. He's also an expert on a wide range of Islamic issues and teaches courses on them at the University of Michigan Law School. Mr. Khan is also a graduate of Worland High School and the University of Wyoming. He joins Bob Beck to talk about the situation in Afghanistan and what the future holds.
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The FBI confirmed the body discovered in Grand Teton National Park is that of 22-year-old Gabby Petito. The local coroner says the manner of death was homicide.
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The U.S Fish and Wildlife Service said on Thursday it is initiating a comprehensive status review of the gray wolf to determine if federal protections need to be reinstated. Conservation groups petitioned the service because of aggressive wolf hunting campaigns in Montana and Idaho.
