Labor Express Radio - WLUW Becomes An Independent Community Radio Station

WLUW Becomes An Independent Community Radio Station

Throughout the late 1990s, WLUW moved further in the direction of a community oriented radio station. Financial difficulties facing Loyola University lead the institution to consider ceasing the radio station’s operations in 2002. The efforts of WLUW producers and community activists lead to an agreement under which station management would be taken over by WBEZ, the National Public Radio affiliate in Chicago. WBEZ’s mission was to assist station mangers develop a plan to make the station self-funding and self-supporting within five years. WLUW from that point on begin referring to itself as Chicago’s independent, listener-supported, community radio station. The radio station attracted growing attention, even at a national level, for its unique programming format and its devotion to remaining community controlled and funded. The station continued to expand its offerings of community programs devoting air time to a diversity of ethnic groups, including foreign-language programs for the Haitian, Latino, Ethiopian, and Southeast Asian communities in Chicago. The program lineup includes many progressive public affairs programs produced by local organizations. The Heartland Cafe, a restaurant that also acts as a left wing activist center in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood, hosts Live From the Heartland. The staff of the 8th Day Center for Justice, a Catholic social justice organization, produces a program called The 8th Day devoted to peace and justice issues. Chicago's Independent Media Center produces From The Trenches, a politically progressive local news program. Labor Express, and in more recent years Radio Chamba, provides the station programming focused on issues of concern to Chicago’s working class communities.

In the summer of 2007 Loyola University, which still owns the WLUW license and the property from which 88.7 FM is broadcast, decided it wanted WLUW to once again become a University radio station, incorporated into the University’s Communications Department. The decision raised concern among many involved with the station that the community oriented programming would be dropped. Shortly following the University’s announcement of its plans to resume management of the station, the station manager and program manager were replaced, creating even deeper suspicions about the future of the station’s programming. When the transfer of management became official in the summer of 2008, dozens of station staff left the station, mostly those involved in music programming. So far, the community programming at WLUW has not changed and the new station management has indicated that no major programming changes will be coming for the foreseeable future.