Bob Stepno has been in the game for a very long time. While he may be short in stature, he has been a giant in the media world for many years now. From working on newspapers, to teaching, all the way to putting radio classics on his website jheroes.com where you can find classic radio segments and shows. Look at it almost like a gallery of nostalgic radio pieces for people that were truly into radio during those times.
Stepno’s love of journalism and radio started at a very young age in Boston, Massachusetts. At a young age Stepno was often listening to the radio while simultaneously reading the newspaper. By the time he was 11 years old Stepno was delivering newspapers to people’s front doors. The love for newspapers and journalism only continued to grow as in college Stepno was reading books about journalist with the intention to work in journalism. Stepno wrote an article for the academic journal.
Bob Stepno taught at Emerson College in Boston and the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. In 2007 Stepno joined Radford University in the Media Studies department. His teaching career lasted from 1999 to 2013 before semi retiring in May 2013. Stepno was once a reporter for The Hartford Courant. The courses he taught during his career were journalism, web production, and other forms of media studies classes. His time at Radford was more about being an assistant professor.
The podcasting and radio world is mainly what Stepno works on nowadays. When it came around to him that podcasts were digging up old radio shows that were around before he was born, that really got him into the podcasting world and doing what he does now. There was a roundtable that he participated in earlier in his life when teaching in Boston, which also played a role in his love of podcasting. That just added onto his passion for newspaper writing and radio.
His website JHeroes.com is a multimedia book in the sense that it is a trip down lane for viewers. It’s a radio for journalists where you can hear stories from fictional stars such as Clark Kent to real life figures whose stories were played out on radio. A major inspiration behind the website was seeing that from the 1940’s to the 1960’s radio series would feature newspaper reporters and turn them into characters. His process of putting the recordings on his website is by listening to shows about the journalists and the way they would were portrayed character wise and posting them as links on the website so people can easily listen to the radio shows. There are many sections that range from adventures, comedy, detective work, drama, movies, real-life and soap opera. Whatever genre you are most interested in, there are great pieces on his website.
Stepno has other journalism and blogging sites that he has used but Jheroes seems to be the main site. He states that his blogging and like a public notebook for him.
Stepno has advice for those that are potentially interested in being a reporter. “If you properly want to understand a man, you should do it by becoming a reporter.” Reporters did stories for the public good , and public entertainment.
Overall, Stepno has been able to mix his love for journalism, his love, for radio, and his love for podcasting, and mix it into one and turn it into a website that he enjoys working on and producing great content. Stepno has been working on these websites for many years now and still has the passion to keep finding old radio segments and putting them on his website.
Sully Towe 