Staff Profile: Matt Shilts

A North State native, News Director Matt Shilts grew up listening to public radio—this station, in fact.

It was something he was always intrigued by, he says, though he didn’t necessarily intend to make a career out of it.

His first radio gig was more of a school assignment—he worked as a DJ and host for Red Bluff High School’s low-powered station, Spartan Radio, 107.7 KRBH-LP-FM—the call letters still roll off his tongue.

“My show was called Morning Drive,” Shilts says. “It was like four or five songs, I read some stuff out of the school bulletin for that day, sports events or whatever, recorded a little intro.”

It was fun, he says, but as a junior in high school he was more interested in music than news. Even as a college student at Chico State a few years later, selecting journalism as a second major was, for him, a way to augment his first choice of English.

“I chose journalism because I wanted something to supplement my English-writing abilities—basically, something to make me do stuff with a higher turnaround,” he explains.

But by the end of college, thanks in large part to his experience working for the award-winning student newspaper, The Orion, Shilts says the journalism major ended up overshadowing other fields of study. He joined the newspaper staff as an entertainment writer, subsequently rising through the ranks to assistant entertainment editor, entertainment editor, and finally, editor-in-chief.

“I kind of fast-tracked,” he says. “I think of myself like—in football, they have this thing called a game manager quarterback, so not like a Hall of Famer but someone who came in to do the job that was needed. And that’s kind of how I felt I was as editor-in-chief—I wasn’t the bright, shining star that had been there since their freshman year.”

Shilts graduated in May 2011, all the while consistently passionate about playing music, but still indefinite about a career path. He had seen job openings at NSPR pop up while he was in school and always thought it would be an interesting place to work. Upon graduating, he applied for an opening as a part-time board operator, which involved hosting All Things Considered and producing newscasts. He found out he got the job while on a post-grad vacation with his family in Cancun.

The part-time position at NSPR headquarters in Chico allowed him to exercise and develop his news and radio chops while maintaining a desirable work-life balance.

“I wasn’t really sure where I was going,” Shilts says. “I played music all the time. I lived a pretty austere existence for the most part—I didn’t need a bunch of money.”

After about two years in that role, he applied for and earned an internal news reporter position, which allowed him to move off the board, produce more news stories, and, most importantly, have a hand in additional aspects of the station.

Then, when the first of several full-time positions became available, Shilts again went for it—gaining the title of broadcast associate, which would turn out to be a short-lived yet meaningful transition. For five months he expanded his purview, working in a variety of roles under the broadcast associate umbrella, including music director and morning host.

When a former news director left the station, Shilts was asked to step into the interim position and earned the permanent news director title not long thereafter.

“Jumping into the news director spot and staying in it has been a great opportunity to learn about every aspect of making radio,” he says. “It’s totally an honor. I’m gulping down experiences and failing constantly but learning from that all the time.”

Now, a little more than a year into his time as head of the news team—which has grown to include reporters Marc Albert, Sarah Bohannon, and Kelly Frost—Shilts says it’s been an honor to help steer the goals of the station, having the trust of Director of University Public Events Stephen Cummins and now General Manager Beth Lamberson, to experiment and figure out how to best cover a large geographical region with a small staff and limited resources.

“We want to do a really good job of creating a composite of what our area looks like and what the people sound like—what the North State sounds like and what’s happening,” Shilts says. “We don’t have the staffing level of some places, and we don’t have people all over the place—so that’s the challenge, how do you do that?”

Looking to the future, Shilts says it’s not difficult to envision a place for himself in the evolving public media landscape—whether that means continuing to do news, learning more about public radio station management, or perhaps podcasting, he’s not sure.

“There’s sort of this renaissance in public media, and so I feel like I’m in a good place to be ready for whatever may come,” he says. “But right now, I’m really happy here and I look forward to continuing our good work and being a part of this team and moving toward somewhere we’re really proud of being.”