Nick Vander Puy, Senior Producer       Sandy Lyon,  Photographer

            Nick Vander Puy is a veteran public radio journalist. He has a BA in philosophy from Ripon College. He worked twenty years as a hunting and fishing guide in northern Wisconsin. Vander Puy got his start in public radio in the early ‘nineties  with community station WXPR in Rhinelander, Wisconsin.  He trained at National Public Radio’s (NPR) 1996 diversity initiative under Catherine Stifter in Washington DC. He received further training from Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) legend David Candow who informed him that good journalism boils down to the art of telling stories. Vander Puy received the 1995 National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB) “Golden Reel” award for “The Day the Bear Died.” When the bear hunting story aired on “All Things Considered” it drew hundreds of responses. Vander Puy’s work is heard regularly on public radio stations WOJB and WXPR in northern Wisconsin. Vander Puy enjoys ice fishing, cross country ski-ing, hunting, and splitting wood for a depression-era kitchen wood cookstove.

 

Sandy Lyon, photojournalist, has worked in community radio since 1981. Lyon, founding programmer at WOJB-FM, served for many years as the program director at WOJB, owned and operated by the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Tribe. During that time she produced radio stories for National Public Radio and received the "Golden Reel Award" from the National Federation of Community Broadcasters for programming WOJB-FM. She loves the northwoods of Wisconsin and community radio. She has worked tirelessly for decades to share the stories about Native Americans and their homeland. She loves night skies, cold winters, deep woods and wild rivers.