WVBR News

WVBR News The official news page of WVBR 93.5 FM. Reporting on the local Ithaca/Tompkins County area.

TOMORROW ON WVBR: Tompkins’ Choice welcomes Deborah Fisher as she joins Paxton Honerkamp to discuss her candidacy for Co...
04/23/2025

TOMORROW ON WVBR: Tompkins’ Choice welcomes Deborah Fisher as she joins Paxton Honerkamp to discuss her candidacy for Common Council. Tune in for an insightful discussion on local issues and the future of city government here in Ithaca—only on WVBR 93.5-FM.

TOMORROW ON WVBR: WVBR’s Tompkins’ Choice series continues, as Ithaca Common Council candidate G.P. Zurenda joins the st...
04/12/2025

TOMORROW ON WVBR: WVBR’s Tompkins’ Choice series continues, as Ithaca Common Council candidate G.P. Zurenda joins the station as a special guest on Talk of Town. Join us for a compelling discussion on the future of our local communities—only on WVBR 93.5-FM.

TOMORROW—WVBR debuts its local public office candidate interview series Tompkins’ Choice, as Ithaca Common Council candi...
04/09/2025

TOMORROW—WVBR debuts its local public office candidate interview series Tompkins’ Choice, as Ithaca Common Council candidate Hannah Shvets joins News Director Paxton Honerkamp to discuss a range of issues impacting the Fifth Ward and the City of Ithaca as a whole. Don’t miss this insightful conversation on the future of our local communities in the midst of a rapidly changing political landscape, only on WVBR 93.5-FM.

TOMORROW ON WVBR: Robert W. Snyder sits down with WVBR News Director Paxton Honerkamp to discuss his latest publication:...
03/26/2025

TOMORROW ON WVBR: Robert W. Snyder sits down with WVBR News Director Paxton Honerkamp to discuss his latest publication: When the City Stopped: Stories from New York’s Essential Workers.

Robert W. Snyder is Manhattan Borough Historian and professor emeritus of American Studies and journalism at Rutgers University. Most recently he is the author of Crossing Broadway: Washington Heights and the Promise of New York (Cornell) and co-author of All the Nations Under Heaven: Immigrants, Migrants and the Making of New York (Columbia). He was a Fulbright Lecturer in American Studies in Korea and is a member of the New York Academy of History. 

Through a collection of oral histories from NYC essential workers at the most vulnerable moment of the pandemic, When the City Stopped: Stories from New York’s Essential Workers paints a picture of one of the most harrowing times in recent history within the microcosm of New York City. 

Our interview with Snyder will air live on WVBR’s Thursday News Hour this Thursday, March 27, at 6pm. It will subsequently be released on all major podcasting platforms. 

Credits:

Robert W. Snyder headshot: Erica Lansner
Robert W. Snyder bio: https://newbooksnetwork.com
Manhattan landscape: https://www.manhattanbp.nyc.gov/

02/08/2025

Some clips from Episode 25 of Talk of the Town: AFTER HOURS, created and produced by WVBR News!

WVBR News Director Jack Donnellan sat down for a second time with author, editor, and publisher Mark Wish. Mark and his wife founded an annual short story anthology, Coolest American Stories, which pushes its contributors to make their fiction as compelling as possible, reminding them that readers crave “unputdownable” storytelling. Mark also served as the Fiction Editor of California Quarterly, was the founding Fiction Editor of New York Stories and a Contributing Editor for Pushcart, and has long been known as the freelance editor who has revised the fiction of once-struggling writers, leading it to land numerous book deals as well as publication in dozens of venues including The Atlantic Monthly, The Kenyon Review, Tin House, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Hudson Review, and Best American Short Stories. 

His first novel, Confessions of a Polish Used Car Salesman, compared favorably with Huckleberry Finn by the Los Angeles Times back in 1997, went to a second printing one month after publication. Watch Me Go, his third novel, was published by Putnam and praised by Rebecca Makkai, Daniel Woodrell, Ben Fountain, and Salman Rushdie. More than 125 of Mark’s short stories have appeared in print venues such as Best American Short Stories, The Georgia Review, TriQuarterly, American Short Fiction, The Antioch Review, Crazyhorse, The Gettysburg Review, Fiction, The Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, New England Review, Barrelhouse, The Yale Review, The Sun, Paris Transcontinental, and Fiction International, and have won distinctions such as the Tobias Wolff Award, the Kay Cattarulla Award, an Isherwood Fellowship, and a Pushcart Prize. 

This interview aired live on Talk of the Town on WVBR 93.5 FM on Saturday, January 25, 2025 at 3:00 PM.

02/08/2025

Some clips from Episode 24 of Talk of the Town: AFTER HOURS, created and produced by WVBR News!

In this special episode, recorded ahead of the 2024 Presidential Election, WVBR’s News Department sits down with former CNBC Senior Producer Peter Schacknow to discuss how the economy might have an effect on the election.

Peter Schacknow served as Senior Producer at CNBC’s Breaking News Desk beginning in March 2006, producing breaking news stories for the daytime shows as well as serving as writer and copy editor for CNBC’s flagship morning show “Squawk Box.” He also wrote and voiced weekend features for CNBC Radio. Prior to that, Schacknow spent seven years as morning anchor and reporter at Bloomberg Radio, specializing in business news and financial market coverage.

While at Bloomberg, Schacknow was nominated as Best Business Anchor by the New York Air Awards, and won an award from the NYS Society of CPAs for his “Tax Smart Now” series. This marks Schacknow’s second stint at CNBC: he was an original employee of the network back in 1989, serving as producer and on-air reporter until 1999. His experience also includes time at the CBS, ABC, and UPI Radio Networks, as well as radio stations WOR (New York), WGSM and WLIR (Long Island), and WVBR-FM and WTKO (Ithaca, N.Y).

This interview aired live on Talk of the Town on WVBR 93.5 FM on Saturday, November 2, 2024 at 3:00 PM.

02/08/2025

Some clips from Episode 23 of Talk of the Town: AFTER HOURS, created and produced by WVBR News!

WVBR News Director Jack Donnellan sat down with Royal D. Colle and Heike Michelsen for an hour-long interview about Beyond Borders: Exploring the History of Cornell’s Global Dimensions (Cornell University Press, 2024). Colle and Michelsen, alongside Elaine D. Engst and Corey Ryan Earle, edited the book, which “highlights and celebrates Cornell University’s many historical achievements and international activities going back to its founding.” Beyond Boarders is a collection of fifty-eight vignettes, penned by authors drawn from different personal backgrounds and academic disciplines. It is a unique and timely representation of the Cornell story. You can purchase it at your favorite local bookstore.

Royal D. Colle is Professor Emeritus of Communication at Cornell. He has worked around the world on projects with WHO, the World Bank, FAO, and the Ford Foundation.

Heike Michelsen was Director of Programming at Cornell’s Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. She was a Senior Research Officer at the International Service for National Agricultural Research.

This interview aired live on Talk of the Town on WVBR 93.5 FM on Saturday, May 4, 2024 at 3:00 PM.

WVBR News Director Jack Donnellan sat down for a second time with author, editor, and publisher Mark Wish. Mark and his ...
02/07/2025

WVBR News Director Jack Donnellan sat down for a second time with author, editor, and publisher Mark Wish. Mark and his wife founded an annual short story anthology, Coolest American Stories, which pushes its contributors to make their fiction as compelling as possible, reminding them that readers crave “unputdownable” storytelling. Mark also served as the Fiction Editor of California Quarterly, was the founding Fiction Editor of New York Stories and a Contributing Editor for Pushcart, and has long been known as the freelance editor who has revised the fiction of once-struggling writers, leading it to land numerous book deals as well as publication in dozens of venues including The Atlantic Monthly, The Kenyon Review, Tin House, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Hudson Review, and Best American Short Stories. 

His first novel, Confessions of a Polish Used Car Salesman, compared favorably with Huckleberry Finn by the Los Angeles Times back in 1997, went to a second printing one month after publication. Watch Me Go, his third novel, was published by Putnam and praised by Rebecca Makkai, Daniel Woodrell, Ben Fountain, and Salman Rushdie. More than 125 of Mark’s short stories have appeared in print venues such as Best American Short Stories, The Georgia Review, TriQuarterly, American Short Fiction, The Antioch Review, Crazyhorse, The Gettysburg Review, Fiction, The Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, New England Review, Barrelhouse, The Yale Review, The Sun, Paris Transcontinental, and Fiction International, and have won distinctions such as the Tobias Wolff Award, the Kay Cattarulla Award, an Isherwood Fellowship, and a Pushcart Prize. 

The interview aired live on Talk of the Town on WVBR 93.5 FM on Saturday, January 25, 2025 at 3:00 PM. A podcast version of Jack’s interview with Mark is forthcoming. 

Snowy scenes from this past week in Ithaca, brought to you by WVBR News.
02/07/2025

Snowy scenes from this past week in Ithaca, brought to you by WVBR News.

We’ve got a few final updates ahead of Election Day in Tompkins County…now get out there and go vote!
11/04/2024

We’ve got a few final updates ahead of Election Day in Tompkins County…now get out there and go vote!

Tune in tomorrow to WVBR News’ annual live Election Day Coverage, with updates every fifteen minutes from 6:30 PM on 11/...
11/04/2024

Tune in tomorrow to WVBR News’ annual live Election Day Coverage, with updates every fifteen minutes from 6:30 PM on 11/5 to 1:00 AM on 11/6!

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