News Release

CHAPEL HILL – WUNC Public Radio (91.5 FM) has hired two broadcast news professionals to assume prominent hosting responsibilities during the station’s "Morning Edition" and "Weekend Edition" programs. These positions are part of WUNC Public Radio’s commitment to expand coverage of a variety of issues that impact the lives of North Carolinians.

Eric Hodge, heard since August on WUNC’s local broadcasts each weekday morning during National Public Radio’s "Morning Edition," has been hired as permanent host of WUNC’s morning program.

After graduating from the Broadcast Center in St. Louis, Hodge worked as a morning announcer, news and copy writer and program director for a variety of commercial radio stations in the Midwest and upstate New York. He spent several years working for major record labels in New York City and London and ran his own promotion marketing company in London. He has worked with artists as diverse as U2, Courtney Love and Ben Folds Five. He wrote and voiced a DVD box set on Harry Belafonte that was nominated for three Grammy Awards.

While in London, Hodge worked with BBC Radio One and BBC Television and helped launch XFM Radio, where he hosted its first morning drive show. In 2000, Hodge and his family moved to Carrboro, where he started a music marketing and consulting company and began working as a weekend host on WUNC Public Radio.

"Eric’s presentation style really adds to the professional sound of "Morning Edition" on WUNC," said program director George Boosey. "His background, including his broadcast news training by the veteran news staffers at the CBS flagship station KMOX in St. Louis, and his knowledge of music and the arts from living and working in cities from New York to London, make him a well-rounded host for our listeners across our state."

Lorne Matalon is WUNC Public Radio’s new "Weekend Edition" host and reporter. An experienced television and radio producer, Matalon comes to WUNC from WBUR in Boston, where he has been a producer for "On Point," a show that is broadcast on WUNC at 7 p.m. weekdays. Matalon’s work examining slavery in Sudan was nominated for an Emmy, and he has reported and produced television documentaries in the United State and in Africa, Brazil, and Cuba. He has been a reporter at two ABC television stations and at CBC Television News, and has filed radio stories for Public Radio International’s Capitol Hill Bureau in Washington, D.C., CBC Radio, Radio Canada International and NPR’s "Day to Day." In Canada, he was awarded a Gemini Award for his documentary on the effort to rebuild a drug-ravaged neighborhood. He is a contributor to National Geographic’s Ethnosphere Project, an initiative documenting cultures worldwide.

In his reporting for WUNC, Matalon will produce a series of special reports on business ethics and social responsibility. This topic is particularly timely, Boosey said, because "the power and influence of the business community in society has grown as businesses themselves have grown and, in some cases, merged into ever larger entities. The ethical issues that have attached themselves to some businesses make it imperative that serious journalism take these issues as seriously as we take our obligation to be watchdogs of government."

This series is made possible by the support of the Morrisville-based Redwoods Group, a privately held, socially conscious organization that operates as a highly specialized provider of property, casualty, insurance underwriting, risk management and claims adjusting services.

"We believe that encouraging and maintaining an ethical and socially responsible culture is at least as important for companies as quarterly profits," said Redwoods Group president and chief executive officer Kevin Trapani. "We hope that this type of reporting will help raise awareness of what it means to assume corporate responsibility and will demonstrate that companies can, indeed, do well by doing good."

WUNC Public Radio is a service of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, broadcasting at 91.5 FM in the Triangle and Triad, at 90.9 FM in Rocky Mount/Wilson, and at 88.9 FM on the Outer Banks.

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WUNC Public Radio contact: George Boosey, (919) 966-5454

News Services contact: Lisa Katz, (919) 962-2093