Often when KET public affairs director Renee Shaw heads out of Lexington to report stories in smaller communities hours away from central Kentucky, someone will ask her, “What’s there? Why are you going there?”
Shaw, who has worked for Kentucky Educational Television for 27 years, understands how it feels to be from a place that is sometimes underestimated. She grew up in Portland, Tennessee (pop. 13,500), just south of the Kentucky border.
“There is value in every pocket of [Kentucky] … we just have to do a better job of communicating that value,” she said Wednesday afternoon at the Alhambra Theatre, where a dozen KET staffers set up operations Tuesday to begin three days of interviews for several Hopkinsville stories.
Their first job was to tape Shaw on Main Street (with the courthouse as a backdrop) for segments of Tuesday’s broadcast of “Kentucky Edition.” The program included a story on local efforts to memorialize Hopkinsville native Gloria Watkins, the internationally acclaimed feminist scholar and author known by the pen name bell hooks.
Additional Hopkinsville stories were slated to run through the end of the week on “Kentucky Edition,” the nightly news program that launched in June 2022. It airs at 5:30 p.m. (Central time) Monday through Friday. Viewers who don’t get KET through their cable providers can stream the program from KET’s website.
Shaw taped an hour-long panel discussion touching on local and regional topics Wednesday evening at the Alhambra for the next “Kentucky Tonight” that will air at 7 p.m. Monday.
The panelists included Christian County agri-businessman Wayne Hunt, Madisonville Mayor Kevin Cotton, Hopkinsville Community College President Dr. Alissa Young, Planters Bank CEO Elizabeth McCoy, South Western Kentucky Economic Development Council executive director Carter Hendricks, state Rep. Jason Petrie, Hoptown Chronicle editor Jennifer P. Brown, and Elizabeth Mudd, who leads Kentucky Lake Economic Development in Marshall County.
Issues they discussed included industrial recruitment, Hopkinsville’s downtown revitalization, quality of life, education, agriculture, unique aspects of Western Kentucky and efforts to reduce Kentucky’s income tax. About 75 invited guests watched from the theater’s seats — and after the taping concluded, audience members were invited to step forward and suggest local stories that KET should return to cover.
Cody Noffsinger made a pitch for the Hopkinsville Rotary Club’s annual auction and the scholarships it funds. Christian County Board of Education chairman Tom Bell spoke about the new Martin Luther King preschool that will be housed in the former Indian Hills Elementary School. Taylor Hayes, president of the Christian County Chamber of Commerce, suggested coverage of the region’s “entrepreneurial spirit.”
A reception provided by Planters Bank followed the panel discussion. Shaw said an “overarching gesture of help” came from several community members — including McCoy, other bank employees, Pennyroyal Arts Council executive director Margaret Prim and Alhambra staffers. She said KET benefitted from arts council employee Bryce Sutton’s technical expertise.
“We really are here to understand the community and to help those removed from it understand what Hopkinsville has to offer,” Shaw told Hoptown Chronicle in an interview before the panel discussion.
Hopkinsville is the first stop on a road tour for KET. Owensboro and Boone County will follow.
The trips serve a dual purpose, potentially generating support for KET across the state and giving the public television station access and sources for more stories. KET looks for communities where staffers can embed for a few days and produce stories that provide a broader understanding of Kentucky.
Shaw was also in town to deliver the keynote address for the Christian County Chamber of Commerce’s annual dinner Thursday night at the Bruce Convention Center.
