Julia Ziegler could charm a charging Jaguar to stop in its tracks. Or in her case, a Nittany Lion.
As a former student at Penn State and a current season ticket holder, Ziegler said it’s an all-day affair. “I have to wake up early. I have a friend who has a house near the stadium,” Ziegler said. “We get up at 4 or 5, then drive up on game day, stay the night after the game. I’m a big fan of 3:30 kicks.”
Ziegler said her obsession with football was in full swing in college. “When I was in school, I was one of those people camping out and waiting in line to get good seats.”
Apparently, each year in school, you progressed to better seating. The freshman got the tunnel, and upperclassmen got the 50-yard line, the first couple of rows. “I spent many nights out in the freezing cold with my friends to get good seats. It was a lot of fun. Great memories of Penn State moments.”
Ziegler recalls a Nittany Lion experience that has stayed with her all these years. On September 23, 2000, while playing in only the fifth game of his college career, Adam Taliaferro sustained a career-ending spinal cord injury while tackling tailback Jerry Westbrooks during Penn State’s game versus Ohio State. The game was being held in Columbus. It was parents’ weekend at Penn State, so Ziegler and her friends had gathered to watch the game.
“Even though it was on television, we watched him get carted off the field,” Ziegler said. “It was his sophomore year, and I was a freshman.” Taliaferro would beat the odds. A year later, he walked back on the field at Beaver Stadium for Penn State’s game against Miami.
“We were sitting in the tunnel for that game. It was so emotional.”
She grew up in a Penn State family.
“I had a lot of relatives who went to Penn State, including my grandparents. My mom really wanted me to go to Penn State. It was a great school, and it also meant cheaper in-state tuition.” As a defiant teen, she says she didn’t want to go for those reasons. She had also been accepted to NYU, Boston University, and Syracuse.
It was an official tour to Penn State that sold her. “It was that visit that made me want to come here. I remember telling my mom it wasn’t because she told me to, but because I really wanted to go. I’m so glad I did. It made me who I am today.”
“Penn State is a huge football school, so that was icing on the cake when I decided to go there,” Ziegler explained. “Just the feeling of being in that stadium. The most we’ve ever had is 111,000 people. I have been there for some of the loudest games. Everything reverberates.”
Ziegler had one of those cutouts they used to fill the seats at games during Covid. A big photo of herself. “They allowed you to buy it after the season. I thought, ‘I’ve got to get that.’ We decided to hang it up in my office and face it toward the newsroom. With our glass office walls, you can see it when you walk by my office. Cracks me up all the time.”
She began her radio career at WTOP in 2003 and has held many roles within the company during that time, including managing editor of WTOP.com’s sister station, FederalNewsRadio.com, for seven years.
In 2019, Ziegler was named WTOP’s Director of News and Programming. From 2015 to 2019, she served as WTOP’s Digital News Director. Ziegler was also part of the WTOP team that created and produced the award-winning true-crime podcast, 22 Hours: An American Nightmare.
“A few years back, two of my reporters were covering the trial of a man accused of killing a family and their housekeeper in the family’s home. The story had many twists and turns – not all of which could fit into our headline news format on the radio. The reporters asked if they could do more with the story. So, I told them to start recording every conversation they were having about the trial. After the trial, we decided a podcast would allow us to tell the story of this tragedy in the most complete way it had ever been told. That was important to us. We didn’t want to retell it and potentially open wounds for the family if we couldn’t offer new information. When the podcast launched, it took off like crazy. Ended up hitting number 2 on the Apple charts. Number 1 among their crime podcasts.”
Ziegler said you just don’t know what is going to take off when it comes to podcasts. A viral tweet can send it to a higher trajectory. There are podcasts that land somewhere in the middle. It can take years for one of them to grow. You’ve also got to determine the revenue side if you can sell ads.
In 2022, WTOP launched its latest podcast venture, DMV Download. Think the local, D.C. version of The Daily from the New York Times or Up First from NPR. Two WTOP staffers now host that show.
“We like the idea of having two hosts on our podcasts for a couple of reasons,” Ziegler said. “We have that built-in backup if one goes on vacation or gets sick. The other aspect of two hosts is there is more of an on-air dynamic. Conversations. You want to have that camaraderie. We’re in that startup phase right now. Seeing where it will all go.”
As a kid, Ziegler said she was ‘normal.’ She was on the cheerleading squad and also played Lacrosse. “I took school seriously; I was always a busy kid. I also had a job in high school.” Ziegler said she worked her way through high school and college under the Golden Arches.
“There is some statistic that talks about the large number of successful people who have worked at McDonald’s,” Ziegler said. “I think every person in the world should be forced to work for a while in a restaurant or service industry. The number one thing I learned there is customer service. Good customer service is so important. I learned a lot about how I operate from my time at McDonald’s. How to multitask, how to think ahead.”
Ziegler doesn’t appear to put on heirs. “You roll the way you roll. I just try to be me and be authentic,” she said. “I am genuinely happy. I feel lucky. I love my job. The people I work with. This is not an easy business and I think it helps if you love what you do. But Covid has been rough for everyone. Doesn’t matter if you’ve worked here for 50 years or a few weeks, it has been hard.”
Ziegler said she’s always enjoyed working at WTOP, and I believe her. “From the top down, it’s a great place to work. Mission driven work. All after the same goal. We enjoy each other’s company. Cool place to work. Top down. Not blowing smoke.”
She credits Penn State Professor John Sanchez for a lot of her success. Sanchez still teaches at Penn State. When he worked at American University, just down the block from WTOP, he would send interns to work at the station.
“My internship was the summer before my senior year,” Ziegler said. “I kept in touch with the managers in the newsroom and as graduation was approaching, I asked if they needed any help.”
They told Ziegler they had some freelance work available. It wouldn’t pay much, and there were crazy hours involved. “I said, ‘when can I start?” She knew the power of a station like WTOP. “I got my foot in the door and worked my ass off. I trusted the process, and I loved what I was doing.”
“Jim Farley came to me and asked if I wanted to help start a new station,” Ziegler said.
Ziegler answered in a manner consistent with her nature. “Sure! Why not?”
Washington Post Radio was a short-lived attempt by Bonneville Broadcasting and The Washington Post to create a commercial long-form all-news radio network in the style of National Public Radio.
“It lasted about two years,” Ziegler said. “I was producing. When the partnership ended with the Post, we kept it a talk station for another year. When that ended, Jim Farley told me since I’d gone on that journey with him, I’d always have a place at WTOP.”
But, for multiple reasons, Ziegler’s journey next took her to Federal News Radio, where she produced and oversaw the website for the next seven years.
With Washington Post Radio, Ziegler said it was fascinating to be just 24-years-old, and on the ground floor of a startup. It was an expensive venture. “Ultimately, we didn’t get the ratings we’d hoped for. I appreciate that Bonneville was willing to try something different. Hubbard is that way too. They’re not afraid to try new things.”
Even early in her career, Ziegler was never really on-air. “I’ve never been an anchor,” Ziegler said. “As a reporter, I dabbled here and there. It’s funny; almost every journalist out of school wants to do on-air work. After I started at WTOP and realized what went on behind the scenes, I was hooked.”
Ziegler said if you asked her mother, she’d tell you she always knew her daughter was going to be a journalist or a writer in some way. “I loved the English classes much more than math and science. I worked on the high school newspaper, the college newspaper. Oddly, I didn’t work for our radio station in college.”
The Ziegler family was always interested in news. “My parents, for as long as I can remember, read the newspaper every single day. It was part of their morning routine. A few years back, they told me they had canceled their subscription to their local paper. I was so upset when they decided to do that. I couldn’t stand it. I told them they had to have a newspaper in their house. I got them a subscription to the Philadelphia Inquirer.”
Because of the number of years she’s worked at WTOP, Ziegler knows the place inside and out, which she says helped when the pandemic hit just three months into her tenure as Director of News and Programming in 2020.
“I’ve worked for this organization; I’ve seen how everything works operationally. I know where the bodies are buried. Going into the pandemic was obviously uncharted territory, but I felt like my operational strengths really helped during that time. We had to train some of the anchors to work from home, get them equipment. Thank god for our technical team.”
During Covid, she recalls thinking, ‘how do we operate a newsroom when we don’t have a newsroom? To facilitate internal communications, they set up an open conference line. Everyone working from home called into the line each day. In the newsroom, another conference phone sat on the producer’s desk.
The producer dialed into this every day as well, which allowed those working from home to hear the conversations going on in the newsroom just as if they were there. In a way, it was a newsroom. Anybody could chime in at any time with a question or answer.
“I was proud of the product we put out,” Ziegler said.
From covering Covid to the racial justice protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, and January 6, Ziegler says it’s been a tough few years.
“It was like running a marathon within a marathon every day. You passed off the baton every few hours to sleep. I couldn’t be prouder of the team. What we were able to accomplish.”
While reporters and the web team were asked to work from home during the pandemic, that was not an option for everyone in the newsroom. Producers and associate producers had to work from the office.
“Some of our anchors worked from home too, but others never left the building,” Ziegler said. “The thought of working from home and trying to produce a great broadcast. There was a lot of anxiety with that. Everybody’s journey has been unique. We respect that, and we have tried to meet them where they are.”
“When I go back and listen to some of those broadcasts, I tell my staff how incredible our coverage actually was. I’d say, “Damn, that was good.’ We got the news out quickly, succinctly. We helped people. That’s our mission every day; to help people.”
While most employees have returned to the WTOP offices, Ziegler said the pandemic has taught WTOP some good lessons about working from home. In the past, if someone had a contractor or delivery coming to the house, they might have to take off work for the entire day. But that’s not the case anymore. Most employees are now set up to work from home if and when the need arises.
Jim Cryns writes features for Barrett News Media. He has spent time in radio as a reporter for WTMJ, and has served as an author and former writer for the Milwaukee Brewers. To touch base or pick up a copy of his new book: Talk To Me – Profiles on News Talkers and Media Leaders From Top 50 Markets, log on to Amazon or shoot Jim an email at jimcryns3_zhd@indeedemail.com.
