Good News is getting more and more difficult to find. 910AM Superstation morning host Justin Barclay works every day to bring goodness to Detroit’s airwaves. “It’s all I could ever remember really wanting to do as a kid.”
In middle school Barclay needed to write a report on what he wanted to do when he grew up. He reached out to one of the local radio stations and shadowed one of their morning anchors. “I said, can I come in? So, you get to watch him, and I was fascinated watching it all. This was like a music show. Top 40 music radio at the time. It was like Memorial Day, he let us come in and watch him and it was a great time. Ever since then I was just kind of hooked.”
Barclay’s experience in radio expanded to more than just watching a DJ when he got into high school. “In my high school senior year, you could take this [half day] class for radio. Sure enough, I got accepted to that. In that class they had people coming in that were working in the business. We had a real radio station that was in the high school. So, you got to actually learn how to operate it, and it was very similar to a tech or vocational program.”
One of the guest DJs was a former student of Barclay’s father. He took a liking to the young Barclay and offered him a spot on “Saturday Night Jukebox” where the station had listeners come in and guest host their Saturday Night show.
“When I got in there, they gave us little cards and things to read. And he said, you sound like you would be good at this. Would you like a like a job, a part time job? I’m like, ‘are you kidding me? That’s my dream.’ So, I got a job out of high school working the overnights on the weekends.”
His first day was Christmas Eve 1996. “Just playing Christmas music. I didn’t talk at this point, [I just] put the CD on the CD player and pushing play and keeping the radio station on the air. But it was one of the best gifts ever, because I was in, and it was awesome.”
His transition from music radio to talk radio came sometime later when one station he was working at ended his contract early. “I had just signed the extension of my contract [in November], and then in March they said, ‘we’re going to go in a different direction.’ And it really gave me time to step back and think. I thought about what I really want to do. The clarity [I had] in that moment, I just wanted to make an impact. I wanted to connect with listeners, and I knew that was really going to happen mostly through talking.”
Today, Barclay hosts at one of Detroit’s top radio stations. He also is a fill-in/guest host for Glenn Beck. While Barclay says politics is “not necessarily my favorite thing to talk [about]”, the topic is exactly what pulled him in to talk radio. “Every day I kind of joke and one of the ongoing things I say is like it’s drinking from a firehose, that’s constantly the news cycle.”
He notes there was a major change in news which came in 2020. “I felt like I had no choice but to talk about some of these big issues and particularly the things that we were all going through back in 2020.”
The change in the news cycle also changed Barclay’s show. He went from hosting a one hour show to sometimes two or three hours, “depending on if the governor had a press conference.”
“It really became a point where people were getting their information, and they couldn’t get it anywhere else. And they felt trusted, and they felt like they were listening to a trusted source. And I told my program director at the time, ‘what’s happening right now. We’re going to build this relationship and trust with the audience that it would take 50 years to build otherwise.’”
Barclay believes as he built trust with his audience other outlets destroyed theirs. “People were coming to us because they were looking for answers, and we just wanted to give them answers. For me at the time, I’m just reading news stories and I noticed as I’m going through or watching the stories that people aren’t getting the answer.”
During this time Barclay started doing live shows on Facebook, Twitter and other social media and expanded his reach. He also wrote a book, Good News: Hope and Encouragement for Trying Times.’
“During these times when people were asking about, particularly the election and other questions, what do you think is going to happen here? I always came back to the same answer for that question, which was ‘I don’t know.’ But I know that God is on the throne, and my focus stayed there. And that faith and whatnot pulled me through some of the darkest times of my life and I just wanted to share that with other people in that book.”
For those looking to follow in his footsteps, his advice is something he was told as a kid. “I guess years ago I would tell you, specifically with radio, don’t say ‘don’t.’ But truthfully, that’s the same advice I got when I was getting into radio. I think some of that’s good because it weeds the serious people out. Right? The serious people are going to stick around, and the hobbyists are going to take off.”
He noted kids today dreaming of radio, podcasting, and all things media will have a considerably easier time jumping into the industry. “That’s because everybody now has in their pocket, a transmitter everybody carries around with them 24/7. [Smartphones] are a device that gives them an opportunity to do what I wanted to do, back then, and I guess I still want to do now, which is make a difference, make an impact.”
Going deeper, Barclay believes people just need to ‘have fun.’ “Creatives stay in touch with that side and do what you love and you can figure out a way to make it work… Looking back, I just see those dots connected in my life and I’m sure that anybody coming up, if you’re doing what you’re really called and gifted to do, eventually you stick with it long enough, you’ll find a way to make it work.”
Krystina Alarcon Carroll is a news media columnist and features writer for Barrett Media. She has experience in almost every facet of the industry including: digital and print news; live, streamed, and syndicated TV; documentary and film productions. Her prior employers have included NY1 and Fox News Digital and the Law & Crime Network. You can find Krystina on X (formerly twitter) @KrystinaAlaCarr.
