John Davis
Host, Reporter, Assistant News Directorjrdavis@wgcu.org
John Davis has been a Reporter/Producer for WGCU since 2007. For more than a decade he served as the local host for NPR’s Morning Edition. He currently serves as producer and host of WGCU’s radio talk program Gulf Coast Life Arts Edition with John Davis. Prior to joining WGCU, he worked at WDUQ-FM in Pittsburgh, PA (now WESA) covering local government and general assignments. John studied journalism at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, before earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication from Florida Gulf Coast University. His work has garnered awards from the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania, the Radio Television Digital News Association, and a first-place award and “Best in Show” from the Florida Associated Press for his investigative work in 2011. Davis helped lead news team coverage around the clock during Hurricane Irma in 2017, which won a National Edward R. Morrow Award. More recently, his election and political coverage has garnered awards from the Florida Association of Broadcast Journalists.
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In this installment from the StoryCorps Mobile Tour visit to Fort Myers in Feb. 2024, we hear John Coopman and his wife Trudy Krintz-Coopman talk about their stories of loss, love, gratitude, and finding each other after they’d both lost spouses of more than four decades. -
The Southwest Florida-based rock band Rosaline drops a new album titled “Zhuzh” on Sept. 6 and will play an album release concert Sept. 7 at Nice Guys in Cape Coral. Ahead of the release, we get a preview from the band’s frontman Caleb Neff. -
The Southwest Florida Symphony will open the 2024-2025 performance season with new maestro Stilian Kirov after the sudden departure of music director Radu Paponiu in April. We’ll meet Kirov and get a preview of what’s in store for the symphony’s 64th season. -
In this installment from the StoryCorps Mobile Tour visit to Fort Myers in February 2024, Jen Hayes interviews her mother, Sherry Hayes, about Sherry’s early childhood in foster care, the loss of Sherry’s adoptive mother at an early age, and the importance and power of forgiveness. -
FGCU Professor in the Department of Ecology & Envirornmental Studies Win Everham is set to give a lecture, Aug. 28, through the FGCU Scholar Series about his ongoing monitoring of the progress of the Picayune Strand Restoration Project. -
In this installment from the StoryCorps Mobile Tour visit to Fort Myers in Feb. 2024, married couple Alex Saiu and Nazma Niles talk about their relationship, graduating college amid the Great Recession, and building their lives and careers in Southwest Florida over the past ten years. -
Picayune Strand in Collier County was once slated to become the largest subdivision in the world. In the 1970s, momentum grew to restore the area’s natural hydrologic flow and environmental integrity. Now the ambitious Picayune Strand Restoration project is nearly complete. FGCU Professor in the Department of Ecology & Environmental Studies Win Everham, Ph.D. has been monitoring the site’s restoration progress by studying the status of several indicator species. He joins us to talk about the project ahead of his lecture later this month titled “Picayune Strand Restoration Project: It could have been Cape Coral South.” -
In this installment from the StoryCorps Mobile Tour visit to Fort Myers in Feb. 2024, lifelong friends Karen Hurst and Cathy Goodacre Smith share childhood memories of growing up on Fort Myers Beach in the 1950s and 60s. -
In an unexpected and unprecedented move, Governor Ron DeSantis, in June, vetoed $32 million dollars in state grants for more than 600 arts and culture organizations throughout Florida. We hear an encore of our conversation with Molly Rowan-Deckart from the Alliance for the Arts in Fort Myers, Elysia Dawn with United Arts Collier, and arts reporter Tom Hall about how local arts and culture organizations are coping with the lost funds and about the economic impact of the region’s arts and culture industry. -
In this installment from the StoryCorps Mobile Tour visit to Fort Myers in Feb. 2024, Sunny Lubner interviews her good friend Stephanie Davis about her childhood troubles, including the stigma of having a lesbian mother and an escape attempt from a camp for troubled girls.
