MediaLex staff members (l-r): Kiah Arnold,Jacobo Aragón Torres, Mark Royse, Diego Espinoza Masais. Photo by Mick Jeffries
Over the course of its 10-year history, the community radio station RadioLex has evolved to fit the ever-changing needs of the community it serves. Looking to the new year ahead, the organization is preparing for its most significant transformation to date.
RadioLex, which started as volunteer-driven low-power FM radio station, is now MediaLex, a comprehensive multilingual media center that will offer training, resources and platforms for Lexington residents to produce podcasts, short films and community-centered journalism.
RadioLex officially launched in 2015, under the leadership of founder Debra Hensley and a small group of likeminded community members, many of whom had been involved in one form or another with WRFL, the college radio station that has been operating from the University of Kentucky since 1988. The organization started as a grassroots project focused on bringing critical attention to public health, with a strong focus on serving Lexington’s rapidly growing Hispanic communities, an audience largely overlooked by mainstream media.
Under the leadership of founder Debra Hensley and a team of likeminded community members, RadioLex launched in 2015 as a low-powered community radio station with two broadcast channels. Photo by Mick Jeffries
The first seeds for the station were sowed in 2011, when Hensley secured two low-power FM licenses in a rare federal release window. Granted on the grounds of public safety and a pressing need for increased Spanish-language communication, it was a notable acheivement for a Lexington entity to be granted those licenses, as most of them were designated for rural areas. This paved the way for the launch of two broadcast channels, WLXU 93.9 FM in English and WLXL 95.7 in Spanish. For years, RadioLex has operated as a radio station by and for the community, with programming centered on locally created news, entertainment and conversation. Its role and reach, however, saw a shift with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. When Governor Andy Beshear advised businesses to shut down, critical information failed to reach non-English speakers, noted the organization’s general manager, Mark Royse.
“A lot of businesses in the Hispanic corridor didn’t shut down, because no one had communicated to them in Spanish,” he explained. In response, RadioLex mobilized a team of volunteer interpreters and partnered with city and state officials to translate and broadcast daily updates into 20 languages over the entire course of the pandemic. “That’s when we sort of discovered our power as community radio and the importance of it,” Royse explained.
While hard-won trust has been a central facet of the station, as with many non-profits and public broadcasting organizations across the country, it has found itself in challenging times in recent years. The station faced a 50% decrease in fundraising between 2022 and 2023. That deficit was pushed further by recent significant funding cuts at the federal level, forcing the organization and other smaller broadcasters to compete with larger stations for limited resources.
MediaLex general manager Mark Royse is helping guide the organization through what he sees as a “go big or go home” transition. Photo by Mick Jeffries
“Our current model was not sustainable,” Royse stated. “It was a moment of ‘we’ve got to go big, or we’ve got to go home.’”
This reckoning led Royse to look to other organizations for inspiration, including a longstanding model established by the Grand Rapids Community Media Center, which has operated for 50 years with various media sources bringing the community together.
With support from the Bluegrass Community Foundation and its Press Forward Bluegrass initiative, a nationwide network designed to strengthen community news organizations, the vision for MediaLex is working its way to fruition. One of the primary goals for the transition will be the launch of a new Community Media Academy, with a community correspondent program at its core. That program will be designed to train residents in the basics of journalism, media ethics and production skills, creating pathways to new opportunities for the underserved to share their stories. It’s Royse’s hope that the academy will also continue to foster more formal partnerships, with plans to offer mentorship opportunities to juniors and seniors of the University of Kentucky School of Journalism, as well as a youth broadcast training collaboration with the STEAM Academy.
This initiative is just the beginning of a much broader transformation. Under the media academy, the organization plans to offer affordable memberships. Members will have access to ongoing media training including podcasting, video production and media literacy. Members who complete foundational courses will gain access to professional equipment and studio space. The academy is designed to increase community connection and empower new generations of local storytellers. A key component of this structure will be the launch of a community newsroom and newswire, where trained correspondents will produce local news stories in a variety of languages that can be distributed and published across partner outlets throughout central Kentucky and the Appalachian region.
The recently rebranded MediaLex is gearing up to become a multimedia platform for community-created news and entertainment. Photo by Mick Jeffries
Notably, MediaLex also aims to expand its multi-language broadcasting, including a new digital station for African diaspora communities, focused on broadcasting in Swahili, French and Kinyarwanda. This initiative aims to address gaps in trustworthy reporting that’s locally and generationally relevant for underserved communities. In parallel, MediaLex also plans to develop a local podcast network to both elevate and connect existing and aspiring podcast creators from across Lexington. Rather than producing the shows itself, MediaLex would act as a curator and promoter, boosting local voices, helping find audiences, and providing technical and distribution support.
While Royse and the MediaLex staff have worked hard to flesh out this vision, Royse emphasizes that there’s still a long way to go to bring the vision to fruition. The plans are still contingent on funding, community interest and buy-in, and other factors. To sustain and scale these efforts, MediaLex plans on developing a media services subdivision designed to support the community while also supporting itself. The division would offer sliding-scale services, including video production, social media management, and digital storytelling for local nonprofits. This initiative will provide essential, affordable resources to mission-driven organizations while creating a reliable revenue stream to continue funding MediaLex’s broader community programs and their own mission of connecting people from different backgrounds and cultures.
Royse states, “We have always called RadioLex the voice of the people, and MediaLex will continue to be that. It’s the voice of the people.”
More information on MediaLex can be found at medialex.us.
Photo by Mick Jeffries