Meet the New Director at Radio Milwaukee

×

Expand

Photo by Erin Bagatta

Maxie C. Jackson

Maxie C. Jackson

Maxie C. Jackson III came to Milwaukee with a mission to make a good institution even better. Jackson became executive director of Radio Milwaukee this September, bringing with him an impressive track record, a CV of accomplishment that bodes well for his management of the station.

For Jackson, the new job means a return to the Midwest. He grew up in East Lansing on the Michigan State campus where both parents served as assistant deans. “I benefitted from that environment—the robust academics, the exposure to culture,” he says. His father insisted that he attend Morehouse College, the historically Black university in Atlanta. “There never really was a choice, he made it clear that I was going there,” Jackson says with a laugh. And he has no regrets. “There was an ethos of excellence,” he says of Morehouse, “of graduating leaders who have made a contribution to civic and social life.”

Jackson’s resume is a record of accomplishment whose seeds were planted in East Lansing. As a teenager, he participated in a local television program. “I learned where the influence lies—behind the scenes with the producers, the executive directors,” he says. Before graduating Morehouse, he worked as a script writer for fundraising event starring Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr.

Afterward, he earned a master’s degree from Michigan State and launched a production and media research company in Philadelphia whose report, “Reaching the Hip-Hop Generation,” led to market research for Grammercy Pictures and Warner Brothers and work with BET and XM Radio. “I couldn’t stand Hollywood—I didn’t like a thing about it,” he says, explaining his pivot to radio. He transformed a Baltimore college station into a professionally run public radio outlet. “I’ve done a lot of launching, initiating projects,” he continues. At WNYC, New York, he “created the research methodology and the program architecture” for public radio’s “The Take Away,” a one-hour news program heard locally on Wisconsin Public Radio. Jackson was chief content officer for New England Public Media and worked with the Pacifica Foundation and National Federation of Community Broadcasters.

With Radio Milwaukee, he inherits a station, run on a non-profit model, that has gained a significant audience. “The mission and vision are outstanding,” he says. “It’s a utopian project to unite a heavily segregated community, a noble initiative. What sold me was the passion, the will and capacity to execute the vision.”

So what’s left for Jackson to do, especially given his resume of innovation? “Change is not the best way to phrase it,” he begins. “They didn’t need me to change the station. The bones are good. We have a great young staff, an attentive board, a good foundation.” His plans involve building on that foundation and “setting the table for the next generation of public service media.” He’s looking to build the station’s journalistic, storytelling portfolio. Radio Milwaukee has always been multicultural, but Jackson cautions, “We need to be careful: building an inclusive institution is usually done from the lens of the dominant culture—it may be truly participatory, but not empowered by the plurality. We’re hoping for a truly pluralistic approach to content creation,” one reflecting Milwaukee’s many communities.

Jackson’s wife, Carmen, is a doctor of Eastern medicine with an acupuncture practice in Maryland. He hopes she will join him in Milwaukee shortly. Their daughter Kai is an art major at Spelman College, a historically Black university in Atlanta, and their son, Maxie Jackson IV, is a high school senior bound for Morehouse on a scholarship.