This article was originally published in The Examiner on June 22, 2017.
By Eleanor Skelton
Staff Writer
A couple of Beaumont residents banded together to form a podcast just before the last local election in May.
Wake Up Beaumont’s regular listeners included candidates like Jonathan Owens and Claude Guidroz, and at the time of this article, the show’s Facebook page had 130 likes.
The podcast host, Julia, who asked that we not print her last name, said she started Wake Up Beaumont after being discouraged by the November 2016 national election.
“Facebook activism is not real,” she said. “You can’t just re-share memes and
expect anything to change.”
She listens to several podcasts regularly that sparked Wake Up Beaumont, which released eight episodes in one month just before the May 6 election.
“This past election was the first time I’ve felt confident enough to vote in a local election – almost entirely because of Julia’s podcast,” Wake Up Beaumont’s webmaster and tech director Christina Trujillo said.
Candidates like Mayor Becky Ames, Christopher “Unc” Jones, Will Robbins, Jude Paradez, Virginia Jordan, Claude Guidroz, W.L. Pate and Beth Gallaspy all appeared on the podcast.
Julia also featured Southeast Texas experts, including Lamar political science professor James P. Nelson and a trustee from a neighboring school district.
Some of her listeners told her that her interviews with city election candidates influenced their vote, she said.
“I felt much better informed after listening to Julia’s podcasts,” Trujillo said. “The
podcasts alone didn’t teach me everything, but they were the catalyst for me to get more informed.”
“A lot of people don’t know how to get information, so they just don’t do [the research]” during election season,” Julia said. “I feel like millennials don’t read newspapers, and the news doesn’t come on when we’re able to watch it.”
Julia hopes that her podcast can encourage bipartisan conversations and prompt Southeast Texas citizens to become more informed about local politics.
“It doesn’t matter if someone is Republican, Democrat, independent, whatever — if their interests are to make the city as a whole better, then that’s what’s important,” she
said.
Julia is planning future episodes featuring local political groups and talking to younger candidates like Will Robbins and Jonathan Owens about what it’s like to run for local
offices as millennials.
Most episodes run between 10-20 minutes, depending on the topic. You can follow the podcast at http://www.wakeupbeaumont.com or subscribe on iTunes.
Anyone can listen to Wake Up Beaumont’s podcast archives from 2017 to 2020 on Podchaser.com.
Eleanor Skelton 