During his time at the University, Murphy worked for WIDR-AM and WIDR-FM, along with being an editor for the Western Herald. He credits WIDR for giving him some of his best memories at WMU.
“I had a Friday shift, either 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. or noon to 3 p.m. for three years,” Murphy said. “To walk into a room with over 10,000 albums and say, ‘Hmm, what should I play today?’”
Murphy was on campus during the summers, and would pick up overnight shifts in order to perfect his craft and learn more about music.
Murphy started his writing career with the Western Herald, and then free-lanced for various newspapers including National Lampoon, The Traverse City Record Eagle, Porcupine Press U.P. Magazine, Backwoods Home Magazine and ABC Radio Network.
Murphy also started writing cookbooks in his free time. Murphy said it started as a happy accident when his friends would go to their cabin in Claire, Mich. and bring only beef jerky, cheese, lunchmeat and beer.
“That struck me funny, and I said it’s probably because nobody knows how to cook,” Murphy said.
Murphy wrote his first cookbook, Flannel John’s Hunting & Fishing Camp Cookbook, as a joke, but when it reached Amazon’s ‘Top 1% Sales’ category in six weeks, he knew he was on to something big. Since October 2012, Murphy has released 14 other books, with six more planned for the very near future. A quarter of all his book sales go to the Wounded Warrior Project; an idea he came up with after hearing that Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters was helping wounded soldiers.
Murphy currently works as an operations manager for Ohana Media Group in Astoria, Ore. where he manages five stations; a position that is always keeping him busy.
“I take every job I’ve done in radio and combine it into one,” Murphy said. “I do a morning show, write and produce commercials and promos, hire and fire, train, work with budgets, program, sales and promotions, etc. In a small market you wear a lot of hats and in a small market when you oversee five stations, sometimes dozens of hats."
And one of those hats includes engineer. Murphy told the story of how one of the stations transmitters wasn’t working properly, and the station’s engineer wasn’t in town. He had to drive to the transmitter and troubleshoot with the engineer over the phone, all the while being afraid of heights. Murphy boasts that because of this incident, he has now officially done every job in radio.
With everything Murphy has accomplished, he cites WMU as the biggest role in his success.
“I feel very fortunate to do what I love more than 30 years after I started,” Murphy said. “If it wasn’t for WIDR-FM and the Western Herald, I don’t know if either my radio or writing career would have happened.”Posted by Stan Sulewski