WAER Syracuse Public Media

WAER Syracuse Public Media is a commercial-free, listener-supported public media organization licensed to Syracuse University and affiliated with the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. A member station of NPR, it broadcasts on 88.3 FM from studios and offices in Haft Hall on the Syracuse University campus and serves Central and Northern New York.

The station signed on in April 1947 as an experimental educational FM station run as a workshop for Syracuse University radio students, and took the call letters WAER, for the Alpha Epsilon Rho radio honorary society, a few months later. Syracuse University hired full-time professional staff to run it in 1983, and in July 2021 WAER became part of the Newhouse School.

WAER carries NPR programming, local news, jazz and other music, and Syracuse Orange play-by-play for football, men's basketball and men's lacrosse. A second channel, WAER HD2 Jazz 88, runs its own schedule. The station also produces podcasts such as The Ostrom Avenue Podcast, documentaries for its YouTube channel, election coverage under the CNY Decides name and a community calendar for the region.

A full-time professional staff of reporters, producers and on-air hosts runs the station, and up to 50 Syracuse University students work in its newsroom each semester; the sports department is entirely student-run. WAER is a Report for America host newsroom, with a corps member covering public health and health equity. Alumni of its student programs include Bob Costas, Mike Tirico, Beth Mowins and Lakshmi Singh.

Staff positions at WAER are Syracuse University jobs, posted on the university's employment site under the WAER-FM Radio department. The professional staff works in news reporting and producing, on-air hosting, music programming and business sponsorship. Students join the newsroom, sports, podcast, web and social media teams through the station's own application.