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Wente out at KWMU

Greg Jonsson of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that Patty Wente, the controversial general manager of NPR affiliate KWMU, has been shown the door.

The University of Missouri-St. Louis fired the longtime manager of public radio station KWMU Monday after a review of management and financial practices at the station.

Patricia Wente had been general manager at KWMU (90.7 FM) for nearly 20 years. The university had little to say Monday about the allegations from current and former employees and an outside audit that triggered the review. A spokesman declined to say what was found in the review.

A terse announcement at the station’s website:

Longtime KWMU general manager Patty Wente has been fired by the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Attorneys with the University of Missouri system and auditors from PriceWaterhouse have been reviewing the station’s management for the past month after questions of financial mismanagement were raised by current and former employees of the radio station.

UM-St. Louis spokesman Bob Samples says the decision to fire Wente came from Chancellor Thomas George.

“The chancellor was provided the preliminary findings of an internal review, and he felt it was in the best interest of the station to make a change at this time,” Samples said.

Wente had worked at KWMU for nearly 19 years.

Mike Dunn, the general manager of Columbia, Mo. public radio station KBIA will serve as KWMU’s interim GM on a part-time basis while a national search to replace Wente is conducted.

Chad Garrison at The Riverfront Times, who has covered the University of Missouri probe into allegations of questionable practices at the station, touches on his previous related article and provides the full text of the UMSL press release.

I expect to eventually see some lively commentary on this at Concerned Listeners of KWMU, which linked to my earlier, somewhat caustic reaction to Garrison’s “Radio Active” article. (Or perhaps not - it’s awfully quiet over there today.)

The best that can be said about the Wente dismissal is that it’s well past time, and the assumption here is that the criticisms leveled at the station were more than borne out by the investigation. This development should stand as a measure of vindication for Laurie Swartz, the former KWMU staffer who brought word of fraudulent fund drive activities to the attention of the university.

Let’s hope that this first step is accompanied by a complete airing of the probe’s findings, and a public announcement of plans to avoid deceptive fundraising and financial shenanigans in the future. That’s the kind of pledge it will take for KWMU to get a pledge of support from me - and, I suspect, from many others.

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