LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Wednesday is a day full of mixed emotions for everyone at WDRB News. It's the last day at WDRB for longtime News Director and Vice President of News, Barry Fulmer.
He has been the driving force behind WDRB News for a quarter of a century, calling the station home for 28 years.
Fulmer has led the newsroom for 17 years — longer than any other news director at any other television station in Louisville's history.
Barry Fulmer started his WDRB career in 1991 as a 20-something weekend news producer. He decided the order of stories in the newscast and wrote the scripts.
He left a few years later for a job in Philadelphia, but a great opportunity brought him back to WDRB in 1998, when he was named the executive producer of the new program Fox in the Morning.
His success in developing and growing that newscast led to a promotion to assistant news director, then to news director in 2004.
That's when his creativity and forward thinking changed the landscape at WDRB. Barry added newscasts at noon, 5, 6, and 11 p.m.
He expanded our newsroom, both the building itself and the staff, hiring sports journalists Rick Bozich and Eric Crawford from the Courier Journal and later adding journalists Jason Riley, Marcus Green and Chris Otts, also from the Courier.
He improved the technology we use each day to do our jobs.
Snowfox text alerts? Those were Barry's idea.
A fleet of drones, the transition from tape to a digital format and high definition and the pioneering use of backpack technology to present live reports? Barry gets credit for those, as well.
He led our newsroom through its most challenging year in 2020 with protests in downtown Louisville and COVID-19.
In our building, we call him the WGND, or World's Greatest News Director, and he's earned that respect.
He's been a leader, a visionary and a provider of "focus and clarity," as he likes to say.
We are grateful for the enormous strides WDRB has made under his leadership, and because of him, we are optimistic about the future.
He built WDRB's newsroom into the biggest and one of the strongest in the state of Kentucky, and he leaves behind an incredible legacy of journalism, storytelling and friendship.
Fulmer is taking on a new role, leading WCPO's newsroom in Cincinnati. It's an opportunity he didn't go looking for. They came after him.
That's what happens to all the good ones.
While you won't see any changes to our newscasts or online, it's hard to imagine the WDRB newsroom without him behind the scenes.
We will carry on your legacy, Barry.
Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts.
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