Radio Active: What has Patty Wente done to create such a meltdown at KWMU?

The chancellor gave no timeline for the review and asked only that station staff cooperate with investigators. Last week, station employees began meeting with auditors from the accounting firm Pricewaterhouse­Coopers as well as attorneys with the University of Missouri's Office of General Counsel.

UMSL spokesman Bob Samples declined to make George available for this story, but it is believed that part of the university probe will address "deficiencies" uncovered during a recent audit of the station. The findings in the audit include allegations that management used KWMU credit cards to pay for personal expenses and failed to provide documentation justifying other expenditures at the station.

"Management may also have the ability to approve transactions that are self-serving and conceal the nature of those transactions," warned auditors in a January 9, 2008, letter to the University of Missouri's Board of Curators.

Sources inside KWMU contend that an investigation into the station and its general manager, Patty Wente, is long overdue. During her nineteen-year tenure, employees claim the 51-year-old Wente has orchestrated misleading fundraising drives, assigned staff to personal work, and ruled with a "reign of terror" in which employees felt threatened to bring concerns to the university.

"The first time you meet Patty, you think to yourself, 'Wow, this woman is full of piss and vinegar.' She can be incredibly charismatic," says former reporter Tom Weber, who left KWMU in December for another job. "After a while, though, her behavior gives you pause. You come to realize that much of her energy lacks focus. Then when you see how it affects coworkers, you really begin to wonder about her."

Station employees say Wente's behavior outside the station — including a stalking allegation and a recent DUI arrest in Florida — serve to undermine KWMU's credibility as a public and tax-supported broadcaster. Worse still, they maintain, is that the university has known for years about staff concerns regarding Wente, but refused to look into station affairs until now.

"How the hell does this woman still have a job?" asks a KWMU employee, who — like many current staffers — feared for his job if he spoke on record. "That's something everyone would like to know."

The KWMU boss and well-paid state employee did not respond to repeated interview requests for this story. In fact, when a reporter showed up unannounced at the station last month to ask questions, Wente had her staff members serve as decoys as she snuck out the back door.

"No one is denying that Patty is a tough boss and colorful individual," comments UMSL spokesman Bob Samples. "But the question is: Has she violated university policy or laws in her capacity as general manager of the radio station? Right now, no one from the chancellor to the vice chancellor to the human resource department has any indication that she has."

Fear of Reprisal
Remember the classic 1998 Saturday Night Live sketch featuring the matronly NPR hosts and Alec Baldwin's "Schweddy Balls"? KWMU staffers say the same skit would never have worked if more people associated public radio with Patty Wente.

With her booming voice, high-pitched cackle and abrasive demeanor, Wente, say colleagues, is more Howard Stern than Edward R. Murrow. She is known to strut about the KWMU office in miniskirts, halter tops and what one staffer describes as a leather dominatrix outfit. Wente frequents tanning salons, drives a Chrysler Sebring convertible and loves a glass — or two — of red wine at her favorite off-campus retreat, Breakaway Café.

"I think the majority of St. Louisans who know Patty would say that she is a character," comments Don Driemeier, dean emeritus of UMSL's College of Business Administration and Wente's immediate boss from 1994 to 2004. "By that, I mean she is a unique personality. She knows people. They know her. She enjoys working a room."

Arriving at KWMU in 1989, Wente brought with her an impressive résumé. She'd recently spent years working in Washington, D.C., for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Before that, Wente served as general manager for radio stations in Oklahoma and Kansas. More recently, she held posts on the NPR executive board and currently serves as president of the industry group Public Radio in Mid America.

At UMSL, Wente wasted little time transforming a tiny classical-music station into a veritable FM powerhouse, with some 190,000 listeners now tuning in each week for KWMU's signature brand of "in-depth news and intelligent talk." "She's built a tremendous radio station," notes Driemeier. "In that sense, I'd say she's been very successful."

Yet Wente's history at UMSL has also been marked by controversy. Within the first eighteen months on the job, Wente fired or accepted the resignation of two dozen full- and part-time staffers. By September 1990 an apparent mutiny at the station prompted coverage in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, with KWMU staffers comparing their new boss to the U.S.S. Caine's Captain Queeg.

"She told me, 'No other opinion matters except Patty Wente's,'" a longtime KWMU employee recounted to the Post-Dispatch in 1990. "She is the kind of person who speaks in third person about herself."

Wente once more garnered media attention in 1999 after she fired the station's news director, Lester Graham. Two other members of the newsroom later quit in solidarity, complaining that Wente (at the time married and using the last name Bennett) upbraided employees for the slightest offense and routinely made improper sexual comments to staffers.

"I came back from a trip one weekend; she asked me if I had gotten laid," former reporter Matthew Algeo told the RFT in "Air Force," a June 23, 1999, cover story. "The next year I did a story on the cockfighting referendum and henceforth I was the expert on cocks."

"It was chaotic; it was screaming, yelling," said Graham. "It was like you never knew what to expect from her every time you went into an office with her."

Then, as is the case now, university officials have been quick to defend Wente and focus instead on the station's growing market share and ever-increasing budget.

"Is Patty universally loved?" asks Driemeier. "The answer is no. But then, each of us has our own management style."

Since at least 2004, however, the university has known about complaints that go beyond Wente's leadership quirks. In January 2004, Chancellor George received a sixteen-page letter from anonymous KWMU employees outlining a laundry list of accusations against Wente.

"The internal environment at the radio station, under the control of general manager Patty Wente is one of crisis, and the external image that is portrayed by her leadership is unsettling," stated the letter. "Ms. Wente presides over a 'reign of terror,' in which she instills intense fear in her staff members and creates an environment that is stifling, negative, highly unprofessional and at the very least, exhausting."

According to unconfirmed allegations spelled out in the letter, Wente:

• Frequently appeared intoxicated at KWMU events and reportedly embarrassed a number of employees and station donors during a 2002 fundraiser when she leaned over and asked guest Diane Rehm (host of the nationally broadcast The Diane Rehm Show), "So Diane, how's your sex life?"

• Engaged in nepotism hires of her ex-boyfriend's daughters, Kristin and Nicole Ritter, who allegedly spent workdays shopping, dining and drinking with Wente.

• Assigned staff to work that had nothing to do with KWMU, such as planning a mission trip for Wente's church that occupied several top station employees for days and cost the station an estimated $2,000 in lost work time.

The lengthy missive ended with a request that Chancellor George launch an investigation that excluded Don Driemeier's involvement. "[We] have serious concerns about breaches of confidentiality by deputy chancellor Driemeier when he has received information regarding the behavior and operation methods employed by Ms. Wente," wrote the authors.

"There is an intense fear of reprisal at the station and a history of broken trust. We believe our concerns must be examined by leaders who are trustworthy and willing to look, listen and take action."

So what did Chancellor George do with the letter? He passed it along to the very person the authors wanted to circumvent: Don Driemeier.

To this day, Driemeier says he cannot comprehend why the writers of the damning letter thought he was untrustworthy. He maintains that he looked into some concerns raised, such as Wente assigning staff members to help with her personal projects.