Rick Brewer
News DirectorRick Brewer has been news director at WCMU since February 2024.
Before leading the newsroom, Brewer was WCMU's general assignment reporter covering central and northern Michigan.
Before landing in Mount Pleasant, he was a producer for Iowa Public Radio’s two daily talk shows, Talk of Iowa and River to River, where he produced hundreds of interviews with guests ranging from hog farmers to presidential candidates for the 2020 Iowa caucuses.
His work has been featured on NPR, Harvest Public Media, Here & Now, WFIU, WFYI and Northeast Public Radio.
Brewer fell in love with radio and podcasts in graduate school at Indiana University in Bloomington after attending Denison University.
Send your story ideas to rick.brewer@cmich.edu
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The U.S. Coast Guard estimates between 10,000 - 13,000 gallons of mineral oil were discharged from an electrical transformer that caught fire Monday afternoon and spread to a power plant outside of Bay City. It's unclear if mineral oil landed in the nearby Saginaw River. -
An electrical transformer caught fire earlier this afternoon and spread to the Karn generating facility in Essexville. A mineral oil spill into the Saginaw River also took place during the fire. It's unclear how much oil has been spilled. -
The case stems from a lawsuit filed in 2019 by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, and the intention was to void a 1953 easement that allowed Enbridge to run the dual pipelines across the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac. -
WCMU's AJ Jones chatted with News Director Rick Brewer about Canada's upcoming election for their next prime minister, and how a potential trade war between the U.S. and Canada could impact Michigan now that President Donald Trump is back in the White House. -
The Standish Maximum Correctional Facility has been vacant since 2009. State Representative Mike Hoadley (R-Au Gres) said he wants the facility to be retrofitted to serve a new public purpose, but it’s unclear what the prison could become. -
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is partnering with county officials to conduct a three-year study focusing on the Tittabawassee River Watershed and its historic flood patterns.
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During U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee's final interview with WCMU as a member of Congress, he spoke with News Director Rick Brewer about being a lame duck, how Washington works from the inside, the future of the Democratic party, political discourse in America and his biggest accomplishments. -
In 2024, WCMU's team of reporters traveled across central and northern Michigan to document the people, places and stories that matter to the region. Here's some of the best images they captured along the way. -
From the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, to rules surrounding mail-in ballots, to a mysterious bird sighting in northern Michigan, these were the most read stories from the WCMU newsroom in 2024. -
On Nov. 1, Neil MacKinnon, Ph.D. became Central Michigan University's 16th president. He comes to Mount Pleasant from Augusta University in Georgia, where he was the provost and the executive vice president of academic affairs.
