If you’ve been hearing a new, unique voice at WKDZ, WHVO, and WPKY, it’s Nolia Williams.
Approaching her junior year at the University of Kentucky, she’s a graduate of Owensboro High School, a resident of Hopkinsville during the summer, and the stepdaughter of the NewsEdge’s own Bill Booth.
She’s also one of just four statewide recipients of this year’s Harry Barfield Scholarship, in what’s a $2,500 renewable annual award from the Kentucky Broadcasters Association. Barfield is the late chairman of the KBA and a former manager of WLEX in Lexington.
A psychology/journalism double major, she’s recently moved into full-fledged journalism at UK, and she’s looking forward to the fall semester and beyond.
After her part-time summer for the NewsEdge, she’ll be taking quite a bit of experience with her to WRFL — which is the 7900-watt college radio station for UK. It broadcasts live and 24 hours a day from the campus, and ran without automation at 88.1 FM from 1988 until COVID-19 erupted in 2020.
Plans for this upcoming radio show already have her excitement and attention.
Williams said she isn’t sure what she wants to do in the workforce, but she loves to write, she loves journalism and she loves psychology.
Grad school options will be in the picture, but in some way, perhaps these three fields can collide into a career. And, truth be told, journalism and the radio waves have always been with Williams.
Now she can just embrace it.
Williams was the only student from the University of Kentucky to earn the scholarship, and she noted she was humbled to represent her school in this way.
