You already knew that WDEL’s Rick Jensen can gab with the best of them. Now the radio talk show host is displaying his intellectual might through the written word. Since late last year, Jensen’s syndicated columns have been published in dozens of newspapers and websites across the United States.
“I always wanted to be a writer,” says Jensen, who earned a degree in broadcast communications at the University of Missouri. “It was totally unexpected. I was writing a beer blog just for fun.” Thanks to Rob Tornoe, whose cartoons are syndicated by Cagle Syndicate, the folks at Cagle asked Jensen to try his hand at a political column. Jensen submitted a dozen audition pieces and received news last Thanksgiving that the column had been syndicated. Cagle is affiliated with more than 800 newspapers across the United States. Jensen’s columns—which have tackled such issues as gun control and Hurricane Sandy relief through his conservative perspective—have appeared in more than 50 of those papers, from Rochester, N.Y., to San Jose, Calif., and “all of Iowa,” he notes. “I’m told that only one out of six newspaper columnists across the country are conservative,” he says. “It is really an honor that Daryl Cagle, who is liberal, and his editors think that I am that quality of writer.” Jensen says the column is a great opportunity to show that “there is some diversity of political thought coming out of the indelibly blue state of Delaware. I hope I am adding something positive,” he says. “Whereas people know that Joe Biden buys his shoes, not by their color, but by their flavor, I’m hoping to bring a different perspective to the way people think of Delaware.”
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