Jay R. Bradley

Hi! I’m Jay Bradley, a journalist, event organizer, freelance web designer, accidental esports manager, and okay trumpet player from Endwell, NY just outside of Binghamton.

My mission is to bring people together, connecting them to new experiences and their own community as much as I can. 

I’ve worked in print, audio, and video to bring stories to life on the local, the important, and the unknown. At times I put on some other hats, often to bring events and broadcasts to life.

You can currently find me producing community focused news as a reporter for Lehigh Valley Public Media, primarily covering the East Penn area. I’ve done work there in radio, graphic design, and reporting of all stripes.

Prior to that, I’m a 2018 graduate of Maine-Endwell High School where I had a filled to the brim schedule of AP classes, music, theater, swimming, track, and whatever else I could fit in. Be it as band president, drama club vice president, or in sports and scouting, I learned a lot from the wide swath of people I was able to work with and at times lead. 

Not wanting to go too far from home and wary of large schools with frat-heavy vibes, I ended up scholarship-subsidized at Ithaca College. I fell in love with the journalism path there after flirting with environmental science, politics, business, and other paths.

Even then I had an awareness of a lot that needed to be done in the journalism field to align it with the modern day demands of financing and engaging our increasingly isolated communities beyond what my admiration of 60 Minutes’ style could offer. 

My home for those years was Ithaca College’s radio station 91.7 WICB, where I published dozens of stories for the flagship show Ithaca Now while branching out to other Ithaca area and college outlets.. 

During junior year I became WICB’s news director right as the global pandemic touched down. 

Given the forced shift to remote work, I worked with the staff to expand and reevaluate workflows, newscasts, and podcast offerings. This hard work led to many awards and recognition for the great reporting that to this day I’m incredibly proud of. 

Coming home to Binghamton for summers, I got to work at many local outlets, only further fueled my belief that local news outlets can be refined and returned to an important role in our new media era.

Not to be one to let go of my high school habits of filling up my schedule, I also co-founded the esports program on campus, which gradually expanded to a multi-team endeavor of broadcasts, casual events, and more due to my and my colleagues’ leadership. All this while continuing to play trumpet on campus and branching out into web programming and business minors before graduating Summa Cum Lade.

Now in the professional world, I want to figure out the ways local media can reinvent itself – all while making some creative content and bringing people together along the way.