As He Retires from WILL, Dave Dickey Cites “Serving The Public” As Career Highlight

“Gooood morning, everyone!”

Dave Dickey has been giving that greeting to listeners of WILL AM 580’s agriculture commodity market reports for years. But those greetings are coming to an end. As of July 1st, Dave Dickey is retiring, ending a journalism career at WILL that began in the 1980s, following stints in the Navy and the Marines.

Dave was a University of Illinois journalism student when he first went on the air at WILL. His first job was a part-time position covering sports. In an interview with Illinois Public Media’s Jim Meadows, Dave says one highlight of that period was getting the chance to cover the U of I’s fabled “Flying Illini” men’s basketball team, in NCAA Final Four competition in Seattle in 1989.

Dave then moved over to news, working for WILL as a reporter and local Weekend Edition Saturday host for roughly a decade.  During that time he won several Illinois Associated Press awards for his work, including awards for his 199 series, “Inside the Economics of College Athletics”.  He also guided students at Urbana’s University Laboratory High School, in their production of more than a dozen long-form radio documentaries.

13 years ago, Dave succeeded the late Charles Lindy as WILL’s Agricultural Services Director, covering agriculture and commodities markets along with Todd Gleason of the University of Illinois Extension.

Through AM 580 and willag.org, WILL provides reports on the commodities markets throughout the day, culminating with the half-hour “Closing Market Report”, which is also syndicated to commercial radio stations in central Illinois. Dave Dickey and Todd Gleason also produce “Commodity Week”, a weekly talk show featuring insights from analysts on the commodities market.

During his time as WILL’s Director of Agricultural Services, Dave Dickey worked to grow the WILLAg audience online, pioneering the use of podcasting, before the term “podcast” was in common usage. He also expanded the WILLAg audience at its in-person events. WILL’s presentations of panel discussions featuring commodity analysts attract audiences in the hundreds.

Dave says agricultural programming at WILL reaches a niche audience that isn’t served by many public radio stations. But he says the service is one that goes back to WILL’s earliest days in the 1920s, when the station then known as WRM presented a talk for dairy farmers on “How to Turn Cream into Gold”.

Maintaining that tradition of agricultural programming at WILL requires staying ahead of current trends. And Dave Dickey says WILL’s next Agriculture Services Director (the search is currently underway) will have to be a visionary, “to look out there on the horizon, and see what new opportunities are out there to serve our audience.”

Besides retiring from broadcasting, Dave Dickey is also retiring from another job he’s held for the past two decades, as a church minister. Dave has served as the pastor for United Methodist churches in the Champaign County area, most recently at Shiloh United Methodist Church in Newcomb Township.