Paul Jurgens has been the voice of area news on KFGO since 1983. He was named news director in 1989. (Photo/Madison Quinn.)
His is the most familiar voice delivering the news on Fargo-Moorhead’s airwaves. Day by day, he juggles deadlines, reporting the latest on some of KFGO Radio’s 20 daily newscasts. But what Paul Jurgens has delivered for 40 years adds up to something more. His work is a living history of the Red River Valley.
Forty-five years ago, young Paul Aughinbaugh headed to Brown Institute in the Twin Cities after graduating from Fergus Falls High School. He had grown up listening to Fargo and Fergus radio, but tuning in the clear-channel, high-power stations that bounced northward at night – WLS, KOMA, KAAY. “I expected to spin records,” he says in the deep, warm voice so familiar to listeners. “I assumed I’d be a disc jockey or announcer. But a news position popped up first, and I never got there.”
Instead, well before completing the curriculum at the Midwest’s top school for broadcasters, in 1980 he snagged a job as a reporter at KVOX Radio in Moorhead. It seemed a good place to start, especially compared to classmates who ended up in outposts in locales like Wolf Point, Montana, or Burlington, Iowa. “I was fortunate to get a job in Fargo-Moorhead, close to my home town and family.”
Three years later, in March 1983, he was recruited by KFGO, then and now the area’s top-rated station – not to spin records, but to report the news. And there he found the on-air spot he has called home ever since.
“That was quite the month,” he remembers. On the 5th, he married his bride, Nancy Jurgens. Ten days later he went on the air as, he says, “number five in a five-person newsroom.” He simplified his professional name, taking his new wife’s shorter, more recognizable surname: “Her parents were pretty proud,” he confides.
He’d joined the station a month after the infamous Medina shoot-out between Gordon Kahl of Posse Comitatus and the U.S. Marshals Service. A grand jury had just indicted Gordon Kahl (who was on the run), Yorie Kahl and Scott Faul on charges of murder for the deaths of U.S. Marshals Ken Muir and Deputy Marshal Bob Cheshire.
“That was the first story of significance that I covered,” Jurgens reflects. “I had been in a courthouse maybe two times in my whole life. I was really green. But I did make it through.”
Six years after joining KFGO, he was named news director, the position he’s held ever since. “We’re fortunate here,” he says. “When I started, all the stations up and down the dial had their own news departments. Now almost none are left. Through multiple changes of ownership, we’ve always been able to put together respectable newscasts.” Four decades after he was hired, the station still has a news staff of four, the largest in the market.
When Jurgens joined, KFGO was known for its country music as well as its news. That format had served it well since it first went on the air in 1948. But it was a time of change. As talk radio grew in popularity, the station moved in that direction. The advent in the 1990s of the late Ed Schulz, who fashioned himself as a conservative voice in the style of Rush Limbaugh, moved programming firmly into the realm of talk and news. Current events and political commentary by Joel Heitkamp and Tyler Axness play a large part of the mix today, along with the friendly lifestyle talk by Amy Iler and JJ Gordon.
“We’ve been the dominant station in the market for at least the last 25 years,” Jurgens observes. “But younger people don’t listen to AM radio anymore, but now they have found us on FM.” In January 2021, Midwest Communications (which had bought KFGO and four other stations from Ingstad Broadcasting) decided to simulcast its programming on the powerful 104.7 FM frequency, along with the lower-powered frequency 94.1 FM – the 100,000 watt “triple tower of power” that promotional spots boast of.
That’s far from the only change Jurgens has seen during four decades behind the microphone. “Weather has always been a key part of our programming, but our role has changed over the years,” he explains. “Back in the 1980s and 1990s, no one had cell phones. We were the critical link between our listeners during severe weather. We had the full staff here overnight during the big blizzard of February 1984 and the flood of 1997.”
The listeners glued to their radio dial during those historic disasters counted on that coverage. They weren’t the only audience that appreciated KFGO’s work. The station’s coverage earned it two prestigious Peabody awards, as well as several Edward R. Murrows and eight Marconis. The awards ceremonies provided Jurgens with opportunities to meet Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and Andy Rooney – heroes who inspired him.
He says his own career, though studded with awards, is anything but star-powered. “When I started out, I did think it would be a little more glamorous,” he says, grinning. “People outside of the business had that impression. After all is said and done, it’s just a job speaking to more people.
“I’ve never been star-struck, but I’ve been lucky. I’ve had 43 good years in this business.”
