Jeff Young’s career spans two states, 1,700 miles and 46 years.

MHCC’s radio broadcasting director is retiring after teaching for 16 years at Mt. Hood.
In 1958 Young got his first radio job. Since then he has seen the birth of digital radio, the 1996 Telecommunications Act that deregulated the industry and created corporations like Clear Channel Communications and Infinity Broadcasting, and the subsequent rise of technical automation, podcasts and shock jocks.

Diverse just begins to tell the story of Young’s calling, having worked for 10 years in commercial radio, and 20 years in community radio.

In 1979 Young moved to Haines, Alaska, to build the town’s first radio station. He saw firsthand the difference radio can have on a community.

“Before the radio station, they had a weekly paper, and it was a gossip mill. With the radio, the community had national news, community events (calendar), info on the City Council. That really changed life. People took the radio station very seriously.”
When Young came to Mt. Hood in 1989, the station was all analog.

“My first year here, we had this old, fifties board. It was the rattiest setup. We had old cartridge tapes from other stations that they didn’t need. The station wasn’t really on the air.”

Spring term of 1990, the station established a format.

“We were an alternative station, since that was leading edge in 1990. We borrowed records, built up the library. We chose the name X58, X for extreme, because that was the nineties, and 58 because we were on cable 58.”

Year after year, Young and his students built the station up to what it is now: a professional-level station that broadcasts 24 hours a day, using automation technology when a disc jockey can’t be present. Top of the line software prepares the students for a future with a radio station outside of Mt. Hood Community College.

KDOX program director Joaquin “Wookie” Gutierrez said, “Jeff is an integral part of our program. He’s really going to be missed. Go to any radio cluster in the city, and you’ll find his students. He’s been a great mentor to all of us.”

The radio program students create radio “spots,” or short advertisements, for many other programs and classes at Mt. Hood. Anyone who has listened to X58 has probably heard spots for anything from chemistry classes to the forestry program.

“This doesn’t sound like student work. This is agency level work being done,” Young says of the student’s work.

Life after Mt. Hood won’t be too quiet for Young. He mentioned different possibilities open to him, from Santa Fe to Guatemala.

“I think I have one more career adventure left in me. I like to travel. I could go to Third World countries and build radio stations. I’d like to immerse myself in Spanish, maybe in South America. I want to learn guitar, meditate, work in my garden. I’d never return to commercial radio, but I’ll need some professional involvement.

“I count my blessings. I really do. I count my blessings. This has been a great job, teaching. I’m an idealist. I believe radio should reflect the community back to itself in the most positive way. It can change life in a community, drastically. I saw it in Haines (Alaska).”