Former WFDD General Manager Denise Franklin Remembered As A Journalist And Mentor

Denise Franklin was with 88.5 WFDD radio for over a decade, leaving in 2012. Before her radio career began, Franklin was already a well-known media figure in the Triad, arriving at WXII TV in the early 80s, and working there for nearly a decade as an anchor and reporter.

Her producer Kathryn Mobley recalls the moment that defined for her much of Franklin's career. It came during a live newscast and Franklin had thirty seconds to prepare.

...I'm in studio, I'm on headphones, Denise is on air. She's talking about some other story, and in [the] break I whisper in her ear about this train accident, and that Hazmat is on the scene, and people are being evacuated. All she said to me was, ‘feed me information...' We hit air, and she starts off with breaking news and starts relaying information. And I am talking to her, and she is just shaping it, and molding it and putting it out to the audience. It literally was happening seamlessly and in real time...And that's when I realized what an amazing talent Denise Franklin was as a journalist. She could think quickly on her feet, she could stay calm in a tense situation...When she was on she was on.

Franklin's co-anchor at WXII, Rick Amme, recalls that Franklin had an amazing voice and a presence that was the envy of any anchor—male or female—in the business. But Amme says his fondest memories revolved around on-air fun when tears of laughter would run down his face.

And she would get tickled at the fact that I was tickled, and then she would try to get control, because she was the command person. Because she was having trouble getting control, this is the honest to goodness truth, she would be stamping her foot on the floor underneath the news desk as hard as she could to try to regain control of her wits, so that both she and I could look like the professionals we were supposed to be.

Franklin arrived at WFDD in the mid-nineties and eventually became general manager. She was always a reporter, though, and was known for her weekly program Voices and Viewpoints, where she would give listeners insights into the lives of local and national celebrities.

Franklin would go on to mentor successful journalists now working across the country and here locally, including WFDD's own Keri Brown.

She cared about people. It showed, just in her actions, and working with her professionally. She brought me to the Triad, she recruited me from West Virginia Public Broadcasting, and I immediately connected with her for her sense of news, her integrity. She wanted to make sure everything was accurate and unbiased, truthful. I loved that about her. I loved working with her. She was definitely a role model for journalists all over the country... an amazing person to work with.

After leaving WFDD in 2012, as a longtime member of United Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, she looked within herself and made the decision to enter the divinity school at Wake Forest University. 

Franklin's son Michael Jones says that his mom's work in both journalism and in the divinity school was simply a means to an end.

She believed that storytelling had the power to inspire all of us to reveal and identify our inner strength and our truth. And to discover in our own ways that we had the strength to pursue that truth. And that to me explains why her unending curiosity and incessant drive led her to so many opportunities to impact people in different ways, and I hope that those impacts that she left with folks will continue to inspire them to discover their inner strength and to pursue their own truths long after her time with them comes to an end. 

Denise Franklin died Tuesday night. She was 59 years old.