Pensacola’s newest media outlet, community radio station WPNX, hit the airwaves in September. Founded by three Pensacola locals with deep roots in the community, they’ve hit the ground running with a unique vision for the future of DIY radio.
Sean Linezo, one of the founders at WPNX, first conceptualized the idea more than 20 years ago after returning to Pensacola from traveling the country and working with Prometheus Radio Project. The idea would sit and grow during that time while Linezo continued traveling and working to help build other stations.
“We had our first meetings right here in the back of this cafe that we’re sitting in, in the back of End of the Line Café 24 years ago,” said Linezo. “We never did our community radio station back in 2002, but it did inspire Fred Toucette, who’s still with WPNX now, to start an internet radio station as soon as that was a technological possibility. And then I never made a radio station of my own. I would travel around and help people organize to build them. And I would participate when I could in different ways. But I ended up always on the road and living in Japan for like 12 years.”…