News Team

Johannes Werner is a journalist who has pursued a wide range of beats, from Berlin to Mexico City, Detroit, and Miami. During the last two decades, his career took him to cover Cuba, from his home base in Sarasota. All that changed in 2023: WSLR brought him home professionally early that year, to direct a growing news team that covers the economic and environmental dysfunction, political extremism, and the grassroots movements that are springing up in response. Johannes knows the ins and outs of this place, and he loves it. He has spent half of his life in Sarasota with his wife Sarah; their child was born at Sarasota Memorial Hospital. He also happens to be a founding member of WSLR, and hosted a public affairs show on 96.5 FM from 2005 to 2015.

Gretchen Cochran is a former pilot and race car driver, but always a news junky. Once owner of a small weekly newspaper and managing editor of a 100,000 circulation newspaper, she continues to tell stories - but printer's ink now gives way to radio waves.

Ramon Lopez has 45-plus years experience as an aviation, aerospace and defense journalist, editor and manager for daily, weekly, monthly and bimonthly international publications.

He was a regular contributor to Jane’s Airport Review and Unmanned Systems magazine. He edited the Precision Strike Digest. He previously served as editor-in-chief of Air Safety Week, editor-in-chief of Unmanned Systems and Washington Correspondent for Jane’s Defence Weekly, Flight International and International Defense Review.

He has worked in both radio and television news, in Washington, DC and now in Sarasota, FL. He holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Mass Communications from the University of Maryland with a minor in Journalism.

Ryan Stanley, a 30-year resident of Sarasota, is a New College of Florida graduate, wife, and mom. Over the last ten years, she has sewn together a patchwork quilt of paid and unpaid work with a dozen different non-profit organizations including Girl Scouts of the Gulf Coast, The Healthy Start Coalition of Sarasota County, and WSLR Community Radio+Fogartyville. Ryan also enjoys cooking, traveling, and the company of fierce women.

Noah Vinsky is back to freelancing for WSLR, after being a standout intern during fall 2024. He also happens to be the managing editor of The Oracle, the student-run, award-winning newspaper at USF covering the main campus in Tampa. Before taking the managerial reins, he earned a Sunshine State Award finalist spot for his sports reporting for the Oracle.