Julie Slaymaker

Julie Slaymaker is a national award-winning freelance magazine and radio journalist who was the public service director for WIFE-AM/FM and served 30 years with her husband, Gene, as co-chairs of the state Society of Professional Journalists yearly contest. She has worked as a correspondent, broadcaster, reporter, investigative reporter and columnist as well as president of a number of professional organizations.

While president of Woman’s Press Club of Indiana in 1988, Slaymaker founded the organization’s Indiana Women’s Prison Writing Contest to promote inmate literacy.  A few years later, she met the head of education for the Indiana Department of Corrections and that led to the contest’s expansion statewide for female and male inmates. It is now in its 34th year.

She started her career in journalism at the age of 19 as an intern for the Indianapolis Times. Her first byline, as a correspondent for Fairchild Publications, appeared in Women’s Wear Daily.

In 1989, Slaymaker was awarded first place in UPI’s Individual Achievement category for a WTLC radio investigation of what was then called then the biggest drug ring in the history of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana.  She shared a National Headliner’s Award with her husband for the same years-long investigation.

Slaymaker has served as president of Woman’s Press Club of Indiana, the Indiana Professional Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and Women for Better Government. She was one of the few women to serve as president of the Players dramatic club, where she pursued her love of acting. She also appeared as an extra in Dan Wakefield’s Hollywood movie, “Going All the Way,” starring Ben Affleck. 

Slaymaker is a former board member of the National Federation of Press Women’s Education Fund, the Indiana Broadcast Pioneers, the Indiana Arthritis Foundation and the former Lambs Club of Indianapolis. She is a former member of the American Association of Women in Radio & Television, the Indianapolis Advertising Club and the Indianapolis Council on Foreign Affair

Her love of drama resurfaces each year as “Witch of Washington Boulevard,” where she welcomes about 650 Halloween trick-or-treaters at her extravagantly decorated home in Indianapolis.