After over 20 years away following his graduation from Harlan High School in 1987, Joe Asher found his way back and eventually into a position as a news reporter at the Harlan Daily Enterprise.

A life-long musician, Asher spent many years as a professional guitarist playing with a number of bands in clubs across Georgia, Tennessee, Florida and Alabama. He also worked as a paralegal in Nashville for a few years.

Upon his return to Harlan in 2009, he worked a variety of jobs including dispatching for LifeCare Ambulance Service and working on the immigration contract at CSC in Barbourville. He began as a news reporter at the Enterprise in March of 2012.

“Probably the thing I enjoy most about working in the news field is the ability to keep people informed on a variety of issues, from city councils to local court activity,” Asher said.

His work experience includes a stint as news director at WTRP Radio in Lagrange, Georgia, where he was on air when the World Trade Center buildings and Pentagon were struck by multiple airliners on Sept. 11, 2001.

“The feeling around the station as well as what was expressed by folks who called in looking for information, was basically stunned anger,” Asher remembers. “In the hours just after it happened, nobody really knew what happened, other than there was no way it was an accident. We kept waiting for something else to happen. It was, to say the least, a tense day.”

Asher graduated from Harlan Independent High School in 1987 and then pursued a degree in broadcasting at Eastern Kentucky University, graduating in 1995.