News Over Noise

Special thanks to guest:

Emily Ramshaw is the CEO and co-founder of The 19th*, the nation’s first independent nonprofit newsroom at the intersection of gender, politics and policy. The 19th* aims to elevate the voices of women and LGBTQ+ people — particularly those left at the margins of American media — with free-to-consume and free-to-republish daily journalism, newsletters and live events. Prior to The 19th, Ramshaw was editor-in-chief of The Texas Tribune, an award-winning local news startup and the largest statehouse news operation in the nation. She is on the board of the Pulitzer Prize, where she is serving a nine-year term. In 2020, Ramshaw was named to Fortune’s “40 Under 40” list.

Special thanks to our guest:

Enrique Anarte is a Berlin-based reporter and International Relations graduate with a passion for producing high-quality, audience-focused journalism that can build bridges and shed light on underreported topics. Currently, he leads the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s first-ever TikTok team - for Openly, its LGBTQ+ news brand - and is a regular writer for TRF covering queer stories across Europe, with a focus on the human impact of politics and policy. He previously reported for DW, NBC News, Reuters and EFE, among others. Recent, Enrique joined the Poynter Institute’s MediaWise ambassador program with a focus on countering mis/disinformation targeting LGBTQ+ people.

Special thanks to guest:

Stephanie Edgerly is a Professor and Associate Dean of Research at the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University. Her research explores how features of new media alter the way audiences consume news and impact their engagement. Stephanie’s research has won several top prizes. This includes the Outstanding Article Award in 2020 from Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly and being the 19th recipient of the Walder Award for Research Excellence at Northwestern University. Her recent projects have explored why people don't consume news and the varied ways people define news. Stephanie earned her PhD from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Special thanks to guest:

Karl Bode is a Seattle-based freelance reporter with two decades of experience covering tech, telecom, media, politics, and consumer rights. His writing has appeared at Techdirt, The Verge, Vice, Ars Technica, and numerous other publications, and he tracks the progress of the community-owned broadband movement for the Institute for Local Self Reliance. Karl began his career in tech by doing legal industry IT support in NYC and helped build the broadband comparison website DSLReports.com before moving into reporting full time.

Special thanks to guest:

Jessica Gall Myrick, PhD, is the Donald P. Bellisario Professor of Health Communication in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State University. Her research investigates the psychology of how people respond to media messages about health, science, and the environment. This work has been featured in academic journals, books, and news reports and has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Special thanks to our guest:

Will Bunch is national opinion columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer and author of several books, including Tear Down This Myth: The Right-Wing Distortion of the Reagan Legacy, The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, Paranoia Politics and High-Def Hucksters in the Age of Obama, and the e-book The Bern Identity: A Search for Bernie Sanders and the New American Dream. He has won numerous journalism awards and shared the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for spot news reporting with the New York Newsday staff.

In this special U.S. Media Literacy Week edition of News Over Noise, Matt Jordan speaks with NAMLE Executive Director Michelle Ciulla Lipkin and Education Manager Megan Fromm. NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education unites a community of educators committed to advancing media literacy education and hosts U.S. Media Literacy Week. The mission of U.S. Media Literacy Week is to highlight the power of media literacy education and its essential role in education all across the country. U.S. Media Literacy Week calls attention to media literacy education by bringing together hundreds of partners for events and activities around the country.

Special thanks to guests:

Michelle Ciulla Lipkin As Executive Director, Michelle has helped NAMLE grow to be the preeminent media literacy education association in the U.S. She launched the first-ever Media Literacy Week in the U.S., developed many strategic partnerships, and restructured both the governance and membership of the organization.

Megan Fromm is NAMLE's Education Manager. She has taught at both the university and secondary levels and has spent more than a decade working with student journalists and journalism teachers to better improve their craft and serve their communities. Megan is a former journalist and was the 2019 National Media Literacy Teacher of the Year. She is the co-editor of Transformative Media Pedagogies (2021) and co-author of Student Journalism and Media Literacy (2014).

Do you feel discouraged or even defeated about the state of the world? So much so that you find yourself disengaging? What if we told you that there was another path? That there’s a form of reporting that doesn’t just tell you what's wrong in your community but actively works to empower you to help set it right?  On this episode of News Over Noise, we talk with James Causey a projects reporter and columnist at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, about solutions journalism and the potential it holds for strengthening democracy.

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Special thanks to guest:

James E. Causey is a projects reporter, columnist, and former editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He's also the former president of the Wisconsin Black Media Association. In 2008, Causey was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. These days, his work focuses on solutions journalism and how the media can be a tool for responding to social issues rather than just reporting on them.

Who owns the news? Media buyouts and mergers have become so commonplace you might not even realize that your local paper or news station is owned by a massive corporation in some far-off place. You might think, “I’m still getting access to information, so why does diversity in media ownership matter?” To find out, hosts Leah Dajches and Matt Jordan talk with Michael Copps, a former commissioner for the Federal Communications Commission.

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 Special thanks to guests:

Michael Copps is the Special Advisor for Common Cause's Media & Democracy initiatives where he provides guidance on the program's work to promote an open and accessible media ecosystem. From 2001-11, he served as a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, where his tenure was marked by a consistent embrace of the public interest. As a strong voice in opposition to consolidation in the media, he dissented in the FCC vote on the Comcast-NBC Universal merger. He has been a consistent proponent of localism in programming and diversity in media ownership. Though retired from the Commission, he has maintained a commitment to an inclusive, informative media landscape.

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Sydney L. Forde is a Ph.D. candidate in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at the Pennsylvania State University studying the political economy of media industries. Specifically, Forde studies journalism as a merit good, and broadband infrastructure as a public good, while advocating for public media and municipal broadband (respectively) as non-commercial alternatives to existing commercial dominated markets. She was recently nominated as the first student member to join WPSU’s board of representatives, was a COMPASS fellow with Annenberg’s MIC Center in Washington DC in the summer of 2022, and has been closely involved in the development of the university wide News Literacy Initiative at Penn State. Forde has published articles in the Canadian Journal of Communication, Communication, Culture & Critique, and Journalism, as well as public scholarship pieces in Yale’s Law and Political Economy (LPE) project and The Conversation.

“My experience is that audiences want us to be truthful and fair, but they don’t want us to be robots.” That’s a quote from a blog post by journalist Lewis Raven Wallace—a post that led to him being fired from Marketplace. Wallace has become an outspoken critique of the notion that “objectivity” is a catchall for accurate journalism. In this episode of News Over Noise, hosts Leah Dajches and Matt Jordan talk with Wallace about the concept of journalistic neutrality and about what can be done to restore some lost public trust in journalism.

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Special thanks to guest:

Lewis Raven Wallace (he/they/ze) is an award-winning independent journalist based in Durham, North Carolina, the author and creator of The View from Somewhere book and podcast, and a current Ford Global Fellow and Abolition Journalism Fellow with Interrupting Criminalization. He previously worked in public radio, and is a long-time activist engaged in prison abolition, racial justice, and queer and trans liberation. He is white and transgender, and was born and raised in the Midwest with deep roots in the South.

How do you respond when someone disagrees with you? If you’re like many Americans, you probably end the conversation and write them off. And who can blame you when debates are frequently framed as moralistic disputes between the righteous and the enemy? But what's the cost of walking away instead of making an effort to engage? On this episode of News Over Noise, hosts Leah Dajches and Matt Jordan find out by talking with Anand Giridharadas, author of the New York Times bestseller, The Persuaders.

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Special thanks to guest:

Anand Giridharadas is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Persuaders, the international bestseller Winners Take All, The True American, and India Calling. A former foreign correspondent and columnist for The New York Times for more than a decade, he has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Time, and is the publisher of the newsletter The.Ink. He is an on-air political analyst for MSNBC. He has received the Radcliffe Fellowship, the Porchlight Business Book of the Year Award, Harvard University’s Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award for Humanism in Culture, and the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Terms like trolls and butterfly attacks sound like something out of a childhood fable. Unfortunately, in the digital information landscape, these terms represent very real tactics that can have devastating effects on democracy. What are these bad-actors are trying to accomplish? And, how can you protect yourself from becoming prey to their malicious schemes? To find out, we’ll talk with Dr. Joan Donovan, one of the leading experts on media manipulation, and disinformation campaigns, and online extremism.

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Special thanks to guest: 

Dr. Joan Donovan is a leading public scholar and disinformation researcher, specializing in media manipulation, political movements, critical internet studies, and online extremism. She is the Research Director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and the Director of the Technology and Social Change project (TaSC). Through TaSC, Dr. Donovan explores how media manipulation is a means to control public conversation, derail democracy, and disrupt society. Dr. Donovan is co-author of the book Meme Wars, The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America. She is a columnist at MIT Technology Review, a regular contributor to the New York Times, The Guardian, NPR, and PBS, and is quoted often on radio and in print. 

Social media often gets a bad rap, but it plays an undeniably critical role in today’s media landscape. With younger people increasingly opting to get their information from platforms like TikTok instead of traditional news sources, its significance is only likely to increase. On this episode of News Over Noise, we talk with journalist, activist, and social media strategist Annie Wu about the power of social media to drive the agenda when it comes to news, politics, and public opinion.

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Special thanks to guest:

Annie Wu is a journalist, activist, social media expert, and politics + pop culture junkie. She is currently the news editor of Feminist. She just completed her work as the Social Media Producer for John Fetterman’s successful campaign for U.S. Senate and previously worked for a non-profit, Gen-Z For Change and PA Stands Up. Annie has recently been featured in a number of publications including NBCNews and MSN.com. As a proud adopted Asian-American, her work focuses on equality, mental health, intersectionality and education.

Most of us get our information fed to us through our smartphones. Constant bombardment and easy access to headlines, video clips, and sound bites help create the illusion that we are well-informed about the goings-on of our world. But...are we? On the next News Over Noise, we’ll explore what the News Finds Me mentality is, how it impacts civic engagement, and why it might be leaving us less informed than we realize. 

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Special thanks to guest:

Homero Gil de Zúñiga, Ph.D. serves as Distinguished Research Professor at University of Salamanca, as Professor at Pennsylvania State University, and as Senior Research Fellow at Universidad Diego Portales. His work aims to shed an empirical social scientific light over how social media, algorithms, AI, and other technologies affect society. Relying on survey, experimental, and computational methods his work seeks to clarify the way we understand some of today’s most pressing challenges for democracies. 

Gil de Zúñiga is recipient of the Pennsylvania State University Medal for Outstanding achievement in Social and Behavioral Sciences, Fellow of the International Communication Association (ICA), Fellow of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), recipient of the Krieghbaum Under-40 Award at the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication (AEJMC), has been identified as one of the most prolific scholars in Political Communication and Social Media 2008/2018 (Sierra & Rodríguez-Virgili, 2020), one of the most bridging and central node Communication scholars in Latin America (Segado-Boj et al., 2021), and recognized as Thomson Reuters Clarivate Journal of Citation Reports (JCR) Highly Cited Scholar.

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Episode Credits:

• Matt Jordan, Host
• Leah Dajches, Host
• Lindsey Whissel Fenton, Producer
• Mindy McMahon, Executive Producer and Audio Recordist
• Holly Lowe, Project Development Manager
• Clint Yoder, Audio Mix
• Kristin Bittner, Instructional Designer
• Katie O’Toole, Advisor
• Greg Petersen, Advisor
• Sydney Forde, Graduate Assistant

Leah Dajches, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral scholar at Pennsylvania State University working on the News Literacy Initiative. Her research focuses on media representation, effects, and literacy as it relates to adolescent development and marginalized group experiences. In particular, Leah is interested in understanding the role of entertainment media and fandom in various components of identity development. Her research has been published in top-tier journals such as Health Communication, Journal of Children and Media, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, and Psychology of Popular Media, among others. When she’s not in the studio or the office, Leah enjoys playing tennis, baking gluten-free/vegan pastries, and spoiling her cats and dog.

Matt Jordan is head of the Department of Film Production and Media Studies in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State University, and Director of the News Literacy Initiative. He writes and teaches classes about how today’s media systems have been altered by digital technology and what it means for democracy. He is executive producer of the documentary series HumIn Focus and author of dozens of articles and books on popular culture in America and Europe. His latest book is Danger Sound Klaxon! The Horn that Changed History.

News Over Noise is produced by the Penn State, Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications and WPSU. This program has been funded by the office of the Executive Vice President and Provost of Penn State and is part of the Penn State News Literacy Initiative. 

Whether your eyelids get heavy at the mere mention of an economic story or you're a seasoned economic news consumer and want to know how you can find reliable, quality reporting, this is a discussion for you. We’re going to talk with Bob Frick, Navy Federal’s Corporate Economist, about what makes for quality—and not so quality—economic reporting and how you can tell the difference. We’ll also discuss how you cut through the buzzwords and vague characterizations to get to the bottom of what’s actually going on. 

Episode Extras

Special thanks to guest:

Robert Frick is Navy Federal’s Corporate Economist. In that role, he advises Navy Federal leaders on economic conditions and trends, especially those that affect Navy Federal’s 12 million members. He is frequently quoted in the press on issues including GDP, the labor market, consumer spending, and housing. Robert also has an expertise in behavioral economics and worked professionally in that area before joining Navy Federal in 2017. He was also a business and financial journalist for 30 years, having worked 15 years in daily newspaper and 15 years for Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine. He holds a BA in Journalism and an MBA from the Pennsylvania State University and has served on the Penn State College of Communications alumni advisory board as well as the Mount Nittany Conservancy Board.

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Episode Credits:

• Matt Jordan, Host
• Leah Dajches, Host
• Lindsey Whissel Fenton, Producer
• Mindy McMahon, Executive Producer
• Holly Lowe, Project Development Manager
• Clint Yoder, Audio Recordist and Audio Mix
• Kristin Bittner, Instructional Designer
• Katie O’Toole, Advisor
• Greg Petersen, Advisor
• Sydney Forde, Graduate Assistant

Leah Dajches, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral scholar at Pennsylvania State University working on the News Literacy Initiative. Her research focuses on media representation, effects, and literacy as it relates to adolescent development and marginalized group experiences. In particular, Leah is interested in understanding the role of entertainment media and fandom in various components of identity development. Her research has been published in top-tier journals such as Health Communication, Journal of Children and Media, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, and Psychology of Popular Media, among others. When she’s not in the studio or the office, Leah enjoys playing tennis, baking gluten-free/vegan pastries, and spoiling her cats and dog.

Matt Jordan is head of the Department of Film Production and Media Studies in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State University, and Director of the News Literacy Initiative. He writes and teaches classes about how today’s media systems have been altered by digital technology and what it means for democracy. He is executive producer of the documentary series HumIn Focus and author of dozens of articles and books on popular culture in America and Europe. His latest book is Danger Sound Klaxon! The Horn that Changed History.

News Over Noise is produced by the Penn State, Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications and WPSU. This program has been funded by the office of the Executive Vice President and Provost of Penn State and is part of the Penn State News Literacy Initiative. 

Consuming quality local journalism has a profound impact on civic engagement. People vote more, get more engaged in their community, and trust each other more. So, what happens when local news outlets start disappearing? On this episode of News Over Noise, we’ll talk with Tim Lambert, the Multimedia News Director at WITF, about the state of local news and the implications this has for all of us. We’ll also offer some tips on how to evaluate the credibility of the news you consume.  

Episode Extras

Special thanks to guest:

Tim Lambert is the Multimedia News Director at WITF. He is a six-time recipient of the Radio Television Digital News Association’s (RTDNA) National Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in digital and broadcast journalism and serves as one of four national coaches for the Trusting News project. Tim’s reporting has also been honored on the state, regional and national levels.

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Episode Credits:

• Matt Jordan, Host
• Leah Dajches, Host
• Lindsey Whissel Fenton, Producer
• Mindy McMahon, Executive Producer
• Holly Lowe, Project Development Manager
• Clint Yoder, Audio Recordist and Audio Mix
• Kristin Bittner, Instructional Designer
• Katie O’Toole, Advisor
• Greg Petersen, Advisor
• Sydney Forde, Graduate Assistant

Leah Dajches, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral scholar at Pennsylvania State University working on the News Literacy Initiative. Her research focuses on media representation, effects, and literacy as it relates to adolescent development and marginalized group experiences. In particular, Leah is interested in understanding the role of entertainment media and fandom in various components of identity development. Her research has been published in top-tier journals such as Health Communication, Journal of Children and Media, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, and Psychology of Popular Media, among others. When she’s not in the studio or the office, Leah enjoys playing tennis, baking gluten-free/vegan pastries, and spoiling her cats and dog.

Matt Jordan is head of the Department of Film Production and Media Studies in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State University, and Director of the News Literacy Initiative. He writes and teaches classes about how today’s media systems have been altered by digital technology and what it means for democracy. He is executive producer of the documentary series HumIn Focus and author of dozens of articles and books on popular culture in America and Europe. His latest book is Danger Sound Klaxon! The Horn that Changed History.

News Over Noise is produced by the Penn State, Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications and WPSU. This program has been funded by the office of the Executive Vice President and Provost of Penn State and is part of the Penn State News Literacy Initiative. 

The U.S. has one of the highest-news avoidance rates in the world, with more than 42 percent of Americans saying they actively avoid the news. On this episode of News Over Noise, hosts Leah Dajches and Matt Jordan talk with Dr. Kirsten Eddy about news avoidance, what it is, and why it matters. They also offer some strategies for how to overcome your own reluctance to engage with journalism.

Episode Extras

Special thanks to guest:

Kirsten Eddy is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, a senior researcher with the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, and a research affiliate with UNC’s Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life.

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Episode Credits:

• Matt Jordan, Host
• Leah Dajches, Host
• Lindsey Whissel Fenton, Producer
• Mindy McMahon, Executive Producer
• Holly Lowe, Project Development Manager
• Clint Yoder, Audio Recordist and Audio Mix
• Kristin Bittner, Instructional Designer
• Katie O’Toole, Advisor
• Greg Petersen, Advisor
• Sydney Forde, Graduate Assistant

Leah Dajches, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral scholar at Pennsylvania State University working on the News Literacy Initiative. Her research focuses on media representation, effects, and literacy as it relates to adolescent development and marginalized group experiences. In particular, Leah is interested in understanding the role of entertainment media and fandom in various components of identity development. Her research has been published in top-tier journals such as Health Communication, Journal of Children and Media, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, and Psychology of Popular Media, among others. When she’s not in the studio or the office, Leah enjoys playing tennis, baking gluten-free/vegan pastries, and spoiling her cats and dog.

Matt Jordan is head of the Department of Film Production and Media Studies in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State University, and Director of the News Literacy Initiative. He writes and teaches classes about how today’s media systems have been altered by digital technology and what it means for democracy. He is executive producer of the documentary series HumIn Focus and author of dozens of articles and books on popular culture in America and Europe. His latest book is Danger Sound Klaxon! The Horn that Changed History.

News Over Noise is produced by the Penn State, Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications and WPSU. This program has been funded by the office of the Executive Vice President and Provost of Penn State and is part of the Penn State News Literacy Initiative.