News Over Noise: Recent Episodes
Penn State News Literacy Initiative, Matt Jordan, Leah Dajches
If you find yourself avoiding the news, you’re not alone. But what’s turning you off is likely not the news itself—it’s the noise surrounding it. News Over Noise explores the challenge of separating spin and click-bait from good journalism and why it matters. This podcast empowers our citizenry by giving listeners the tools they need to balance staying informed while protecting their well-being and the public good.
Special thanks to our guest:
Kate Starbird is a Professor at the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington (UW). Kate’s research sits within the fields of human-computer interaction (HCI) and computer supported cooperative work (CSCW). Extending from early work in crisis informatics, her research program has followed the phenomenon of online rumoring down the rabbit hole and into some of the toxic online spaces that are increasingly (re)shaping discourse, values, and politics around the world. Her work has revealed how online disinformation — i.e. the intentional manipulation of discourse for political gain — is inherently participatory, taking shape through collaborations between witting agents and unwitting (though willing) crowds. Dr. Starbird received her BS in Computer Science from Stanford (1997) and her PhD in Technology, Media and Society from the University of Colorado (2012). She is a co-founder of the UW Center for an Informed Public, which works to strengthen democratic discourse by building resilience to online manipulation.
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Special thanks to our guest:
Barbie Zelizer is the Raymond Williams Professor of Communication and Director of the Center for Media at Risk at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication. A former journalist, Zelizer is known for her work on journalism, crisis, culture, memory and images. She has authored/edited fifteen books and 200 articles/essays. Recipient of multiple fellowships, including the American Academy of Arts and Science, the British Academy and the European Academy, her work has appeared in national and global media. Coeditor of Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, she is past President of the International Communication Association. Her most recent book is the forthcoming How the Cold War Broke the News (Polity, 2025).
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Special thanks to our guest:
Award-winning writer Tony Norman is the longtime columnist and editorial writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. A former Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow at the University of Michigan and an adjunct journalism professor at Chatham University, he now freelances for several local and national publications.]
Read Tony's Essay, "Requiem for the Post-Gazette."
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Special thanks to our guest:
Timothy Richardson is the Program Director, Journalism and Disinformation. Timothy previously worked as an Editor at The Washington Post for thirteen years, where he served as the Breaking News Editor on the Metro Desk, placing him in the center of some of the nation’s highest-profile stories, including the protests that followed the killing of George Floyd and the Storming of the U.S. Capitol. Richardson oversaw accountability-driven reporting of the infrastructure law, the airline industry, transit systems, and the federal Department of Transportation. Richardson’s role at the Post was focused on launching and running day-to-day operations of the organization’s foray into hyperlocal news. He began his journey as the Digital Managing Editor of the Las Vegas Sun, then returned to The Post as the Metro Staff’s Digital Editor, strengthening its digital-first strategy. His earlier roles included serving as Digital Editor for the Naples (Fla.) Daily News and the Topeka (Kan.) Capital-Journal, helping each legacy print publication to establish a digital presence and strategy. Richardson is a graduate of Kansas State University.
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Special thanks to our guest:
Rachel Besharat Mann, PhD is a scholar at Wesleyan University interested in the academic and personal literacy practices that support adolescents through a sensitive developmental period marked by identity exploration, that in turn provides the foundation for behavior and self-conceptualization in adulthood. Her current work explores how social media impacts adolescent consumption and interpretation of information used to inform the development of civic identities and political ideology. Past work has explored the impact of social media use on self-esteem and identity development through the lens of possible self-ideation.
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Special thanks to our guest:
Judd Legum is the founder and author of Popular Information, an independent newsletter dedicated to accountability journalism. PopularInformation won the 2020 Online Journalism Award for Excellence inNewsletters, and its reporting was credited by Bloomberg for bringing a "political reckoning" to corporate America. Previously, Legumfounded and served as editor-in-chief of ThinkProgress, a progressive media outlet. In 2008, Legum was the research director for HillaryClinton's first presidential campaign. He is a graduate of GeorgetownUniversity Law Center and Pomona College.
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Special thanks to our guest:
Dr. Amy Kristin Sanders is the John and Ann Curley Professor of First Amendment Studies at Penn State. A licensed attorney and award-winning former journalist, Sanders is an internationally recognized expert on the legal regulation and ethical use of emerging technologies, with an emphasis on freedom of expression and democratic values.
She has published more than 30 scholarly articles and co-authors the widely recognized law school casebook First Amendment and the Fourth Estate: The Law of Mass Media. Sanders regularly serves as an expert witness and consultant to Fortune 500 companies on media law and ethics issues and her words have been published by major news organizations, including USA Today, The Conversation, the Houston Chronicle and the Austin American-Statesman.
As a native of rural Missouri, Sanders is proud to serve on the Truman State University Foundation Board of the Directors and is a lifelong fan of the St. Louis Cardinals.
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Special thanks to our guest:
Sofia Rubinson is an analyst at NewsGuard and the senior editor of Reality Check, NewsGuard’s daily newsletter about how false claims spread — and who’s behind them. She investigates emerging false narratives spreading across social platforms and tracks the growing use of AI systems to manufacture and scale misinformation.
Producer: Lindsey Whissel Fenton
Audio Engineers:Mickey Klein, Scott Gros, Clint Yoder
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This is a special crossover episode between News Over Noise and the Democracy Works podcast featuring guest co-host Jenna Spinelle. Jenna is the Communications Specialist for the McCourtney Institute for Democracy. She is responsible for shaping all of the institute’s external communication, including website content, social media, multimedia, and media outreach. She also hosts and produces the Institute’s Democracy Works podcast. She holds a B.A. in journalism from Penn State and is an adjunct instructor in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications. Prior to joining the McCourtney Institute, Spinelle worked in Penn State’s Undergraduate Admissions Office and College of Information Sciences and Technology.
Special thanks to our guests:
Pamela Brunskill is a senior director of education design at theNews Literacy Project. Pamela joined NLP in August 2021 after 20 years of experience in education and education publishing. She was a teacher in Clarence and Williamsville, New York; a literacy coach at Enterprise Charter School; and an adjunct instructor at Bloomsburg University, Bucknell University and the University at Buffalo. She has written five books for the education market and co-authored Information Literacy: Separating Fact from Fiction. Pamela holds a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from SUNY College at Buffalo and a master’s degree in education from the University at Buffalo.
Sean Marcus is the Interactive Learning Designer for MediaWise here he designs and develops learning material for a wide range of audiences and purposes, ranging from senior citizens to high school students, and traditional classroom lessons to asynchronous, online learning experiences. Sean spent over 20 years teaching high school in Tampa Bay, twelve in public schools and eight in local independent schools. He has taught journalism, television production, creative writing and graphic design, and advised nationally recognized publications. Marcus holds a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and a master’s degree in English education, both from the University of South Florida. As a lifelong learner, he has pursued learning opportunities ranging from bookbinding and letterpress printing to digital citizenship and internet safety. He has presented at the Florida Council of Independent Schools’ annual conference, as well as at journalism education conferences at the local, state and regional level.
Jenna Meleedy is the Communication Coordinator at the National Association of Media Literacy Educators (NAMLE), where she manages the organization’s digital communications strategy. Her work includes running NAMLE’s social media channels, newsletters, website, and serving as a liaison to partner organizations. Jenna first joined NAMLE as a Social Media Intern in 2023 and later contributed as a member of the Youth Advisory Council for two years before stepping into her current role. A recent graduate of Pennsylvania State University, Jenna holds a Bachelor’s degree in Media Studies with minors in Civic and Community Engagement and Communication Arts and Sciences. Her passion for media literacy is reflected in her previous roles as a News Literacy Ambassador with the News Literacy Initiative and as an Education Advocacy Intern with the Media Education Lab. In 2024, she traveled to the Czech Republic as a Digital Citizenship Curriculum Development Intern, where she created and taught media literacy curriculum to secondary school students. Coming of age in the COVID-19 pandemic drove her to media literacy as a tool for empowerment, a combatant to political radicalization, and a framework for mental health and well-being. She is deeply committed to empowering digital natives to use media literacy as a means to foster critical thinking and engage in the democratic process.
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Special thanks to our guest:
For the past 16 years, Jim Rodenbush has worked with award-winning student media organizations, helping to mentor the next generation of journalists. Most recently, he served as Director of Student Media at Indiana University and taught in The Media School. During his time there, the Indiana Daily Student won 12 Pacemaker Awards and was twice named College Media Outlet of the Year. Before coming to IU, Rodenbush managed student media programs at Colorado State, Penn State, and Webster universities. Along the way, he taught courses in reporting, writing, editing and media management. Rodenbush is a frequent conference speaker and former president of WAUPM and executive director of the Indiana Collegiate Press Association. He holds a bachelor’s in journalism from Webster University and a master’s from the Newhouse School at Syracuse University.
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Special thanks to our guest:
Eoin Higgins is a writer based in New England whose work has appeared in progressive and mainstream outlets across the country. His new book on tech billionaires, the media, and the right is now available for preorder.
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Special thanks to our guest:
Dr. Michelle A. Amazeen is Associate Dean of Research, Associate Professor of Mass Communication, and Director of the Communication Research Center at Boston University’s College of Communication. Her research explores persuasion and misinformation, including how people recognize and resist misleading media. A contributor to The Debunking Handbook 2020 and ranked among the top 2% of highly cited scholars globally, her work has informed policy worldwide and been presented to organizations such as the FTC, EPA, and FDA. She currently co-leads BU’s Climate Disinformation Initiative and is the author of the forthcoming book Content Confusion (MIT Press, 2025).
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
A special thanks to our guest:
Bradford Vivian is Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at Penn State. His latest book is Campus Misinformation: The Real Threat to Free Speech in American Higher Education (Oxford University Press).
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
A special thanks to our guest:
Victor Pickard is the C. Edwin Baker Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, where he co-directs the Media, Inequality & Change (MIC) Center. Pickard’s research focuses on media history, journalism studies, and the normative foundations of media policy. He has published more than 150 articles, book chapters, and essays, and he often writes for popular venues such as The Guardian, The Washington Post, Jacobin, Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, and The Nation. He has authored or edited six books, including the award-winning monographs America’s Battle for Media Democracy and Democracy Without Journalism? Confronting the Misinformation Society. Currently he is working on a book that historicizes how capitalist logics structure information and communication systems in ways that harm democracy.
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
A special thanks to our guest:
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist and journalist. He is the author of many books, most recently “Picks and Shovels” and “The Lost Cause,” a solarpunk science fiction novel of hope amidst the climate emergency. His most recent nonfiction books include “The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation,” a Big Tech disassembly manual, and “Chokepoint Capitalism,” about monopoly platforms and creative labor markets. He coined the term “ensh**tification,” to describe the decay of online platforms. The word was named Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society, the Macquarrie Dictionary and the New Scientist. He works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and serves as a MIT Media Lab research affiliate, a visiting professor of computer science at Open University, a visiting professor of practice at the University of North Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science, and he co-founded the UK Open Rights Group.”(https://craphound.com/)
Episode art licensed by Creative Commons 3.0 by Jonathan Worth.
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
A special thanks to our guests:
Davey Alba is a technology reporter for Bloomberg, based in New York City, covering Big Tech and its influence. Previously, Alba reported for The New York Times on online disinformation and worked at BuzzFeed News and WIRED, covering AI and technology’s societal impact. She has received multiple journalism awards, including the 2019 Livingston Award for international reporting and a Mirror Award for journalism in peril. Her work has also been recognized by the SABEW Awards, the Online Journalism Awards, and the Deadline Club Awards. Alba has spoken at institutions such as Oxford University and the University of Florida. Originally from Manila, Philippines, she studied science writing at Columbia University and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Leon Yin is an award-winning journalist at Bloomberg News. He builds datasets and develops research methods to investigate technology's impact on society. He writes Inspect Element, a practical guide to data-driven investigations. His work quantifying Google and Amazon's self-preferencing has been cited numerously by legislators, the academy and popular media. In 2023, the series "Still Loading" received a Philip Meyer Award recognizing the best uses of social science methods in journalism. The piece was also cited by the city council of Los Angeles to outlaw digital discrimination. Leon got his start in news at The Markup, and his start in research writing Fortran scripts at NASA.
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
A special thanks to our guest:
Gil Duran is a journalist and political strategist who has worked as a spokesman for Jerry Brown, Dianne Feinstein, and Kamala Harris. He later served as California opinion editor at The Sacramento Bee and editorial page editor at The San Francisco Examiner. His work has appeared in The New Republic, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the New York Times. He publishes two newsletters: The Nerd Reich, on tech authoritarianism, and FrameLab, on political language and framing.
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
A special thanks to our guest:
Bill King is a senior writer for Sports Business Journal. He’s the publication’s lead contributor to In-Depth stories, Special Report coverage and profiles and has won numerous national and regional writing awards since joining SBJ in 1998.
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Special thanks to our guest:
Andrea Wenzel is an Associate Professor of Journalism at Temple University’s Klein College. She is the author of Antiracist Journalism: The Challenge of Creating Equitable Local News (Columbia University Press, 2023) and Community-Centered Journalism: Engaging People, Exploring Solutions, and Building Trust (University of Illinois Press, 2020). A former journalist, her research focuses on initiatives to create more connected and equitable communities and newsrooms. She co-founded the Germantown Info Hub and has been a fellow with Columbia University’s Tow Center. Prior to completing her PhD at USC Annenberg, she spent 15 years as a radio producer and editor at NPR affiliates in Chicago (WBEZ) and Washington, DC (WAMU), and as a trainer/project manager for organizations including BBC Media Action and Internews in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Iraq, and Ghana.
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Special thanks to our guest:
Cory Barker is an assistant teaching professor in the Film Production & Media Studies department and co-host of News Over Noise. His research explores media industry convergence, focusing on legacy media's use of new technologies in production and distribution. His book, Social TV: Multi-Screen Content and Ephemeral Culture (2022), examines the U.S. television industry's failed social media revolution and won the 2023 Outstanding Book Award from the Media Industries Studies Interest Group. Before joining Penn State, Cory was a tenured faculty member at Bradley University and earned his Ph.D. from Indiana Universit
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Special thanks to our guests:
Elizabeth Estrada is a Cuban American reporter, editor, and producer. As Spotlight PA’s democracy editor, Elizabeth connects voters with the information they need in order to confidently participate in our democracy. She helps shape the growth of Spotlight PA’s service journalism around voting and elections through community engagement, partnerships, and interactive tools. Previously, Elizabeth worked at WHYY, Philadelphia’s public radio station, as an engagement editor, where she reported positive stories through her original Feel Good Friday series, launched the station’s first-ever bilingual series, and managed an opinion and essay section. Prior to working in journalism, Elizabeth worked at various nonprofit film organizations, supporting women and diverse media makers. She currently serves as the board chair of PhillyCAM, Philadelphia’s public access station. Originally from Queens, New York, Elizabeth now lives in Philadelphia.
As director of journalism at WITF, Scott Blanchard works on things like newsroom strategy, culture, ethics, and training; he works with reporters (mainly climate reporter Rachel McDevitt) on stories; and he’s deeply involved with our community engagement efforts and collaborations with other news organizations. Blanchard came to WITF in 2017 as editor of StateImpact Pennsylvania, a public media collaboration covering the state's energy economy, and we are now a leading source for climate news in the state. He later became senior editor for WITF News and StateImpact, and, in 2022, director of journalism. Before coming to WITF, Blanchard spent more than16 years at the York (Pa.) Daily Record, where he was a projects and investigative editor.
Special thanks to guest:
Jack Brewster is Enterprise Editor for NewsGuard. Prior to working at NewsGuard, Brewster was a Fulbright scholar in Munich, Germany, conducting a research project about the role of journalists in the digital age. Previously, Brewster was a reporter at Forbes Magazine, covering politics, misinformation, and extremism. Brewster also has written about politics for Time Magazine, Newsweek, Vice News, and the New York Daily News.
Special thanks to guest:
Chenjerai Kumanyika is an assistant professor in NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Alongside his scholarship and teaching, disciplinary service on the intersections of social justice and media, Kumanyika specializes in using narrative non-fiction audio journalism to critique the ideology of American historical myths about issues such as race, the Civil War, and policing. He is the co-creator, co-executive producer and co-host of Uncivil, Gimlet Media’s podcast on the Civil War and he is the collaborator for Scene on Radio’s influential Season 2 “Seeing White,” and Season 4 on the history of American democracy. Kumanyika has written in scholarly venues such as Popular Music & Society, Popular Communication, The Routledge Companion to Advertising and Promotional Culture, as well as public venues such as The Intercept, Transom, NPR Codeswitch, All Things Considered, Invisibilia, and VICE. His work has been recognized with several prestigious honors including the George Foster Peabody Award (2018) for Uncivil and The Media Literate Media Award (NAMLE) for Scene on Radio (2021). In 2021, Kumanyika received the Union of Democratic Communications’ Dallas Smythe Award for his career accomplishments and advocacy. He studied mass communication and critical media studies at The Pennsylvania State University’s Donald Bellisario College of Communication where he earned his Ph.D.
Special thanks to our guests:
Rebecca Landsberry-Baker is an enrolled citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and the executive director of the Indigenous Journalists Association. She is a recipient of the 2018 NCAIED “Native American 40 Under 40” award and was selected to the Harvard Shorenstein News Leaders Fall 2022 cohort. Landsberry-Baker made her directorial debut with the documentary feature film, BAD PRESS, which was supported by the Sundance Institute, Ford Foundation JustFilms, NBC, and the Gotham. BAD PRESS premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and received the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Freedom of Expression.
Angel Ellis is a Citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and has lived, worked, and played within the tribes' reservation boundaries most of her life. Growing up, her heroes had press passes rather than capes and inspired her to become a journalist. Ellis became Director of Mvskoke Media in 2020. In 2020 she joined the ranks of Elias Boudinot Free Press award winners, an award given by the Indigenous Journalist Association to those who defend press freedoms. In November 2022, the Local Media Association (LMA) recognized Ellis during Native American Heritage Month as one of the Indigenous people "who have positively influenced and enriched the United States." In January 2023, the film "Bad Press" premiered at Sundance. This film follow’s Ellis’s advocacy work and was selected as the Sundance Special Jury Freedom of Expression Award. She remains dedicated to serving her community as Mvskoke Media’s Director and has consulted some of the most high profile media companies in the world on best practices for Indigenous storytelling.
Special thanks to guest:
Geoff Dembicki is an investigative climate journalist based in NYC. He is a regular contributor to the media outlet DeSmog and author of The Petroleum Papers, which was named a top ten book of 2022 by the Washington Post.
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.
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.
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.
And
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.
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 the next News Over Noise, we’ll find out by talking with Anand Giridharadas, author of the New York Times bestseller, The Persuaders.
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.
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.
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 Americans get their information fed to them through their 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.