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. Prio...

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 que...

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 Awa...

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 caree...

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...

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 ha...

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 h...

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...

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 fo...

“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 Mat...

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 Jorda...

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 D...

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 powe...

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 infor...

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 disc...

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. W...

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. Episod...