Spectrum

Robert Scott is the Regional Administrator of the Great Lakes Region of the federal Small Business Administration (SBA) and he is on a mission. Scott recently toured some of the areas of his region facing some of the greatest economic stagnation to spread the word about some of the benefits of the Small Business Administration. He is responsible for the rustbelt in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michiga...

Covering this White House and this President is a 24 hour job, says Gregory Korte, award-winning Washington correspondent for USA Today. He says that this President is more complicated in many ways from any other President in history. In part, Korte claims, because most traditional ways of handling issues and procedures are turned on their head. This President often eschews the analytical approach...

Russia is trying to elevate its power in Europe and on the world stage and Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin is manipulating the United States and other countries in the process, according to professor, author and expert on Russia Dr. Steven Miner. To gain prestige and power, Putin is wanting to split the NATO alliance as well as disrupt and denigrate European and American politics and democracies, s...

Last year, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) spent nearly $5.5 billion dollars on contracts related to small businesses. Some $2.7 billion or 16.5 percent of total procurements involved direct contracts between small businesses and NASA. Another $2.8 of contracts were subcontracts with small businesses -- contracts between small business and large prime contractors servicing...

In November 2017, Errin Whack was appointed to be the Race and Ethnicity Writer for the Associated Press. She works closely with the Race and Ethnicity team dedicated to covering “race, culture and politics” in a changing and volatile America. The Associated Press says it has developed a team that can focus on the complicated issues of race and provide rapid responses to racial issues developing a...

A producer works behind-the-scenes and in the control room helping to write and direct the way the news is presented by the talent. It is an important and vital role to the delivery of broadcast news but it’s a role that is little understood. A producer helps gathers the news, write it and sits in the control room advising the talent during the news delivery. A producer and the news anchor must ha...

Editorial cartoonists, in the heyday of newspapers, were plentiful. Now the group is down to only 50 nationwide and that number is being threatened by slow extinction. One of the survivors, however, is prize winning cartoonist, columnist, editor and author Jack Ohman of the “Sacramento Bee. “ Currently, his cartoons are syndicated by The Washington Post Writers Group. Previously, his work appeared...

Since 2014, the faculty and staff of the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine have been developing a new medical school curriculum called the “Pathways to Health and Wellness Curriculum.” Its design is revolutionary and may lead the way for other medical schools to follow. Come August, gone will be the big auditorium lectures. Instead, greater emphasis will be placed on individ...

The meeting in Singapore between President Donald Trump and N. Korean leader Kim Jong Un was most assuredly historic. It was the first time that a N. Korean leader had met face-to-face with a sitting U.S. President. But, was the meeting substantive and did it produce any lasting results? That is the question politicians, journalists, and analysts are asking as President Trump wings his way back to...

As we feel racial tension from the White House and hear immigration horror stories from President Donald Trump’s Administration, it is refreshing to have a true scholar publish a book that is well researched and has an optimistic slant on the same issues. That is what Dr. Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute and former executive vice-president of the Wilson Center has done in...

For 25 years, Stephen Crowley was one of two “New York Times” (NYT) photographers stationed in Washington to cover the White House, the President, and Congress. Being a politically-minded guy since childhood, Crowley says that covering politics was never boring and in fact, it often was exciting. He says that covering politics is a lot like shooting athletic events…there are always surprises, succ...

Medical historian Jacqueline H. Wolf, a professor at Ohio University, has just authored a new book tracing the history of the use of Cesarean Section baby deliveries in the United States noting a definite upward trend in the 21st Century. The book, “Cesarean Section: An American History of Risk, Technology, and Consequence,” explores the history of the C-Section from the 19th century until today....

As if the tangled and muddled web of potential Russian collusion and conspiracy with Americans to interfere in the 2016 Presidential Election was not confusing enough, we now have the activities of President Trump’s former attorney and “fixer” Michael Cohen to further complicate matters. Philip Ewing, security editor for National Public Radio (NPR) in Washington, has been following the Cohen situa...

Investigative journalism is not the sole province of only big-city newspapers like the “New York Times” or the “Washington Post.” Instead, it is starting to flourish at the grassroots level through the assistance of the Institute for Non-Profit News (INN), a collective of over 100 non-profit news organizations across the country. The groups are committed to transparency in government and to hold p...

Andrew Revkin has spent his professional career covering environmental issues and writing about them contemporaneously. However, his most recent book, just published in May 2018, tracks climate change by looking at 100 historical events that help explain today’s climate debate. The book is “Weather: An Illustrated History: From Cloud Atlases to Climate Change” published by Sterling and it is co-au...

Journalist Leo Mirani has spent his life in big cities. He worked for the Guardian in Mumbai, India – a city with a metropolitan population of over 22 million people. And, he now lives in London with a population of about 9.8 million people. His whole life has been spent in large cities and metropolitan areas. He, however, has been curious about what small towns might be like and small cities in t...

Dr. Steve Crocker was there for the birth of the Internet. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was part of the group that developed the protocols for the ARPANET. That was the foundation for today's Internet. It was originally designed to share data and scientific research; however, it quickly morphed into a system used by millions of people for both productive and nefarious reasons. He helped f...

The term “liberal” seems to be fading from the political lexicon. Instead, daily, we, as voters, are bombarded with the term “progressive.” We constantly hear of progressive versus mainstream candidates. It was really apparent in the 2016 primary with Sen. Bernie Sanders challenging Hillary Clinton. But “progressivism” also has seemed to invade state elections and grassroots politics. For example,...

Artificial Intelligence quickly is becoming a greater part of our lives. Algorithms already trace our digital footprints and routinely send us targeted advertising and social media content compatible with our views. AI checks our credit scores and approves/disapproves us for loans and mortgages. It also is being used to predict behaviors – especially by law enforcement and criminal justice systems...

The serious side of Dr. Michael E. Mann approaches his battle with the climate change deniers in the Trump Administration with scholarly excellence. But, the author side of Dr. Mann approaches the same topic with science, satire and cartoons. Dr. Mann is one of the world’s foremost authorities on climate change and its impacts. He is an award-winning scholar. He is a Distinguished Professor of Atm...

In the early 1970s, Madeline Carvalho Lanciani traveled from suburban Dayton, Ohio to New York City as a young woman with dreams of being an opera singer. After many twists and turns in life, she now owns the famous Duane Park Patisserie in the fashionable Tribeca District. She is famous for her baking, her creativity and for her tenacity. March is National Women’s History Month and the theme this...

“Fake News” is a term that does not have one definite meaning. Its definition is fluid depending on who is using it to describe news coverage, says an assembled team of experts. Spectrum brought together a veteran journalist, a scholar in the fields of communication and education, and a media executive with 30 years of experience in public broadcasting to dissect the topic of “Fake News” and what...

This month the civil war in Syria will enter its eighth year of fighting. More than 400,000 have been killed, nearly 1 million injured and over one-third of the nation’s infrastructure has been destroyed, says Dr. Bassam Haddad, an expert on Syria. Millions have been displaced from their homes and other countries have felt the glut of millions of Syrian refugees fleeing the fighting. What started...

Students of color, students who don’t know English well and LGBTQ students are “vastly over-represented among students who face school disciplinary actions,” says Dr. Lisa Harrison and Dr. Theda Gibbs-Grey of the Patton College of Education at Ohio University. This has led Dr. Harrison and Dr. Gibbs-Grey to launch a research study called “Black Girls Matter: Exploring the School Experiences of Mid...

Russia intended to support candidates against Hillary Clinton- the object of Vladimir Putin’s hatred, says expert on Russia, Dr. Steven Miner, scholar, author and professor in the Contemporary History Institute of Ohio University. Russia also intended to disrupt American politics and social systems leading up to and after the 2016 Presidential Election, says Miner after perusing the 35 pages of in...