Spectrum

When you think of college students you might think of affluent young people reveling in the joys of care-free campus life…But, that doesn’t describe all college students – especially many non-traditional students. They often are juggling families, jobs, mounting debt and hunger. Yes, hunger. Many go to regional campuses or community colleges. They are enduring current hardships for the promise of...

Children who have been in foster care are a special group of children to be adopted. Currently more than 110,000 children are waiting in this category for adoptive parents. However, more than 20,000 will leave foster care without ever being adopted increasing their risks for anti-social behaviors as adults. These figures are the result of a recent national survey conducted by the Dave Thomas Found...

This is a personal story…the story of journalist Colin Lasu…a son of South Sudan, Africa’s newest country. Because of the chaos since its independence in 2011 and a Civil War beginning in 2013, over 1 million refugees have fled to neighboring Uganda and Ethiopia and over 200,000 have fled to other countries. Lasu, a journalist in his home country, came back to America and received asylum here. He...

USA Today, in partnership with YouTube, delivers a weekly virtual reality newscast called VRtually There, produced by VR veteran Robert Padavick. It is the first native VR series, says Padavick and it produces three feature stories a week. Although VR is in its infancy, Padavick claims that watching something in VR is like having a movie theater on your face. The experience is totally immersive an...

Laurel Wamsley, a young but veteran reporter and producer at National Public Radio (NPR), says she loves working there because she feels the NPR is truly serving the public. She also knows that NPR has made a concerted effort to attract a younger millennial audience and to broaden its base. Wamsley is in her second stint at the radio giant. She has served as both a “producer” and a “reporter.” She...

Never before have we had a President that spoke his mind almost daily to the American people. Like it or hate it, President Trump, through his use of social media, broadcasts across the globe his likes, dislikes, and policy thoughts. He is unedited. While President Obama was closed, guarded and cautious, Pres. Trump says what he thinks or feels regardless of the consequences. Some argue, this make...

Graham Nash is a two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee who created pioneering British pop-rock outfit The Hollies with childhood friend Allan Clarke in his late teens and was a featured initial in Crosby, Stills, and Nash. He continues to be socially and politically active well into his older years. Last year he released his first solo project in 14 years, “This Path Tonight,” crafted with...

What Russia may lack in modern traditional military assets, it more than compensates through its ability to wage tactical cyberattacks and ultimately the potential for cyberwarfare. That’s the opinion of Dr. Steven Miner, professor and Director of the Contemporary History Institute at Ohio University. Russia’s military hardware is deteriorating and the Russian economy is not strong under its leade...

President Donald Trump states that his actions through Executive Orders will bring coal mining jobs back to America. Jonathan Norris, researcher and engineer, says that is not likely to happen. Mining jobs have been on a steady decline since the 1980’s, according to Norris. The main reason is that natural gas has become a much cheaper way to run power plants to produce electricity. So, even if the...

Passions can run high with immigration issues. Some Americans embrace immigration and immigrants as being the backbone of the United States. While with others, immigration is seen as problematic and even frightening and a threat to America. Although often we, as Americans, see immigration issues as simplistic black and white issues, but instead, according to Dr. Andrew Selee, we need to take a bro...

American foreign policy under the Trump Administration currently is “chaotic, amorphous, and …unprofessional,” according to Ambassador Reuben Brigety, dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. Ambassador Brigety expresses to Spectrum podcast that he is concerned about the huge number of important positions in the State Department that are not yet filled a...

During the scramble to be the first and provide the best possible coverage of the ongoing Trump/Russia investigations, credible news organizations have published numerous stories based upon “leaks” from sources who are listed as “anonymous” or described without using their names or titles. Some Administration officials decry “leakers” and infer that they are not credible and chastise news entities...

We have investigations ongoing of the Trump campaign/Russia connection in the Senate, the House and with the Special Counsel appointed by the Interim Attorney General. It seems we don’t have any one place to follow the events and with each entity conducting its own investigation, we as average citizens can feel like we’re drowning in a sea of terminology and confusion. We can’t keep up or keep the...

Authenticity and great storytelling combine to form the backbone of good advertising, according to advertising expert Chuck Borghese. Borghese is an award-winning veteran of the creative side of advertising having spent nearly four decades in the business and charting its changes over time. He notes that in the days of Mad Men advertising executives, up through the early 1960’s, that most advertis...

Linda Tirado, author and activist, has written and spoken around the globe about what it's like to be poor in America. She now has a new project. She is seeking truth about our democracy by traveling the country and interviewing voters in the last Presidential election to find their current reaction to the Trump Administration and to the apparently stalled Congress. Tirado is finding that we have...

This White House is run differently than the West Wings of past Presidents. Those were based on fairly rigid protocols, roles, traditions and procedures. This White House is not the norm. It sometimes appears to be chaotic but it actually reflects the temperament, the personality and the style of its primary occupant – President Donald Trump. “It’s not better or worse…it’s just what the President...

This is a special edition of SPECTRUM featuring intelligence expert, David Crane. The way President Trump is dismissive of “intelligence briefings” and makes disclosure decisions without prior consultation with intelligence experts causes grave concern to a long time security veteran. Recently, the news has focused on security gaffes in the White House. Some reports have said that President Trump...

World-renowned international lawyer and national security expert David Crane is heading the Syria Accountability Project to hold Syrian governmental and faction leaders accountable for thousands of verified war crimes. He and his group are building war crime cases and trial packages against Syrian government and faction leaders. To date, Crane’s group has verified over 8,000 pages of individual wa...

The job of the editorial teams at National Geographic is to make a “round world” come to life on a “flat plane” of a magazine, a web-screen, a phone or other mobile device. That, often, is a big challenge. Kaitlin Yarnall is Deputy Director for the Centers of Excellence in Journalism, Mapping and Photography at the National Geographic Society. She also has been the lead editorial manager for Natio...

National Public Radio’s Bob Boilen has shaped the way an entire generation consumes music. During his 20 plus year career at NPR, Boilen has served as creator and host of the online series “All Songs Considered” and created the increasingly celebrated “Tiny Desk Series.” Earlier, he was producer and director for the afternoon news show “All Things Considered.” Sound is important to Boilen. He grew...

Nicole J. Phillips once had a personal life in turmoil until she discovered the gift of giving kindness to others and to herself. Outwardly, she appeared to have it all: a prominent and loving husband, three beautiful children, and a job as a television news anchor. It was a life that most people would only dream about and fight to get. Yet, Nicole was “miserable.” She was depressed and engaged in...

It is Will Cooper’s firm belief that the American judicial system doesn’t value the lives of poor black women and therefore, their stories of abuse, deprivation and courage are seldom told by mainstream media. Their conditions are ignored by politicians, he argues. If their stories are told, Cooper contends that mainstream media “sanitizes” the stories so as to not offend the sensitivities and ste...

This is part two of our three part series on race, media and politics. Washington Post’s Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Wesley Lowery covers law enforcement, justice and he served as the lead reporter for The Post in Ferguson, Missouri. He has covered the Black Lives Matter Movement for a number of years. And, in November, he had a book published called “They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimor...

In this special edition, Spectrum breaks down the Trump Administration’s recent actions against climate change into plain English that everyone can understand. To help us with that, we are assisted by Dr. Geoffrey Dabelko, Professor and Director of the Environmental Studies Program at the George V. Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs at Ohio University. For 15 years prior to that, Dr...

Researcher and former photojournalist Danielle Kilgo asserts that African Americans are negatively stereotyped by the mainstream media – especially in photos and video. Danielle Kilgo is receiving her doctorate from the University of Texas-Austin and next fall will start teaching in The Media School at Indiana University. She has been part of a research team at the University of Texas. Her researc...