The Journalism Salute

On this episode we're joined by Joe Coughlin . Joe is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Record - North Shore , a non-profit newsroom serving Chicago's North Shore suburbs. Joe has 20 years in the journalism industry to draw upon. The Record and The Journalism Salute started at around the same time. In fact, Joe reached out to me not long after he started to tell me what he was doin...

On this episode we're joined by Nicole Lewis . Nicole is the engagement editor for The Marshall Project , leading the organization’s strategic efforts to deepen reporting that reaches communities most affected by the criminal legal system. She also leads certain investigative reporting projects. The Marshall Project is a non-profit nonpartisan newsroom covering America's criminal justice s...

On this episode we're joined by Ishan Thakore . Ishan is a climate and environmental reporter for Colorado Public Radio . He previously worked as a researcher, fact checker and field associate producer for Full Frontal with Samantha Bee , a show that ran on TBS that used comedy to tell and analyze news stories. We talked to Ishan about both jobs. He discussed his responsibilities on Full Front...

On The Journalism Salute we talk to journalists about who they are and what they do, with the intent of showing that journalists are not the enemy of the people. On this episode, we're joined by Rick Goldsmith . Rick is a 2-time Academy Award nominated documentary filmmaker. His most recent film, Stripped For Parts, American Journalism On The Brink is streaming on PBS.com through the end of 20...

On this episode we're joined by Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez . He is a political science and philosophy student at the University of Texas at Dallas. He's the editor-in-chief of The Retrograde , a student newspaper that operates independent of school administration. He previously was editor-in-chief of The Mercury, which was the campus newspaper that received funding from the school, until...

Hi everyone - Wanted to alert you to another journalism podcast that you might enjoy listening to. This is a recent episode of Small Press, Big Ideas hosted by Paul Gewuerz , who owns and runs a company that produces podcasts for news organizations. It's a podcast about the business of local news and community journalism. Today Paul sits down with Matthew Watkins, Editor-in-Chief of The Texas...

On this episode, we're joined by Laura Kebede-Twumasi . Laura is a journalist and public historian based in Virginia. She has formerly been a staff writer at the Richmond Times-Dispatch and an education reporter at Chalkbeat. From 2022 to 2025 she was a journalist in residence (and professor) at the University of Memphis, where she got her masters, and the Institute for Public Service Reportin...

On this episode we're joined by Ana Valdez . Ana is a multimedia journalist for KWCH-12 TV in Wichita, Kansas. Ana, a native of Bolivia, describes herself as dedicated to sharing bilingual stories, believing that journalism should create impact and that language should be a bridge, not a barrier. Ana shared her career path and gave examples of her work ranging from covering immigration and oth...

On this special edition of The Journalism Salute, we talk to Anita Pinto, a speech therapist for Urban Assembly Gateway School for Technology , a high school in Manhattan in which she started a journalism club last year. Anita is going to check in with us once a month to let us know how her club is doing, the challenges the students face, and the things they learn. We thank the non-profit Press Pa...

On this episode we're joined by Cara Kuhlman . Cara is the director of digital strategy and products for KNKX Public Radio in Seattle. She is also the founder of Future Tides , which provides news for people who work, play, and live on the Pacific Northwest's waterways. I'm interested in that in particular because Cara is doing some clever things to engage with her readership, includin...

On this episode we're joined by Elisha Brown . Elisha is the Reproductive Rights Today Newsletter for the non-profit States Newsroom . She's based in Durham, North Carolina and is a 2017 graduate of American University in Washington D.C. She worked for some prominent newsrooms prior to her current job, including The New York Times , The Atlantic, and The Daily Beast . Elisha talked about t...

On this episode we're joined by a great longform feature writer, John Glionna . John is a longtime journalist – older than most of our guests (he's in his 60s). He spent 35 years in newspapers including 26 at the Los Angeles Times . He's been based in different places around the world, including Seoul, South Korea and Las Vegas. This interview is intended to pick John's brain on wh...

On this episode we're joined by Laura Robertson . Laura just completed a stint as a writer for The Nome Nugget – that's Nome as in Nome, Alaska – and the Nugget is an award-winning weekly that serves a population of 3,700 in western Alaska. It is Alaska's oldest newspaper. She is a graduate of Princeton University. As she prepares to start a new job she talked about her experience both...

On this episode, we're joined by Logan Jaffe . Logan is based in Chicago and is a reporter for ProPublica focusing on newsletters. She's been there for 8 years and her work often centers on using historical research to tell stories about the present. She is a 2011 grad of the University of Florida and is pursuing a masters in public/applied history from Loyola, Chicago. Logan recently wrot...

On this episode, we're joined by Bryan Vance . Bryan is the founder of Stumptown Savings , a newsletter and website that helps the people of Portland Oregon shop for food smarter. This is a chance for us to talk about creator-model journalism and service journalism. Bryan talked about the motivation for starting Stumptown Savings (a combination of a Nieman Lab article and getting laid off), wh...

On this episode we're joined by Jai Smith . Jai is the founder and editor-in-chief of Lehigh Daily. Lehigh Daily is a hyperlocal newsroom covering my community- the Lehigh Valley part of Pennsylvania. It has a presence not just as a website but as an Instagram account with 24,000 followers and a TikTok with 28,000 followers. And it's just over a year old. Jai explained why he started the n...

On this episode we're joined by Veda Thangudu. Veda will be a sophomore biology major at Purdue this fall. Veda is a part of the Youth Environmental Press Team (YEPT), an organization whose goal is to elevate the voices of middle school, high school, and college journalists writing about the environment and the climate crisis. The program exists in 7 states. Students are paid to participate. V...

On this episode we're joined by Angilee Shah . Angilee is the CEO and editor-in-chief of Charlottesville Tomorrow , a non-profit newsroom in Charlottesville, Virginia. A couple of years ago we interviewed someone from that newsroom, Erin O'Hare , in an interview that I've cited in every presentation I've done to students since. So I thought it would be good to talk to someone else...

On this episode we're joined by Hanaa' Tameez . Hanaa' is a staff writer for Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. Hanaa' and Nieman report on the future of journalism. She previously worked for the Fort Worth Star Telegram as its diversity reporter (one example here ). Hanaa is a 2016 graduate of Stony Brook University, where she was editor in chief of the school paper. She...

On this episode we're joined by José Ignacio Casta ñ eda Perez . He's a reporter for Spotlight Delaware , a local independent journalism non-profit. He's been there for the last year and a half. Previously he covered border issues for the The Arizona Republic and Underserved Communities for The Wilmington Delaware News Journal . He's specializing in reporting on immigration in Dela...

On this episode, Mark Simon speaks to Marcela García , associate editor and columnist for the op-ed page at The Boston Globe .  Marcela often writes about Latinx communities in Boston including in a newsletter she launched , ¡ Mira!, that is written in English and Spanish. She also writes some of the Globe's unsigned editorials. For that, she and two of her colleagues were finalists for this y...

On The Journalism Salute we interview journalists about who they are and what they do with the intent of showing that journalists are not the enemy. Today we're joined by Alan Tai . Alan just won the Journalism Education Association's Student Journalist of the Year award as a senior at Monta Vista High School in California. Alan talked about his experiences on the student newspaper, El Est...

On this episode we're joined by Alexandra Lange . She is a journalist, design critic, author and teacher. She was recently named the 2025 Pulitzer Prize winner in criticism for a series of pieces at Bloomberg CityLab about designing cities for families. The judges wrote: For graceful and genre-expanding writing about public spaces for families, deftly using interviews, observations and analysi...

On this episode, Mark Simon is joined by Ayaan Shah . He's the Pennsylvania Student Journalist of the Year and newly graduated from Emmaus High School in Emmaus, Pennsylvania. Ayaan and I live in the same county- Lehigh County. Ayaan talked about his journalism interests. He shared the story of covering Joe Biden's appearance in his town and one interview from that experience that stood ou...

On this episode, we're joined by Justin Baxley . Justin is a journalist based in the south who just completed 3 years working as a digital content manager for 13 WMAZ in Macon, Georgia. He is in the process of transitioning to a new journalism job, but we wanted to talk to him now at the suggestion of Kristen Hare, our recent guest from the Poynter Institute.   Justin's father Michael was...