News Over Noise

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. 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 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. 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 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. 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.