Journalists Are My Heroes Kyle Munson

This finale for Season 1 of Journalists Are My Heroes finds me looking in the mirror: Matthew Hansen recently wrapped his tenure as metro columnist at the Omaha World-Herald. Like me, he's a child of the rural Midwest who ended up working as a columnist in his native state's largest newsroom. Also like me, he recently stepped out of journalism to flex his skills in the world of content marketing; he's now managing editor for the Buffett Early Childhood Institute. Like any good journalist given plenty of leash, Hansen in his 16 years at the World-Herald followed his whims far and wide -- including reporting trips to Afghanistan and Cuba. He also had a front-row seat to Omaha billionaire Warren Buffett's purchase of his hometown newspaper and the diminishing prospects that Buffett now sees for the financial viability of local news. This conversation runs the gamut: Hansen talks about how the journalism crisis cut his newsroom in half, but we also discuss the goofy origin of his @redcloud_scribe Twitter handle. I ask Hansen about one of his epic stories where he discovered that the most famous photo in American history essentially was a big lie. He also talks about some of his new outlets for writing, including online magazine Between Coasts. We even explore Hansen's feelings about the heart attack that he survived this summer (and wrote about, of course). Get to know a journalist who says he has "an overactive sense of justice, like every metro columnist in the country." 

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Graham Lee Brewer, "a reporter covering criminal justice, the death penalty, and Indian Country," grew up listening to National Public Radio in the back of his parents' car. Today he's a working journalist in Oklahoma with a distinguished resume that blends experience on the radio and in the traditional print headquarters of the Oklahoman, among many other highlights. Brewer, also a board member of the Native American Journalists Association (NAJA), currently is contributing editor on the tribal affairs desk of High Country News, a nonprofit news org dedicated to covering the American West. Brewer spends some of his time helping to train other newsrooms nationwide in the ethics of covering Indigenous peoples. Our conversation includes Brewer's work with NAJA, his own Cherokee roots (as the Cherokee Nation currently campaigns to add its own representative to the U.S. House, based on an 1835 treaty), his chronicling of the executions of death-row inmates, and many other journalism topics. Thanks for listening and for spending a little time getting to know another working journalist. 

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In this episode I talk to Laura Dawn, chief creative officer of recently launched news aggregator FrontPageLive.com. The shorthand description is that it's a progressive response to the massively popular Druge Report. But it goes much deeper than that, as you'll hear from our interview. Among the team that launched the site is none other than former Fox News political reporter Carl Cameron. 

Dawn isn't a journalist by the traditional definition. She's an activist who for years has been a writer, director, strategist, and producer of social justice campaigns. She was the seventh employee of MoveOn.org. She runs her own agency, Art Not War, with her partner, Daron. She talks in this interview about how she was among those targeted by Cambridge Analytica in the final months of the 2016 presidential election. 

The way the political battles now rage online, with such sophisticated and micro-targeted information campaigns, makes it harder than ever to sort the propagandists from the activists from the journalists. And it's the journalists who seem to be struggling most of all to hold their line.


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Larrison Campbell is a political reporter whose coverage for nonprofit news org Mississippi Today has an emphasis on public health. Her summer, meanwhile, has had an emphasis on viral news. That's because a married male gubernatorial candidate in Mississippi denied her a ride-along to cover him on the campaign trail unless Campbell and her editor agreed to send a male reporter as chaperone; the candidate feared that political opponents might exploit images of the two of them together for attack ads. That sparked a firestorm of debate over gender equity, "the Billy Graham rule," the #metoo movement, and a host of other issues. But that's hardly the totality of Campbell as a journalist. She has had a long and varied career across the country--including a long stint working behind the scenes for daytime TV and Hollywood. She joined Mississippi Today in 2016, the week before its official launch. Her work with the statewide news nonprofit includes its own podcast, "The Other Side." Here we talk about everything from the gender politics of political coverage to nonprofit news to "As the World Turns." Spend a little time getting to know @thisislarrison, a working journalist providing real news for her local community.


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"I actually enjoy covering public meetings," says Ty Rushing, managing editor for Iowa Information Inc., a family news operation that serves numerous communities in northwest Iowa and whose flagship newspaper is the N'West Iowa Review in the town of Sheldon, pop. 5,100. Rushing, who began his first full-time journalism job in 2013 in Newton, Iowa, grew up reading the Kansas City Star and dreaming of a career covering sports. But he has come to cherish his role and responsibility in a land where "just about any food item (can) be turned into a taco or pizza variation, including soups and burgers." He has seen how his dedicated reporting on city council meetings and other public affairs -- both in his news stories and in his lively Twitter feed -- helps give his readers a voice and protect their interests. Local officials who meet in secret or a town of 125 threatened with losing its emergency medical services are issues that affect Rushing's friends and neighbors. 


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Our latest guest is dedicated veteran journalist Doug Burns, co-owner and editor of a family newspaper that has delivered quality local news for nearly a century. With the Carroll Times Herald and affiliated newspapers in western Iowa, Burns manages to cover everything from colorful local characters to feisty national politics. (He even has his own interviews and issues podcast on Anchor, Iowa Political Mercury.) This conversation ranges all over the media landscape: the challenges facing modern community newspapers; Burns' new digital media marketing firm intended to claw back a little revenue from Facebook and Google; his nasty recent libel lawsuit; how to revive rural Main streets in the Amazon era; the enduring controversies around Iowa Rep. Steve King; the 2020 Iowa caucuses and presidential campaign; and many more topics. As always, thanks for listening. And please subscribe to and support the sources of local news that you rely on.


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Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/journalistsaremyheroes/support