My Principles of Journalism students were charged to create a podcast that focused on news literacy while critically engaging with journalism’s foundations and the journalism industry. The students created 60 episodes in the first year focused on 12 specialty or alternative presses. The podcast is now expanding to also have interviews with professionals about their work and the role of news literacy within it.
See below to listen to Ink and Airwaves, their incredible podcast.
What Local News Means to Us: Spectrum News 1 – Ink and Airwaves
In this reflection episode, the team steps back from reporting and compares notes on what changed in their own news habits after analyzing Spectrum News 1 Milwaukee. They talk through where local news fits into their day-to-day lives, what pulls them toward national headlines or social feeds instead, and how emotions like stress, avoidance, and "doomscrolling" shape what they choose to watch or ignore. The group also names where Spectrum's approach to circulation and access met them or missed them, then connects those observations to bigger course ideas about news literacy, trust, verification, and civic responsibility. The episode closes with concrete next steps each person plans to take to stay more engaged with local news without letting it take over their attention.
- What Local News Means to Us: Spectrum News 1
- How Spectrum News 1 Milwaukee finds (or loses) its audience
- FoodShare uncertainty in Milwaukee and how USA Today framed it nationally
- Inside the work of Aly Prouty, Multimedia Journalist of Spectrum News
- Producing News in Brew City: Spectrum News and the Local Contexts of Their Practice
Patrick R. Johnson, Ph.D., MJE 