At The Journalism Salute, We Take Pride in Diversity of the Beats We Showcase
One of the cool things about this podcast is in scheduling the guest interviews. I like the idea that usually, one week is so completely different from the next. The last three weeks are a classic example of that. But as much as our guests are different, the principles of what they do are similar.
This week’s episode features Mesfin Fekadu (listen here). Mesfin is the music editor at The Hollywood Reporter. The son of Ethiopian immigrants, Mesfin was obsessed with music at an early age. It’s as if his whole life built to his two biggest journalism jobs, one with the Associated Press and now his current job. He’s also the vice-president of the Society for Features Journalism.
Mesfin works on anything and everything related to music. He could be breaking news one day, then writing a feature about a transgender music engineer the next. Hollywood Reporter is also known for its celebrity interviews and Mesfin has talked to some of the biggest names in music (for example, Dolly Parton and Fifty Cent.
Mesfin knows that there are going to be a lot of eyes on those pieces, so he works to make them stand out. In this clip, he explains the importance of the research he does.
Two weeks ago our interview guest was Jim Morris. Jim is the executive director and editor-in-chief of Public Health Watch, which does investigative journalism related to Public Health. Jim is a journalism lifer with 40+ years of experience. He’s won many, many prominent awards and just recently published a book, The Cancer Factory, that took much of his career to write.
Jim, who is based in Texas, has an expertise in environmental pollution, and many of the resources at Public Health Watch are put towards a series of stories under the subject of Toxic Texas Air. It’s arduous, potentially even dangerous work but Morris’ team is devoted to covering it. As Jim explains in this clip, the impact of doing so can be significant
The week before we talked to Jim, we were joined by Lev Gringauz. Lev is a writer and associate editor for Jewfolk, which a non-profit news source for Jewish news in Minneapolis-St. Paul and Cincinnati.
Lev writes about Judaism from many different angles. He’s done a series of pieces recently in which he visited historic Holocaust sites with a group of teachers. He also did a longform piece documenting the goings on related to the closing of a nationally-known rabbinical school in Cincinnati. In this clip, he explained how he views the role of journalist as pertains to his work.
We continue to plug away every week talking to interesting journalists and learning their stories.
Coming next Tuesday, we’ll have an interview with Aisha Sultan, an award-winning nationally syndicated feature writer and columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Aisha is Pakistani-American and that interview will come out the day before Pakistan Independence Day. And the following week we’ll talk with Alice Scott, the Journalism Education Association Student Journalist of the Year, who grew up in Texas and is headed to the University of North Carolina.
I hope you’ll check those out.