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Audio Astra: Political conversations on race, abortion and COVID-19
Audio Astra reviews recent audio reporting on Kansas news, including podcasts and radio stories. Eric Thomas directs the Kansas Scholastic Press Association and teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the University of Kansas. Kansas politics overwhelms other topics in the audio reporting space, but especially this week as podcasts from the Reflector, KCUR and the Topeka Capital-Journal […]
Audio Astra: Concerns for workers, unvaccinated patients, bird bureaucracy
Audio Astra reviews recent audio reporting on Kansas news, including podcasts and radio stories. Eric Thomas directs the Kansas Scholastic Press Association and teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the University of Kansas. Listening to podcasts from around the state provides some unexpected connections from week to week and from one podcast to another. This week, those […]
Audio Astra: Saving the planet, home to vultures, combatting COVID-19
Audio Astra reviews recent audio reporting on Kansas news, including podcasts and radio stories. Eric Thomas directs the Kansas Scholastic Press Association and teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the University of Kansas. Reporting on climate change is a staple in coastal areas, but the topic emerged a few times this week in the audio reporting in […]
Audio Astra: Right-wing extremism, Medicaid holdouts, Confederate monuments, new media
Audio Astra reviews recent audio reporting on Kansas news, including podcasts and radio stories. Eric Thomas directs the Kansas Scholastic Press Association and teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the University of Kansas. This week’s listening is brief in duration but packed with consequence. Listeners can blaze through all of the excerpts below in less than an […]
Audio Astra: Black farmers, pools for the people, safe spaces
Audio Astra reviews recent audio reporting on Kansas news, including podcasts and radio stories. Eric Thomas directs the Kansas Scholastic Press Association and teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the University of Kansas. Through coverage of reparations, sexual identity and even public pools, three public radio segments this week document how Black folks are advocating for change […]
Audio Astra: ‘Grassland Groupies,’ Wichita homesteaders, summer school blues
Audio Astra reviews recent audio reporting on Kansas news, including podcasts and radio stories. Eric Thomas directs the Kansas Scholastic Press Association and teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the University of Kansas. The three podcasts I’ve spotlighted this week all wander into nature in their own ways: one through a “virtual” summer school field trip, one […]
Audio Astra: Growing hemp in Kansas, being farmers’ wives, not compromising on gun rights
Audio Astra reviews recent audio reporting on Kansas news, including podcasts and radio stories. Eric Thomas directs the Kansas Scholastic Press Association and teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the University of Kansas. The thread that holds much of this week’s audio reporting together is how changing government programs and regulations impact Kansans, whether it’s about agriculture, […]
Audio Astra: Kansans taking down Asian stereotypes, training cybersecurity specialists
Audio Astra reviews recent audio reporting on Kansas news, including podcasts and radio stories. Eric Thomas directs the Kansas Scholastic Press Association and teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the University of Kansas. It’s been an incredibly rich week for audio reporting in Kansas. Many episodes didn’t make it into Audio Astra this week, including recent installments […]
Audio Astra: Kansas’ missing lifeguards, middle-of-the-road memories and the ‘evangelical machine’
Audio Astra reviews recent audio reporting on Kansas news, including podcasts and radio stories. Eric Thomas directs the Kansas Scholastic Press Association and teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the University of Kansas. As summer begins in Kansas, it was a week of listening to stories about swimming, taking a lighter approach to life and slowing […]
Audio Astra: Farmers saving water, virtual reality med school and other surprising sounds
Audio Astra will review recent audio reporting on Kansas news, including podcasts and radio stories. Eric Thomas directs the Kansas Scholastic Press Association and teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the University of Kansas. In the coming weeks, I look forward to showcasing reporting from the previous week. In this first installment of Audio Astra, […]