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Audio Astra: Betraying our medical ‘heroes’ in Kansas
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. Call health care workers whatever you want — heroes, essential, frontline. Whatever word we use, the constant refrain from health care workers and medical […]
Audio Astra: Calculating public harm from tax break, deep freeze
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. How does the government calculate what we each owe? Whether it’s a decision by a utility regulatory board or a court decision about property […]
Audio Astra: When trickle down effects become a waterfall
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. When daily newspapers shed jobs during the last few decades, education reporters took a hard hit. The layoffs left one or two reporters to […]
Audio Astra: COVID insecurity in many different forms
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. COVID-19 has become so ingrained in our news coverage that I didn’t realize essentially all of the stories in this week’s Audio Astra are […]
Audio Astra: Experts on Kansas tax incentives, wildlife earn our ears with authority, details
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 cast of scientists, doctors, academics and other experts in my playlist this week is staggering. I hope you join me in rewarding the […]
Audio Astra: From sublime to newsy, from speculative to touristy, all in podcasts
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. Writing a headline for this weekly recap can be easy when there are tidy connections or overlaps between one podcast and another. Not so […]
Audio Astra: Honesty vs. ignorance with COVID, plus redistricting and school censorship
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. To start this week’s audio recap, let’s do a comparison of two COVID-focused podcasts. On one podcast, we have Joseph LeMaster, the Johnson County […]
Audio Astra: Athletics and finances in higher education, plus foster care concerns
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, I have been frequently quoting the Kansas podcasts that I heard. Of course, that is helped by living in a sports-crazed family […]
Audio Astra: Civil rights, political divisions, a long-ago zoo, school standards
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 variety and quality of Kansas audio this week is the best collection since I started this recap in May. While I would normally […]
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 […]