NEPA SCENE PODCAST: The ethics, bias, and power of modern media (with guest Joe Van Wie of JVW, Inc.)
Professionally recorded every Monday at The Stude in TwentyFiveEight Studios in Scranton and released exclusively on nepascene.com every Tuesday, the NEPA Scene Podcast is a free supplement to the website, expanding on the arts and entertainment stories covered on the site and going beyond them to discuss other news and entertainment topics.
Each week, the unedited and uncensored podcast features Rich Howells, NEPA Scene founder and editor; Mark Dennebaum, president and owner of TwentyFiveEight Studios; and Lauren Quirolgico, commercial and content strategist at Lavelle Strategy Group and editor at TwentyFiveEight. Every episode streams on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and nepascene.com.
In Episode 46, we welcome our guest, Joe Van Wie, an award-winning producer and CEO of video, web, and media production company JVW, Inc., and our friends Lee Shaffer and Jimmy Reynolds to talk about the evolution of media and publishing and its role today, both locally and nationally. After the Weekender, a Wilkes-Barre arts and entertainment paper, published a controversial article that made national headlines because the writer, Justin Adam Brown, bragged about getting free drinks at a bar by pretending to be a military veteran, many readers in Northeastern Pennsylvania have been questioning why they chose to go in this direction and what the place of an alternative publication should be. After taking the Weekender to task a bit and laughing about Brown’s embarrassing appearance on Steve Corbett’s talk show on WILK-FM, we discuss the history of modern media and how it shapes public opinion; how business and corporate interests play a role in the presentation of information and the change they’ve caused locally; journalistic ethics and bias; the enduring political power of newspapers in NEPA; creating local political ads; the Internet, bloggers, and citizen journalism shaping the way news is presented today, for better or worse; being an “alternative” without resorting to shock value or clickbait; and the power of the Netflix documentary series “Making a Murderer,” which changed so many minds in a murder case long after the media had guided public opinion.
In The Last Word segment, we talk about the need for positivity and cooperation to truly present an alternative view in media and shaking things up in the area to bring about change.
Listen on iTunes.
Listen on SoundCloud:
Listen on Stitcher.
Watch the first 10 minutes of the show on YouTube:
And just for fun and to show that we don’t take ourselves too seriously, here’s a few minutes of banter about Mark walking in on Lee in the bathroom before the show gets going:
Photo by Mark Dennebaum/TwentyFiveEight Studios
