Episode One: From Newspapers to Television Programming
Episode One
Title: From Newspapers to Television Programming: How News and Entertainment have Grown since 1950
Student Producer: Diza Baryshnikov (member of the class of 2026)
Episode Description:
In this episode, we explore Americans’ experience with media news and entertainment. From listening to major World War II news over radio to watching the first music video on MTV, this podcast dives into the ways our media lives have changed over the past several decades.
Featuring:
Margaret Lovell, a retired science writer who has lived all over the United States, settling in Urbana, Illinois in 2022.
John Dudley, a Professor Emeritus in Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois who grew up on a farm in eastern Indiana. After receiving his PhD in plant breeding and genetics, he worked with the U.S Department of Agriculture on sugar beets and alfalfa and later returned to the Midwest to work on corn genetics.
Celia Elliot, the Director of External Affairs in the University of Illinois Department of Physics, grew up in Tolono, Illinois, bought her first Apple IIe in 1985. She has since worked with technology in federal research administration as it shifted from paper proposals to online systems.
Cope Cumpston, a retired book designer who grew up in Massachusetts and later moved to Urbana in 1996 to follow a job with a publishing company. She currently hosts the show “Womyn Making Waves” on Champaign-Urbana’s community radio station WEFT 90.1 FM.
Ann Reisner grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. She received her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Mass Communications and now serves as Associate Professor Emerita in the Department of Media & Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois.
Paula Kaufman, now retired, moved to Champaign-Urbana in 1999 to become the first Dean of Libraries and University Librarian at the University of Illinois. She also was the first recipient of the Juanita J. and Robert E. Simpson University Library Deanship.
Grant Henry, an Illinois native, first lived in Central Illinois in 1975 when he came to the University of Illinois to get his PhD. A retired school administrator, he now lives in Champaign.
Dennis Wenger, a local, central Illinois farmer who lives and farms in Fairbury.
Keith Kelley, a Professor Emeritus of Immunophysiology at the University of Illinois.
Colleen Bushell, an original designer of MOSAIC, the first popular web browser to display images with text. She currently serves as Director of Health Care Innovation at National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).
