Hallie Linden yearns to write for the New York Times. At the moment, she’s stuck at a daily newspaper in tiny Green Meadow, Indiana, a town known for its amusement park and nothing else. It’s 1989, and juicy reporting jobs are hard to find. She resolves to work hard, win a few awards, and then welcome the job offers.
In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host David Ahrens speaks with Cynthia Simmons. She’s author of a recent novel called Wrong Kind of Paper, the story of a young reporter in a small town who resists the corporate journalist demand to avoid “controversy.”
The novel unexpectedly turns into a two track thriller — one uncovering the deadly corruption and the other is the fight to get the story published.
Before her career as a reporter, novelist and professor of media law, Cynthia Simmons was the News Director of WORT-FM. Since then, she’s held numerous prestigious reporting positions, and is now the Associate Teaching Professor at Penn State, where she teaches mass media law.
In this interview, she also shares with Ahrens the special contribution of listener-supported radio by providing the information necessary for a democracy to function.
What Are You Reading?
A Musical Translation of Movement: Jérôme Camal on Guadeloupean Gwoka and (Post) Coloniality
Joyce Carol Oates, "Zero-Sum"
B. Pladek’s Magical Intersection Of Ecology And History
Jon Melrod's "Fighting Times" in Wisconsin
Novelist And Poet Quan Barry On Nonduality, Communicating Beyond Language, And Writing Across Genres
Poet Deshawn McKinney On Vulnerability As A Muscle
Scholar Nicole Fox On Memorials, Transitional Justice, And The Inescapability Of Memory
Michael Dorgan, "No Fight, No Blame: A Journalist's Life in Martial Arts" (part 2)
On (Short) Storytelling, with Wisconsin writer Steve Fox
The search for dignity in Palestine, with Christa Bruhn
Local Writer JK Cheema On Writing, Family, And Remembering The Past
Jon Shelton on "The Education Myth"
Writer John West On Paradox, Redemption, And Playing Bach
Mark Borthwick, "A Brave and Lovely Woman: Mamah Borthwick and Frank Lloyd Wright"
Public Lies and Professional Secrets in Cold War Washington
Scholar Sami Schalk On Black Disability Politics from the Black Panthers to the 2020 Uprising
Madison Infuses Scott Mitchel May’s New Novel, “Breakneck”
Writer Jeff Sharlet On Whiteness, Slow Civil War, And Harry Belafonte
Freedom Dreaming with Anisa Yudawanti and Amy Wilson
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Lit Society: Books and Drama
Ex Libris
Write The Book: Conversations on Craft
Pride and Prejudice
The Federalist Papers
Fresh Air
Myths and Legends