Episode 43: Newspapers and journalism with The Herald's Phillip O'Connor
Release Date: 10/11/2019
Episode 63: Podcast creator Jason Becker will change your mind about umpires
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Let’s meet the baseball nut who sticks up for the guys behind the plate that every baseball fan loves to hate. Yes, we’re talking about umpires. In this episode of the Check It Out! podcast, host Ken Harvey talks to his friend Jason Becker, creator of the . “In my book, he’s a genius, and he’s producing a fascinating podcast for the officials behind America’s favorite round-ball sport. That’s baseball, and those are umpires,” Harvey said in introducing Becker. “Fans and players often...
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Episode 62: Professor's academic research on racial strife leads to his first novel
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In Episode 62 of Sno-Isle Libraries Check It Out podcast, co-hosts Ken Harvey and Tricia Lee talk to local author Stewart Tolnay and learn how he has used his study of American racial history to create interesting fiction and nonfiction. Tolnay is a Ph.D. professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Washington. His first fiction novel, “,” features a Black Vietnam War veteran, his white girlfriend and the struggles they face as an interracial couple in Everett in 1969. Tolnay is also the author or co-author of...
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Episode 61: Peek inside the childlike mind of Chris Ballew and meet Caspar Babypants
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Part 1: You Don’t Wanna Be a Rock-and-Roll Star Chris Ballew lived the rock-and-roll life. As frontman for the late, great Presidents of the United States of America, he wrote infectious, goofy, catchy hits about “Peaches” and a “Dune Buggy” when heavy grunge dominated Seattle’s FM radio waves. He toured all over the world. He played to packed arenas and stadiums. He even won a Grammy award. But that’s the old Chris Ballew. Today,...
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Episode 60: Thanks to the internet and copious amounts of data, the future is now
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Rodney Clark helps deliver the future. As the vice president of the Worldwide Internet of Things and Mixed Reality Team, Clark and his crew work with more than 8,000 partners and clients to connect billions of everyday devices to the cloud. Sensors on stop lights, cash registers, automobiles, home appliances, exercise monitors, video doorbells. They all generate information and data that allows organizations to take action on that data and insights. “It’s a wave, it’s a reality,” Clark said. It’s no longer “the future.” “The job that I have and...
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Episode 59: If coronavirus has you worried, this good doctor reminds you you're not alone
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If you’re anxious about the global coronavirus pandemic and COVID-19, you’re not alone. In this episode of Sno-Isle Libraries , you’ll hear how a globe-trotting disaster-relief doctor loses sleep about the deadly virus that has upended our sense of “normal.” is a clinical assistant professor at Washington State University’s Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine after spending 33 years at the University of Washington School of Medicine in a similar role. In 1994, he and his wife, Debbie, founded CMRT, the nation’s first state-affiliated medical disaster response...
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Episode 58: Claudia Samano-Losada loves libraries as much as she loves her communities
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Claudia Samano Losado has many talents. Early-childhood educator. World traveler. Life coach. Recreation-center owner. Dance-movement instructor. But maybe most importantly, Losado is a fervent Oak Harbor Library supporter. “I think I’m very passionate about a lot of things, and one of my passions is to share with others and to take and give in the same way,” said Losado, a member of the library’s board. “Since I have had so much from the library I’ve wanted to give back to, and this is a very good way to give back, but not just that, to know more about the...
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Episode 57: For food critic Nancy Leson, deadlines got in the way of a good time
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Chapter 1: Meet the writer who’s not fond of writing Nancy Leson loves books, she loves libraries, she loves to talk and she loves food. That makes the Edmonds resident an ideal guest for Sno-Isle Libraries . Libraries figured large in Leson’s childhood in Philadelphia. Her family had little disposable income, so off to the library they went to borrow books and glean information from encyclopedias. These days, Leson says, the Friends of the Edmonds Library book sale is her favorite book event every year. Books and learning followed Leson into adulthood. ...
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Episode 56: A Rich Frishman picture isn't just a thousand words. It's a story unto itself.
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If a picture is worth a thousand words, some of photographs could be novels. Frishman was a news photographer for The Daily Herald in Everett and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize before he left to pursue freelance work. He knows how to tell a story with a photograph, and he still sees and tells the stories of America through his camera lens. Frishman has criss-crossed the country to chronicle its beauty and everyday life in his collections, and , and the guarded secrets in The difference between Frishman and the rest of us who think we take good pictures is how...
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Episode 55: Sometimes, a guest's gift can be hard for hosts to swallow
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admits he was a bookworm as a child. Is that why the prolific author loves insects, and loves to eat them? Sno-Isle Libraries hosts Ken Harvey, Jim Hills and Jessica Russell sat down with Gordon and chewed the fat about his reputation as “the bug chef.” And they graciously accepted the guest’s gifts, as polite hosts do. Yes. Harvey, Hills and Russell ate bugs. The Seattle-based author of “” and 19 other titles covering , and has appeared on many TV shows and headlined national festivals. When Gordon visited Sno-Isle Libraries and laid out plates of edible bugs, the hosts were...
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Episode 54: From "J.P. Patches" to elusive gorillas, this Edmonds pair has seen plenty
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If you’re old enough to remember when Seattle television was limited to a handful of broadcast channels and you remember J.P. Patches, you’ve seen the work of Sharon Howard and Mike Rosen. Howard got her start in broadcast TV in 1977 with KIRO-TV as a floor director for newscasts and “.” It was performed and broadcast live, six mornings a week. Without any rehearsal to speak of. “Well, everybody thinks that we had a script and it was planned, but our plans were to meet in the cafeteria 15 minutes before the show,” Howard said. “And we just played it by ear. Somebody would say,...
info_outlineThere is no doubt that newspapers and journalism are undergoing changes.
Phillip O'Connor should know, he has worked through many of those changes and continues to chart a course into the future for the Fourth Estate in his new role as executive editor of The Herald newspaper in Everett, Wash.
Until arriving at The Herald in the summer of 2019, O'Connor was a committed midwesterner by birth and then choice.
O'Connor started as a "15-er" (sports department clerk working for three hours at $5 an hour) , taking scores over the phone for his hometown paper, the venerable Kansas City Star (which also launched the career of Ernest Hemingway). After rising through the reporter ranks and various news beats, he moved a few hundred miles east across Missouri to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
It was at St. Louis where O'Connor says his mileage reports went from cross-town to round the globe.
"After Sept. 11, 2001, it was around Thanksgiving and my parents were in town," O'Connor says. "I got a call from my boss; would you be willing to go to Afghanistan?
"And I say, 'Absolutely.' So I walk back to the living room where parents are and I say, 'I guess I'm going to Afghanistan.
"And my mom says, 'I raised an idiot.'"
After Afghanistan came reporting trips to Iraq, Bosnia, Israel and then Haiti after the devastating 2010 earthquake.
The common thread, O'Connor says, is local news.
"When I went to Afghanistan the first time, we traveled with a doctor from St. Louis and that was how we got across the border," O'Connor says. "We told her story."
After St. Louis, O'Connor went to The Oklahoman newspaper in Oklahoma City and the next phase of his career.
"At Oklahoma, I wanted to change my role," O'Connor says, adding that he eventually oversaw breaking news, enterprise reporting and other areas of news coverage. "(And) instilling the digital culture in our newsroom, looking at the strategies and tools and storytelling methods. We were able to do amazing work that I'm very, very proud of."
All of that experience has a bearing on O'Connor's view of journalism, newspapers and his role at The Herald.
"Local content is what our readers are interested in," he says. "I try to direct as much of our resources as we can toward local content. And, we need to have a digital experience that people are going to enjoy."
As for the future, O'Connor shares his own thoughts on the current state of journalism: "I don't think the public understands how dedicated hardworking committed the majority of people in this profession are. Todays' journalists are more skilled than any generation we've ever had. The talent we demand from our reporters is pretty amazing."
Episode length: 1:02:45
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