Rex Smith

“Freedom is a fragile thing, and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction.”

(Airs 04/04/25 & 04/06/25 @ 6 p.m.) The Media Project is an inside look at media coverage of current events with former Times Union Editor, current Upstate American, Substack columnist Rex Smith, Judy Patrick, former Editor of the Daily Gazette, Barbara Lombardo, Adjunct Professor at the University at Albany and former Editor of the Saratogian, and Daily Gazette Editor Miles Reed. On this week’s Media Project, Rex, Judy, Barbara, and Miles talk about a survey that shows people are tuning back into the news, the difficulty of covering the Doge cuts, a poll that shows Americans, by a 2-1 margin, want to fund public broadcasting, and much more.

There’s a silly Monty Python sketch from a half-century ago that some of you surely remember, and it spawned an enduring meme — though we didn’t have that name for it then. In the scene, a hapless character who is annoyed about being asked a lot of baffling questions complains, “I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition,” at which point a trio of red-caped cardinals bursts into the room, with one exclaiming, “No-o-o-body expects the Spanish Inquisition!”

(Airs 03/28/25 & 03/30/25 @ 6 p.m.) The Media Project is an inside look at media coverage of current events with former Times Union Editor, current Upstate American, Substack columnist Rex Smith, Judy Patrick, former Editor of the Daily Gazette, Barbara Lombardo, Adjunct Professor at the University at Albany and former Editor of the Saratogian, and Daily Freeman Publisher Emeritus Ira Fusfeld. On this week’s Media Project, Rex, Judy, Barbara, and Ira talk about The Atlantic Editor’s Signal chat story, the Trump administration threatening public broadcasting and the Voice of America, and much more.

Lately I’ve been noticing how many English words are portmanteaus – that is, words created by joining parts of two other words. You know, like “brunch,” which is a smooshing together of breakfast and lunch, or “blog,” which was created from “web” and “log.” There’s a lot of this in America: We get “sporks” at fast-food joints, and we go home to sit next to our “labradoodle” and multi-task by browsing our “email” while watching a “sitcom” or a “romcom” or maybe a “bromance.”

(Airs 03/21/25 & 03/23/25 @ 6 p.m.) The Media Project is an inside look at media coverage of current events with former Times Union Editor, current Upstate American, Substack columnist Rex Smith, Judy Patrick, former Editor of the Daily Gazette and Vice President for Editorial Development for the New York Press Association, Barbara Lombardo, Adjunct Professor at the University at Albany and former Editor of the Saratogian, and WAMC News Director Ian Pickus. On this week’s Media Project, Rex, Judy, Barbara, and Ian talk about what the White House Press Corps needs, the difficulty of reporting on what’s going with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, why local and regional reporting is so important, and much more.

Those of us who work in journalism understand that when we tell people that we’re worried about what the Trump administration is doing to press freedom -- and particularly about the threat of changes to libel law -- we might sound like just another interest group pleading for our own privileges. Here in Albany, where I’m speaking just now, we see a lot of that, after all.

(Airs 03/14/25 & 03/16/25 @ 6 p.m.) The Media Project is an inside look at media coverage of current events with former Times Union Editor, current Upstate American, Substack columnist Rex Smith, Judy Patrick, former Editor of the Daily Gazette and Vice President for Editorial Development for the New York Press Association, Barbara Lombardo, Adjunct Professor at the University at Albany and former Editor of the Saratogian, and Daily Freeman Publisher Emeritus Ira Fusfeld. On this week’s Media Project, Rex, Judy, Barbara, and Ira talk about the difficulty of covering news under the Trump Administration, Jeff Bezos and what’s happening at the Washington Post, the threat to libel law, and much more.

In this commentary last week, we discussed some notions of how to maintain our mental health in turbulent times for America. Not that I’m a psychologist, mind you – I’m just a journalist, who has come across some research that I consider worth passing along.

(Airs 03/07/25 & 03/09/25 @ 6 p.m.) The Media Project is an inside look at media coverage of current events with former Times Union Editor, current Upstate American, Substack columnist Rex Smith, Barbara Lombardo, Adjunct Professor at the University at Albany and former Editor of the Saratogian, Daily Gazette Editor Miles Reed and David Guistina, Media Project Producer, Morning Edition Anchor, and Adjunct Professor at the University at Albany. On this week’s Media Project, Rex, Barbara, Miles and David talk about the increasing need for public media, the challenge of covering the local angles of the Doge cuts, what’s happening at the Washington Post, and much more.