Personal site of journalist, baker, and storyteller Tony Ganzer.
(This essay ran in the newsletter for Ideastream Public Media on 16 Dec 2021, announcing my departure as afternoon host after 8 years. Listen to my final segment here. More on my future to come.)
Continue reading “Setting a new course between the profound and absurd”
Early in my career, just as I was leaving college, a radio program director told me to quit radio, and never look back.
“Your voice,” she said, looking to the side. “It’s just not…you should do something else. Radio’s not for you.”
In this episode of The Baking Journalist a German theme: breakfast rolls or Brötchen, and three differences between journalism in Germany and the U.S.
I hope you like it, and please subscribe on YouTube, and to my e-mail list.
Continue reading “Baking Vlog: German Brötchen and Journalism”
[An expanded version of this essay appears in my book Kneading Journalism]
It seems to be its own past-time to ask John Kasich whether he’s going to run again for president, perhaps even challenging the incumbent Donald Trump.
CNN is especially interested in Kasich’s plans, and the network invited the two-term Ohio Governor to let viewers see into a crystal ball, and know if he sees a way to the White House.
“Right now, I don’t see it,” Kasich told the network, surely dashing the hopes of keen political observers wanting another narrative arc to follow.
“That doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be a path down the road,” he said, maintaining the possibility of a plot twist later.
I wasn’t surprised by Kasich saying this to CNN in August 2019, not only because I’m a journalist in Ohio and generally feel there would be more buzz before such a move.
The main reason I wasn’t surprised to read about Kasich on CNN is because Kasich is on CNN’s payroll as a Sr. Political Commentator, and pundit.
Continue reading “Journalists should stop subsidizing the pundit class”
In this episode, I tell the story of what happened trying to report at the pyramids a year after the revolution, and a story of charity right after we left. I also try to make Egyptian Fino bread, which I ate nearly every morning in Cairo. And thank you to all of the wonderful Egyptians who told me the proper pronunciation is “fee-no” not “fine-oh!” I hope you like it. A longer essay about Egypt, Egyptian bread being life, and about reporting in the country can be found in my book: Kneading Journalism.
Please subscribe on YouTube, and to my e-mail list.
I didn’t want to leave my recording gear in a public bathroom by the pyramids, but I didn’t think I had a choice. After a chance encounter with a Swiss-Egyptian man in Zurich, I ended up on a week-long reporting trip in Cairo in 2012. Hamid was going to show me his Cairo, and talk about how his native country had changed since the revolution that led to the exit of Hosni Mubarak, and a new chapter in Egypt’s rich history. We traveled to Giza for an interview, and security wouldn’t let me through with my gear. They thought I was a TV guy, and thus needed an expensive permit.
Continue reading “Baking Vlog: Egyptian Fino Bread”
I’m literally just baking a loaf of bread and talking about something journalism-related. In this episode: Irish Gingerbread, a quick bread.
I tell a quick story about stumbling into a G8 protest in Dublin after college, and getting my first taste of being a real journalist. I hope you like it, and please check out my book Kneading Journalism and subscribe on YouTube
What used to be an exception in journalism seems to have become a norm: affording anonymity to sources offering some unattainable insight, intentionally-hidden fact, or, it seems, juicy gossip.
If-and-when to grant anonymity is one of the more controversial discussions in the journalism realm, and it should be.
A written, broadcast, Tweeted, Instagrammed, or whatever, record of a story or claim needs to carry credibility and provability, lest one be attacked for ‘fake news.’
Continue reading “The scourge of ‘anonymous sources’”