We haven't published an episode since April. Here's why, and the plans for Season 3.

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This time on The Media Scrum we speak with Rep. Steve Handy, who represents House District 16 in the Utah Legislature. Steve’s a six-term incumbent who just got tossed by delegates to the GOP Davis County Convention. He talks about that, and other things – including his 17 years at the Standard-Examiner and Deseret News, his dealings with reporters, his work on various legislation including clean-air initiatives and gun bills, and more.

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This time on The Media Scrum we speak with Amy Joi O’Donoghue, a reporter for the Deseret News’ Utah In-Depth team with decades of expertise and award-winning writing in police, government, land and environmental issues. Mark and I have known Amy since 1985, when we all worked together at the Standard-Examiner in Ogden. Amy’s family lives in Weber County with their horses, chickens, Irish Wolfhounds and Jack the cat.

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This time on The Media Scrum we speak with Jim Burton, longtime sports writer and columnist for the Standard-Examiner. Since leaving the Standard, Jim has dabbled in PR and marketing, and even did some editing at the Deseret News. But now he's enjoying work at El Monte golf course in Ogden. We sure enjoyed talking to our old friend, Jim, who definitely has some feelings and observations about journalism and where it’s at now.

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This time on The Media Scrum we venture outside the Utah media bubble and speak with Chris Carlson, who worked in network-TV news for 42 years. As an ABC News cameraman in Washington, D.C., Carlson had a front-row seat to history. In covering Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, Carlson logged scores of unique experiences. Over the decades he spent at the White House, Carlson witnessed many leaders of the "free world" from just 12 feet away, filming the nation’s political history as it was happening. After retiring three years ago, he has self-published an eBook, “9/11 with POTUS,” that’s available for purchase at your favorite online bookseller. We really enjoyed talking to Carlson, and we hope you enjoy listening.

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This time on The Media Scrum we speak with Lori Buttars, longtime reporter for The Salt Lake Tribune. Lori covered the Olympics, arts and music, and all sorts of beats at the Trib. She’s also been a “visiting professional” at Utah State University where, like yours truly, she edited the student newspaper when she was a student there. Back in 2007, Lori fled journalism for public relations as public information officer for the Weber-Morgan Health Department. We actually spend a fair amount of this conversation talking about local public health's response to the coronavirus pandemic, which we found fascinating. We sure enjoyed talking to Lori, and we hope you enjoy listening.

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This time out things are a little different, since Mark had a conflict the evening of the interview, and I ended up speaking with our guest, the Deseret News’s Jay Evensen, one-on-one. Jay is the DNews’s editorial columnist and an editorial writer. He got his start in journalism at BYU, interned at United Press International in New York City, wrote sports in Oklahoma, and was a government and consumer affairs reporter in Las Vegas before landing at the Deseret News. We haven’t talked to many folks from newspapers’ opinion pages on The Media Scrum, so this was fun reconnecting with Jay – I hadn’t communicated with him for years and years – and hearing how he got his start and what it's like to be the editorial voice of a newspaper’s ownership.

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This time out we’re revisiting a conversation we had last summer with Mary Nickles, whose career at KUTV in Salt Lake City just passed the 30-year mark – and 30 years is forever in TV news. Mary has been the morning, noon and/or evening anchor on KUTV’s various news programs for about 25 of those years. Not only is she a pro on the news set, but she’s done health stories over the years that have actually saved lives – including her own. She talks about that, and lots more, on this episode. We had a lot of fun talking to Mary, and we hope you enjoy our conversation.

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