By Trinity Times Staff
Season two of the Trinity Times podcast Enlightened Exchanges begins Feb. 4, 2025, with an episode that features a roundtable discussion with students and scholars of Trinity Washington University about the start of President Donald Trump’s second administration.
“The staff of Trinity Times wanted the new season to begin strong with a timely topic,” said Chaz Muth, director of Trinity’s multimedia newsroom and program chair of the university’s Journalism and Media Studies program. “Actions by the new administration have dominated the news since the Jan. 20 inauguration and the impact is already being felt by the entire Trinity community. This became the natural topic.”
This first episode features Trinity Times student journalists Saron Gebereegziabhier and Genesis Bu-Chinchilla; Trinity President Patricia McGuire; Allen Pietrobon, chair of the university’s global affairs department; and two student members of the school’s Debate Society, its president, Lakshimi Mosquera-Herrera, and its public relations manager, Djenba Cisse.
The episode will drop 5 a.m. Tuesday, in time for regular listeners to hear during their morning commute, Muth told Trinity Times.
It’s the student news organization’s ongoing effort to produce digital news content in multiple media platforms in the ways people consume news in the 21st century, he said.
The second season of Enlightened Exchanges is expected to include episodes posted every Tuesday throughout the university’s 2025 spring semester on a variety of topics, including politics, the environment, technology, feminism, social justice, scientific and health.
The inaugural season of Enlightened Exchanges began Oct. 8, 2024, and the student news organization posted weekly episodes in the fall semester.
“I was so impressed with the first season of the podcast,” McGuire told members of the Trinity Times staff when they assembled for the Jan. 29 recording of the roundtable discussion featured in the Feb. 4 episode. “I’m so glad Trinity Times has jumped into the podcasting space.”
The university’s president, who served as an editor at Trinity Times as an undergraduate student at Trinity in the 1970s, confirmed her commitment to student journalism at Trinity.
The number of podcast listers in the U.S. has grown from 17 million in 2008 to more than 100 million in 2023, according to Edison Research.
Podcasting allows student journalists to showcase long-form, in-depth reporting in a way they can’t in other news platforms, said Joshua Romney, an adjunct professor at Trinity who teaches in the Journalism and Media Studies program, better known as JAMS.
Podcasts offer several advantages for journalists. They provide a platform for long-form storytelling, free from the time and space constraints of traditional media. This allows journalists to explore stories in greater depth, adding context and nuance that might be lost in standard news reports. Additionally, the conversational style of podcasts creates a sense of intimacy and trust between the host and listeners, helping to build a loyal audience.
Students majoring in JAMS learn how to produce news content on multiple platforms and includes articles, videography, podcasts, photography and social media.
Listeners can find the Enlightened Exchanges homepage on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or on the Trinity Times website. The podcast is carried on many different podcasting platforms.