‘MTSU On the Record’ programs reveal river poetry, journalism residency

Recent editions of the “MTSU On the Record” radio program introduced the university’s new journalist-in-residence and reintroduced the third longest river in North America.

Host Gina Logue’s interview with Matthew Brown, a lecturer in the Department of English, first aired Dec. 29 on WMOT-FM (89.5 and www.wmot.org ) and reintroduced the third longest river in North America. You can listen to their conversation here.

Matthew Brown

Brown and his friend Justin Orlowski recorded the sights and sounds of their journey from the source of the Mississippi River to its mouth in May 2013. The end result is “The River Sonnet,” a multimedia presentation including audio, video and Brown’s original poetry.

“I grew up on the Mississippi River in southern Illinois,” Brown said. “Both my mother and my father’s families have been on the same farms for a couple hundred years, and the river is very much on my mind wherever I go.”

Whitney Matheson

Brown and Orlowski’s work may be seen and heard at www.riversonnet.org, including poems written by Brown and inspired by people and places along the river. The radio program included several audio clips from the project.

Logue’s interview with Whitney Matheson, who will become MTSU’s Journalist-in-Residence in spring 2015, first aired Jan. 5 on WMOT-FM. You can listen to their conversation here.

From 1999 to 2014, Matheson worked for USA Today. Her blog, “Pop Candy,” which explored entertainment and pop culture, was posted on the newspaper’s website.

It won the Weblog Award for Best Pop-Culture Blog in 2006 and in 2008 won an EPPY Award for the Best Entertainment Blog from Editor & Publisher and Mediaweek magazines.

“I really think that the most important thing for a journalism student to have is a great portfolio when they graduate,” Matheson said, “so it is important to me to develop projects that not only teach them how to be better journalists but things they can show to people after they graduate to help them get a job.”

To hear previous “MTSU On the Record” programs, visit the searchable “Audio Clips” archives at www.mtsunews.com.

For more information about “MTSU On the Record,” contact Logue at 615-898-5081 or WMOT-FM at 615-898-2800.

A video clip from the Brown interview may be seen below.