Angie Cooksy: 0:10

Welcome back to the Bradley University Podcast. If this is your first time listening in, I am one of your hosts. I am Angie Cooksy. I serve as the vice president for enrollment management, marketing and communications here at Bradley, and my co-host is Ben Jedd.

Ben Jedd: 0:26

I am assistant vice president of marketing and communications here at Bradley University.

Angie Cooksy: 0:30

Which basically are really long titles to say we get to be the storytellers on campus, which is pretty much the coolest job, I think. Yeah, it's pretty fun. Um so if you haven't heard of the podcast before, first and foremost, we are recording it in Hilltop Studios here on campus in the lower level of University Hall. It is an awesome space full of really cool technology for our students and our community to be able to tell stories and do music production and all sorts of things. Um super thankful to be able to have this space to record the podcast. And the whole point of the show is to highlight the awesome people and the amazing things that are happening in and around campus with Bradley Connections. And so let's just jump right in. Our guest today is Sarah Netzley. She is a professor of communication and journalism here in the Slayton College of Communications and Fine Arts at Bradley University. Sarah, can you tell us a little bit about your background and the path to the seat that you sit in today in the communications department?

Sara Netzley: 1:25

Absolutely. Hello. Well, thank you so much for the invitation. I really appreciate it. And I love the introduction that you said that you're the storytellers because that's what I talk about with what I do also is storytelling. It's just that my storytelling is in the journalism arena, which is a type of storytelling, and it's what I talk to my students about. And in fact, our department does that, right? Storytelling in all these different arenas that we we talk about. So my background, I was a journalist. I was a print journalist. I covered the Illinois General Assembly a thousand years ago when there was a state senator who was up and coming named Barack Obama, and people were saying, Oh, and I think that kid's going places, and it turns out he did. So um I loved working in the newsroom. I was an entertainment reporter actually here in Peoria at the journal Star, which was a tough gig. On at two o'clock on a Friday, you'd stand up and say, Well, I'm going to the movies. See y'all on Monday. Ugh, just perfect, perfect job. Uh, but I uh I got my PhD at SIU Carbondale, and I really planned to go back into the newsroom. I loved writing. I didn't see myself in academia, but this job opening came along in Peoria, and I loved Peoria. I'd been at the journal star. My family is central Illinois, so I thought, well, it's for a print journalism professor. I kind of have to try. You know, I I want to be in the newsroom, but uh so my first and last academic job interview was at Bradley, and they offered me the job. I took it, that was 20 years ago, and here I am.

Angie Cooksy: 2:45

I love that.

Ben Jedd: 2:46

Can I can I ask a question that is not on our list? So you spent how long like reviewing films?

Sara Netzley: 2:52

Uh it was a year.

Ben Jedd: 2:53

Okay. What what was your favorite movie you saw in that year?

Sara Netzley: 2:56

Okay, the first one that I reviewed, the first one ever was Bring It On.

Ben Jedd: 3:00

Okay.

Sara Netzley: 3:00

Which is the classic classic bar. Well, and and the funny thing was I they I didn't start off writing movie reviews. My my boss, I think, wanted to kind of feel me out before they set me loose in this very important endeavor. And they trusted you with bring it on. I don't think he wanted to be the whatever something guy that he was alone in the theater reviewing Bring It On. And so he sent me the young new employee. And it turns out I was there in the theater and there was only one other person, and it was a solo, like 50-something guy. And I was like, I don't why are you sitting two seats away from me? This is an empty theater. I just want to do my job, my guy. So Bring It On will always have a very, very special place in my heart. But we did a lot of Oscar films. That was the year that like Quills was nominated, but nah, really, it's just Bring It On Lives. Lives right here.

Ben Jedd: 3:45

Excellent. I love that. All right, so you've been at Bradley for 20 years.

Sara Netzley: 3:48

Yes.

Ben Jedd: 3:49

So what do you love about your job?

Sara Netzley: 3:51

Uh, the people. And I mean that at every level. I mean my my colleagues in the department, uh, my students. The the sadness that I have with my job is that these great students that we have leave.

Angie Cooksy: 4:02

It's really annoying.

Sara Netzley: 4:03

It's rude, you know. They they matriculate and they leave us behind, but they stay in touch. I mean, that that's what I've really found is the alumni connection and the outreach is it it's one of the things that I really like about Bradley is that the students stay in touch. You know, the ones who we remember and the ones who just keep coming back. There was um one not long ago who this past semester who was in town for a wedding and just made the rounds of the third floor of the GCC checking out, you know, who what professors are here just to catch up with students like that. It makes it all worth it. And it's I joke sometimes that you pay me to grade, I teach for free. You know, I just I love the teaching part, right? It's the grading part that that is the work, but the teaching, it's work, but it's so rewarding to to make those connections and then the people I'm doing it with, you know. Uh I cannot say enough good about my department, my my all the chair people I've had over the years, my colleagues, some of them have come and gone, and others have just kind of stayed consistent with me. And it's I feel very lucky to be, like you said, in the seat that I am in the Department of Communication.

Angie Cooksy: 5:04

So watching you light up talking about teaching, what's your favorite thing to teach?

Sara Netzley: 5:08

Oh gosh. So many things. Um, I I teach uh a lot of the journalism writing skills, and I I love that. I love figuring out what I can do to help a student kind of crack that code to how do you write a little bit better? How do you make this a little bit more in line with what the industry standards are? How do you use your unique voice in a way that it's going to reach the audience you want to reach? And we have students in the department who, you know, they want to be investigative reporters or they want to be on entertainment tonight or they want to be on ESPN or do sports commentary. And so there's so many different goals that figuring out how do you get their communication skills, verbal, print, whatever the case may be, ready to go and and operating with their own unique skills or the spin they put on a turn of phrase, that's really fun for me. But also just writing best practices and everything I've learned from my career before I came to Bradley, the work that I do, you know, outside the creative production that I'm doing, um bringing all of that to bear on how can you express this better, what word choices can be stronger, and just watching them start incorporating it, some more slowly than others, but watching it happen, it's so rewarding. And then there's the the bigger theoretical, how does media fit into society classes that I adore? You know, it's it's where you start talking about when we present news in this way, what effect does that have on audiences, or how does that storytelling again, right? What does telling a story in this way mean? What kind of meaning does that make for audiences? And so I teach a media race and gender class, which I adore, talking about how we depict these sort of historically excluded or marginalized groups and film, advertising, comic books, music, you know, all of these different arenas in the media, that that is so fun to watch students either say, I knew about this, but I didn't have words to talk about it, or to say, I never thought about this before, but you're right. The protagonists in all these movies really are a lot of times men. Why don't women have more leads? You know, so it's it's just it's it's that's seeing that light bulb is so rewarding and just having those conversations. I love talking to students and hearing what they are interested in and what do they want to talk about. Um the other thing I do is the honors college. I love teaching in the honors college. That really is just bonus learning for students who enroll in the, you know, are accepted into the honors college. And so all the professors uh who teach there get to kind of pick a topic that is in their industry and their field of expertise. And students come for, you know, an hour or two a week, and we just vibe. You know, we we we we talk about these topics, and the most recent one that I did was a class on uh Taylor Swift and Barbie and how Wait, can I take that class? Like I would like to copy. But it's it's Taylor Swift Barbie, and I kind of expanded it to also include um Beyoncé and then Chapel Roan. And so we talked about how media messaging about these powerful women affects the way they thought about femin femininity and women and masculinity and all these things growing up, and they didn't realize, oh, when I started saying Barbies are stupid or I hate Taylor Swift and I didn't have any reason for that, a lot of it is driven by media messaging that's been consumed and absorbed. And we talk about, you know, the language choices and the way, the gendered way we talk about things. And and what I really like, students like being challenged in the classroom, right? Yeah. But they also like a little bit of say in the direction or they want to study the things that they're interested in. So with these kinds of big media classes, I can go down the paths they are interested in going. So we added a lot in that class about um fan engagement with artists like Chapel Rome, who has been very open about I need you to respect my privacy, right? So seeing that the students were really interested in the struggle she was having with her mental health and with fame, we I added some readings on that, and they just really enjoyed going down that path and talking about it. So that's I guess that's a circuitous way to say I just I really like the freedom that a lot of these classes give me to introduce the topics that we need to cover that I want to, you know, achieve as a goal by the end of the class, but doing it in ways that the students are going to respond to and they're gonna enjoy.

Ben Jedd: 9:23

That's so fascinating. I I think that uh I want to take that class too.

Sara Netzley: 9:29

I feel like we're in class, right?

Ben Jedd: 9:30

I know. But I also can't get hot to go out of my head now that you've said Chapel Rhodes.

Sara Netzley: 9:35

It's a feminine dominant.

Ben Jedd: 9:36

Yeah.

Sara Netzley: 9:36

So you know.

Ben Jedd: 9:37

So that's uh that's that's gonna be with me all day. So thank you for that.

Sara Netzley: 9:42

You're welcome.

Ben Jedd: 9:43

Uh can I ask though you so you've been teaching journalism now for 20 years, you came from print. How has journalism teaching journalism kind of expanded and evolved over the past 20 years?

Sara Netzley: 9:57

Oh my gosh, so much. And it's a little scary sometimes because you you know, you get your degree and you start teaching, and you're not in a newsroom five, six days a week, right? You're not rolling with the changes in the industry that the professionals are. So it takes work to keep up to speed on, you know, what are the new practices, what kind of tools or techniques or software or you know, anything like that they need to know. The fundamentals stay the same, right? Accuracy, transparency, ethical behavior, all those things in journalism are consistent. But the way I'm preparing students for the workforce has changed because they may not have one employer for their whole lives. That that is how many how many different jobs will will Gen Z have? I mean, uh I'm assuming. Exactly. Or on technology that doesn't exist on platforms that the person who's going to invent them hasn't been born yet. You know, okay.

Angie Cooksy: 10:51

Well, I don't know that we need to. Okay, fair.

Sara Netzley: 10:55

So I I really try to focus on the the fundamentals of, you know, what is good writing, what is clear storytelling, how do you know your audience, and how do you get the information that they need across, regardless of the platform, so that they can apply those skills in any capacity. But there has been some change in how I do things because of well, we could go in a whole other very serious direction about trust in the media and you know, do we have a shared idea about what is true and what are facts? And we don't always, and that is difficult because we have to have the consensus about reality in order to get stuff done. And so that is a conversation that I'm having in classes that I did not have 10 years ago. So it has, you are right, it's changed a lot, and it's been a challenge to keep up on the industry and make sure I'm getting those fundamentals across, but also saying, okay, now we also have to be aware of not everybody is going to want to work with you because they don't trust the media. Although studies show that local media often is more trusted than national, so it kind of depends on where you go, but it it's just it's being aware of those challenges, being aware of how you can show people that you're trustworthy. And like I said, transparency, being accurate, correcting mistakes when you make them, all of those things are really important. But yeah, no, it's you're correct, it has changed so much.

Angie Cooksy: 12:12

I'm gonna steal Ben's question. Um, because you all of the things that you're talking about, you're also connecting back to your classroom experience and you're connecting to our students here at Bradley. Can you share a student story or an alumni story that really has just resonated with you over your 20-year journey here?

Sara Netzley: 12:29

Oh gosh, there's there's so many. Um, I had one student who is um she's no longer in the journalism industry, I don't believe, but one of her first jobs was as a police reporter for uh a pretty major city in the South. And she came back to visit and told me some of her stories. And I was just so proud of her that she she made this point of giving out, and I tell them this, give out your business cards like candy, because you want people to call you when they have a story idea, and even if it turns out to be nothing, better to have five false leads than miss something that's good and important. And so she would talk about getting pulled out of bed in the middle of the night to go to a crime scene or getting to um be there when they had new delivery of some kind of weapons or guns or something. I don't know. Not not my fluency there, but she got to test fire them with the the force and things like that. And so the participatory, the trust that she was building, it was really, it was really impressive the the work that she did to to do this really demanding terrible hours, terrible, you know, just no nine to five there at all. And she threw herself in wholeheartedly. And I just the work ethic and the time she put into building those relationships was fantastic. Another one that I always remember some of my best journalism students have come from engineering.

Angie Cooksy: 13:44

Wait, can we just pause on that? Because I feel like our engineering students are like, that's not my jam, but they're so good at it.

Sara Netzley: 13:51

Well, and they're so, and it's just they're so good at so many different things. And so when he came to me, I was just like, How did you you were doing engineering? Now you're okay, great, welcome. Great writer, just one of the best writers I've worked with, but he also was a big fan of golf. And he ended up working for one of the major golf magazines, which was I know, right? Ben just went to a different place. Yeah. Did you see that?

Ben Jedd: 14:14

Dreams like goals.

Sara Netzley: 14:16

Truly. He just he he landed this incredible, incredible uh job doing uh skills that he was so good at, so such a beautiful writer, but then in this field that he adore literally, field, literally, golf field. Sorry.

Ben Jedd: 14:31

I'll Nobody calls it a golf field.

Sara Netzley: 14:34

What? The baseball rink is a beautiful place. I don't know why you're correcting my sports terminology. So, but no, those are just a couple, just the fact that the student would make this huge change in major and then end up with a dream job upon graduation. Um does that happen for everybody? No, of course not. But he hustled, he put himself out there, he had the expertise, he put in the time, and also he wasn't afraid to change, you know? And that I just that takes a lot of courage, I think, to say this is a 180 from what I thought I was gonna be doing. And he did that. And and I just I was so grateful to see him willing to throw himself into the curriculum, and then after he graduated, just going full speed into the the great tan that I'm sure he developed on all those courses. That's his reporting.

Angie Cooksy: 15:20

Uh so as we started developing this podcast, one of the things I wanted to do was give people space to talk about themselves, which as we have started recording this podcast, everyone that comes on, and this is very broadly, talks about everyone else and the amazing things that are around campus and the amazing people that they get to work to with. So I'm gonna put you a little bit on the spot. Um what about your role or what you do in the classroom are you unapologetically exceptional at? What are you great at, Sarah? Oh, this is so hard.

Sara Netzley: 15:59

I am a Midwestern woman.

Angie Cooksy: 16:01

I know, it's very Midwestern. Nobody likes this question, but it's so good.

Sara Netzley: 16:06

Um, I do think I make pretty good connections with students. You know, it's not 100%, it's not universal, and those ones I never quite reach, I feel that keenly. At the end of the semester, I just feel that, oh, I never quite, you know, it was close, but I never really but I do tend to joke and uh bring in pop culture references and and I try to not surprise students, but I try to um present things in ways that are relevant and use examples they understand. I live in fear of the day that I don't know any of the people who are nominated for Grammys because I feel like That day is now for me.

Ben Jedd: 16:40

I know it's getting hard to call 10 years ago, actually.

Sara Netzley: 16:43

It's getting harder. There are times when I will say, What is a Paul Mascale? I don't I don't know what that is. He's in Gladiator 2, and I don't. And so they they will and I will say, I can you explain that? I did not know that Serena Carpenter was a Disney. I'm looking at Ben because you have kids at that age. Yeah. And I then they were horrified that I didn't know that. But you know, I'm I'm I am listening, I am learning, you know. So I that's uh that's not a very good answer, I don't think. But I do, I don't, I'm not one of those professors where it's shut up and listen and take notes and save the questions for later. I want interaction and I want interruptions, and I I seem to always have a student who is the research assistant. So when I'm lecturing and I stop and say, huh, how does that work? I think the other this past semester it was who owns cemeteries. And it I should know that as an adult, as a taxpaying adult. I have no idea who owns cemeteries. But there's some private city. Some of them, but aren't some of them?

Angie Cooksy: 17:41

You can come back on another episode and explain this to us.

Sara Netzley: 17:44

Stay tuned for all about cemeteries. Who owns cemeteries? It's an eight-part podcast. Hulu's picked it up for a limited series. It's gonna be great. Nicole Kidman is attached. Um, but no, I always seem to have a student who says, Dr. Netley, I'm on it, and then and we'll have the answer. So I just I really like the it is a conspiracy of learning sometimes, you know, that we kind of are working together to say, actually, I don't know that either. Let's let's explore that. Let's see if we can find that out.

Angie Cooksy: 18:14

I feel like that's a podcast title. Conspiracy of learning. That's so good. Straight on dizzotype.

Ben Jedd: 18:21

We're we're working on titles for our podcast right now. We're the Bradley University podcast.

Sara Netzley: 18:26

So that's way better. So we'll work on it. Um, I can I can sell that to you for a very reasonable fee. That's awesome.

Ben Jedd: 18:33

That's awesome. And that and the cemetery idea.

Sara Netzley: 18:37

We're just like people are dying to get in, you know? You know? That's the kind of jokes you get in a Sarah Netley class.

Ben Jedd: 18:45

I love that. I love that. Dr. Sarah Netzley, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate having you here.

Sara Netzley: 18:52

It was my pleasure. Thank you for the invitation.

Angie Cooksy: 18:53

Thank you. That wraps up our current episode of the Bradley University Podcast. We're gonna work on the name. If you have name ideas, send them our way. Um, again, we are your co hosts. I'm Angie Cooksy.

Ben Jedd: 19:04

I'm Ben Jedd.

Angie Cooksy: 19:04

We'll see you next time. Go Bradley.

Ben Jedd: 19:06

Bye bye.