WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The WRFH Interview: Emily Jashinsky

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

Emily Jashinsky, the D.C. correspondent at UnHerd and co-host of Counter Points with Ryan Grim on the Breaking Points channel, joins WRFH's Alessia Sandala.From 02/07/25.

This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Alessia Sandella. With me today is Emily Dishinsky, the Washington correspondent for Unheard and the co-host of CounterPoints. Hi, Emily. First, could you give me a bit of background and tell us how you became interested in journalism? Sure, yeah. Well, I'm originally from Wisconsin. I went to school at George Washington University in D.C. and as soon as I graduated, kind of got involved in professional D.C. life and stuck around. Worked at the Washington examiner, worked at the Federalist, and I ended up taking over Federalist Radio Hour, the podcast, which we used to tape every day from the Kirby Center, the wonderful Hillsdale Kirby Center in D.C. And so that's how I got into podcasting, went to Unheard, started hosting some shows, and that's

how I ended up here. Yeah, awesome. So you work with print, audio, and video. How did you go about getting experience on all of these fields? Yeah, that's a great question, because everything has changed over the course of my career. And that'll happen to basically anybody who gets into journalism at any time because the story of journalism is the story of technology from the printing press onwards. And for me, I started online at the Washington Examiner, which also has a magazine, but most of what you do is writing online. And that's where I went to Federalist, also online. But Federalist Radio Hour, when it needed a new host, I had done some guest hosting. And I had done some sort of traditional cable TV news appearances. And that sort of brought me into the space where

media was moving over to YouTube. And YouTube and podcasts were kind of merging. You know, that used to be seen as like sort of separate that, you know, what was going on YouTube is different than what's being a podcast, being, you know, uploaded as a podcast. And as those things merged, I just randomly kind of had experience in the old traditional cable as a journalist who was writing in D.C. You know, go on cable news to report your work. And then I dipped my toe in podcasting by happenstance because Federalist Radio Hour needed a new host. And that sort of brought me to hosting YouTube podcast shows that are both. And they, you know, that's obviously very hot right now. And that's how I ended up doing it. Yeah. How was the transition from going to print and writing articles to audio and

video. Yeah, I still, so I still do a good bit of online writing. What I think was most interesting from the transition standpoint was going from doing a lot of cable news to doing a lot of new media YouTube type content, content for X or online video platforms, because you just don't have commercial breaks. And in some cases, you don't have, you know, huge layers of production and business bureaucrats, you know, kind of telling you what you can or cannot say or what the parameters of a conversation are, you can really be freewheeling. And that expansiveness in the new media world is very different from the world of traditional cable where you get kind of 20 seconds to make a very concise point and make it really punchy. So I actually think being someone

who started with experience doing cable helped in the podcast space, because you have to learn how to be punchy and concise, but then you can also sort of go on a little bit longer. You just already have training not being, you know, sort of someone who is boring. Because you can't be boring on cable TV. You have to be energetic. Yeah. Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you just like fell out of your depth, especially when talking on like live? Oh gosh, yeah. But that's another nice thing about. new media. I tell the story a lot about how when I was doing my TV training, before I started

doing a lot of, you know, Fox News in particular, really, really, one of the best in the business TV trainers told me when we did a practice interview, never say that you don't know the answer to a question. And that is absolutely good advice if you're doing cable news because they don't want to have you back if you say you don't know the answer to a question. But in the podcasting world, everyone can smell BS, right? Immediately if you start answering a question that you don't know the answer to because you have like a lot of space to go off on it. So you're much better saying, I don't know the answer. Like, that's a really good question. I don't know the answer to it. And for me, that's been really cool about being in the new media space is that you can actually

be more candid because viewers and listeners want that. And producers want that because they know the viewers and the listeners want that. And sometimes there are just questions that raise really good questions that you don't know the answer to. And it's really good. I mean, it's awkward in a 20-second cable news segment to say, I don't know, wow, what a good question. It would be interesting to talk to this person and that person to get to the bottom of it. You can't do that on cable news because there commercial breaks. So that's one really cool thing about new media. But, you know, it happens. And it's good to just be honest when you don't know. I think it's actually like, you know, one of the most important things about journalism is having the courage to ask questions. So,

yeah, it happens. Yeah. As it should. Do you have a favorite? Do you prefer print or audio or video or kind of do you like doing all of them together? I love writing. I always say some people get into journalism because they love writing. Some people get into journalism because they love reporting. And then you have the rare person who loves doing both. But it's like 30, 30, 30, 30, whatever, 33, 33, and I'm just one of those people that really loves writing. So as much long form writing as I can do, I try to because I know it's it's I you know this is since we're on a podcast and my job every day is doing podcasting I can say this with some self-awareness and self-deprecation. I think podcasting is the laziest form of journalism. And in some ways that's good because you can get stuff out really quickly to your audience and you can do it in an entertaining way without being irresponsible because you have more time to talk. But there's something when you're writing that forces you to be more thorough and. thoughtful, if that makes sense, because you have to spend time in every single word. You know, you're consciously typing it. It's not just sort of rolling off the tongue. So they're both great.

I just love writing. What do you enjoy most about working on unheard? Well, unheard is really good about making sure that it doesn't follow the herd because unheard is spelled H-E-R-D. So U-N-H-E-R-D. like the herd of, you know, rhinocerite, whatever it is, you don't want to follow the herd. And making sure that what we publish are the people that are straying from the herd. Because everyone else is publishing what the herd thinks. And so we don't care if they're straying from the left or from the right or to the left or to the right. But I think that's amazing to be able to hear people who are questioning conventional wisdom, whether they're on the right or the left.

And as someone who comes from a conservative media background and is generally conservative, it is so invigorating to constantly be confronted with people who are questioning conventional wisdom, not just from the right, but also from the left, because, you know, I got in a journalism as somebody who is curious. Like, most journalists are people who are just curious and like to ask questions or they should be. And for me, it is so invigorating to have people asking questions from perspectives that I don't necessarily agree with, but challenge my conventional wisdom. It's just, I really love that at Unheard. I don't know that anybody else is better at that right now. I mean, it's just, it's a very, very, it's a brave thing for a publication

to do, and it's a really encouraging thing for a publication to do. How did you end up at Unheard after the National Journalism Institute and the other publications you worked for? Yeah, so my first job out of college was at Young America's Foundation as the spokesperson. And that's actually how I ended up doing more TV because I would go on and sort of talk about, you know, the perspective of young conservatives. And this was at the end of the Obama administration, early in the Trump administration. And from there, went to do opinion writing at the Washington Examiner, where I covered campus news, some campaign stuff. And when I was at the Federalist, I did a part-time job at the National Journalism Center, which was part of Young America's Foundation, and was working with a lot of

students, a lot of great Hillsdale students, actually, as a matter of fact, to help them enter journalism as a career, training them, teaching them how to do some of the basics, which all the Hillsdale kids already know, of course, because of the great John Miller and Scott Bertram here at Radio Free Hillsdale. But when Unheard was looking for someone to do some U.S. daily shows from D.C., I think what they noticed is one of the things I do on sort of a part-time basis, an additional of this other stuff, which is very common of journalists. You kind of have to have a lot of stuff on your plate at once.

But I host a show on Wednesdays on the Breaking Points YouTube channel, which is helmed by Crystal Ball and Sager and Jetty. They came from the Hill, where I also did some hosting on their channel on YouTube, which is called Rising. Crystal and Sager are from the left and the right. And so I host a show with Ryan Grimm, who worked at HuffPost at The Intercept, and now he's the founder of DropSight News. He is a Democratic socialist. I am a sort of Christian conservative, and we come together every Wednesday morning and do the news. And Unheard sort of sees that or saw that and was like, okay, so this is someone who's conservative, but also, like, loves hearing from the left.

And so I think that's sort of what we bring over to the show that I do now called Undercurrents, which I host every day. But I host and try really hard to bring on the left and to take it seriously. So you kind of get both as a daily news show from Undercurrents, which is so fun. Yeah. When you're working on a story, do you primarily develop your own ideas or are you assigned ideas? How do you go about coming up with a story idea? I like to get ideas from talking to sources. You know, not that they're my assignment editors, but I check in with them to see what's happening. And then I think, wow, that's interesting. Or it's interesting this Republican told me this. Or it's interesting this Democrat told me this. I wonder what the Republicans. think about that or I wonder what the Democrats think about that. So for me, I'd just like to talk to people, see what's going on. And often, since I'm an opinion journalist and not a straight news reporter, my story ideas are things I think other people aren't saying that are sort of

burning me up. It's usually something that I just want to, I badly want to get out there because I don't think other people are talking about it. And a lot of times that is what I hear from people who are working in Congress or at the White House or on a campaign, or maybe at other media outlets, something like that. But for me, it's a lot of it comes from just trying to figure out what's going on. This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Alessia Sandella talking with Emily Dyshinsky, Washington correspondent for unheard and the co-host of Counterpoints. So what is the most important skill you've learned as a journalist? Skill. You know, this is the, like obvious cliched answer, but curiosity is the most important, like, asset because you can be a

great journalist if you're just curious and relentlessly asking questions. I think in terms of hard skills reporting, this is what I always tell young journalists is that if you start from a basis, like we all want to do opinions. Everyone has opinions. You know, 80% of people in journalism, their ideal would be to just give their opinion all day, whether it's writing or talking. And that's understandable because it's cathartic for us as humans. It's psychologically cathartic to be able to share your opinion. But if you come from a place where you have a foundation in reported journalism, it can even be from doing opinion journalism, which is how I started. But you can chase down a lead, check with sources, and write up a story pyramid style. You can then take that anywhere.

You know, you can, the sky is the limit. You can't do a good opinion. journalism unless you have an understanding of the basics of reporting, whether that's TV or a print online, whatever it is. Like, you need, even if it's like TikTok journalism, you need to know what goes into actually reporting out the news to be a part of the news because otherwise you don't understand how the, let's say, how the sausage is getting made, so to speak, when other people are doing journalism, you have to have that to know where to be skeptical and where to find credibility. and things. And so if you can take that foundational understanding of basic reporting,

you know, developing sources, talking to them, chasing down a lead, writing a story up, or, you know, building a story out for a package on radio or TV, if you can do that, you can then build into a really good opinion journalist. You can build into a really good print journalist, a really good columnist, really good TV anchor. That is the most, transferable skill and you have to have it to be good. Have you ever had to write about something that you didn't agree with? Oh, I'm sure I have. Let me think about that. I'm sure I have. But I can't think of any examples off the top of my head. But because I've always been an opinion journalist, I've also always had the freedom to frame everything in a way that I'm comfortable with. If

that makes sense. You know, I don't think I've ever had to report something out or present an opinion that I didn't agree with. You know, it's, I've had stories assigned to me that I've pushed back on for sure, which is one of the coolest things about working at a good publication. I think this is a problem at a lot of media outlets. If people aren't comfortable pushing back on bad assignments, but if you work at a really good outlet, as I've been really blessed to do everywhere in my career, you know, you have that back and forth. So that definitely happens. I don't think I would just write a story that I didn't think was fair. And I'm sure other people find themselves in that situation more when your day-to-day is actually like just doing straight news. But as an opinion

journalist, it's you kind of have some luxuries if that makes sense to add your own framing and all of that. What's the best story? you've ever written or covered on your podcast? Oh, best story. The best story. That's a great question. Trying to come up with a good answer here. I wrote this was early in, there were a couple of ones early in the year 2020, which is probably the most consequential year that we have had as a civilization in a long time. And one of them was about, this was a really reported out piece from the perspective, from an opinion perspective, but it was a long story on Hollywood's relationship with China. And that story, I think, is probably the best I've done just because it proved to be

very prescient, like two months later, when all of a sudden the American corporate worlds deep ties to China were tested. Like the... I guess the limits and the problems with those relationships were tested for the next couple of years. And Hollywood is still sort of reeling from that. And it came from a tip and built into something really cool. So I was really happy with that story. And the other one that I was really happy with came from a tip too about The Chosen. Really early in 2020.

This was around the same time I did the Hollywood story. that one was from a tip about this new show that was catching steam and it was the first national profile of the chosen and I think it aged really well. It was reported out. I got data from their spreadsheets about how people were watching it in China because the pandemic had people in lockdown there before we knew it was going to have people in lockdown here. So that story just I don't know how I stumbled into it, but it has aged really well. in terms of the technology and what the chosen has done to Hollywood and the sort of business incentives of providing Christians with good art. So anyway, those are the two that come to mind. Yeah. This is a bit of a silly question, but who's the coolest person that you've ever met while doing journalism? Camille Pahlia. Camille Pahlia is by far the coolest person I've ever met. I got to interview Camille Pahlia, which I still can't believe, because she is one of those people who is almost like a reactionary leftist, I would say.

But her thinking is so energetic and her writing is so energetic and it's so challenging and provocative that it has, you know, built out into, it's helped me build my worldview, my values, and it's also challenged my worldview and my values. And I sat down with her for like 45 minutes when I was new in journalism on a beautiful spring day in a courtyard of, I think it was the Decatur House, the White House in D.C. And she was incredible and we had an amazing conversation. So Camille Polly and then also Andy Cohen from Bravo. I've met Andy, Andy Cohen a couple of times. And that as a as a sort of, let's say, shameless Bravo obsessive, that one was fun. Awesome. Do you think that you've made a

difference in the world through your journalism? them? No, no, I'm kidding. If I was just like, no, that would be really depressing. A little bit. I've wasted my life. No, I mean, of course, I hope so. You know, my impetus for going into journalism and for staying in journalism is that when I was growing up in Wisconsin during kind of the Bush years as the culture war was building, I had a very deep personal frustration with the way Christians, gun owners, Midwesterners. were depicted by Hollywood and the news media. And that's why I wanted to go out to D.C. And I didn't know how I would deal with that when I got to D.C. Like what career would best be a place to channel that frustration into? But that's to the extent that I can make a difference in the world,

in the United States, in media. It's by hopefully, I think, giving space, you know, space, for people who think differently from the Beltway to come in and, you know, maybe report some of those perspectives out, you know, whether they happen to be pro left or right, just people who don't, maybe it's, maybe it's, you know, on counterpoints, having conversations with Bernie Sanders supporters from a Christian perspective. You know, it's just those ideas aren't comfortable to most people in the Beltway. And I hope that to the extent that I make a difference, it's just bringing some, helping those ideas actually be fleshed out. And, you know, argued with in a space where,

you know, they typically don't even get airtime. So hopefully that makes a difference. That's, that's my optimistic take. Is there something that you see young journalists make mistakes doing when they're first reporting? And how do you think that as a young journalist that you can overcome that? and kind of improve your skills and your ability to cover events. And, yeah. Well, Hillsdale journalists never make mistakes. No, you know, I've spent years teaching young journalists and working with them. And I think the biggest mistake is just wanting to jump into opinion.

It's so easy to do because there are a lot of outlets that really want opinion. right away, even from young people, because opinions tend to be better for clicks, because it's just easier to click on something that's, you know, it's easier to build a headline that makes someone click if it has an opinion on it because it's playing on our emotions more. You know, whether you hate the opinion or you love the opinion, it's just easier to get someone to click if there's an opinion in the headline, whether that's on YouTube or in print. So there are a lot of incentives for young people to jump ahead quickly and to want. And to want, to, you know, be on multimedia platforms right away and skip the sort of boring print aggregating

or basic reporting. And again, like, you can do these all at the same time. Like, I started as an opinion journalist, but I had a really great editor, Tim Carney at the Washington Examiner, who was relentlessly pushing us to make sure that we were reporting in our opinion. So it wasn't just, you know, write these blogs. It was, you better be talking to somebody on the Hill if you want to write the story or you better go call that campaign up. And so I was very lucky to have that experience, but I easily could have just like jumped in and started, you know, freewheeling and, you know, sounding off on all kinds of different things. So if you do that, you end up just sort of, it reminds me of how somehow in school they like made the mistake of putting

mean an advanced math class in elementary school, and I skipped learning long division. And to this day, I cannot do more division. And it probably hurt my ability to go very far in math because I just never learned long division. So it's sort of like when you jump into opinion, you miss a basic building block and you find yourself 10 years down the road only being able to spout off and you're less valuable to news outlets when that's the only thing you can do. If that's the only thing you can bring to the table, There are a lot of people who can spout off on everything, but they don't bring original sources to the table. They don't have technical skills. Like you're running this board, this sound board, this mixing board, recording this.

You have to be able to do some of these really basic things to have a leg up because everyone has an opinion. But if you have an opinion that is built out with sourcing and you have the technical know-how to put it in different formats, that is the biggest thing. And also just a big mistake young people make in general is underestimating the amount of work that goes into all of this. So not Hillsdale kids in my experience. But some kids just come in and expect they have, you know, a 35-hour work week in journalism and, you know, can kick back with their laptop in their pajamas and, you know, slack people and figure it out. So coming out of college, how did you, I guess, How did you land your first job? Like, what is something that publications look for when they're hiring?

Do you have any advice for other students here? Yeah, the most important thing to get a job in journalism is to have clips. So you need to be publishing while you're in college. And Hillsdale is really good about this because of the Collegian and because it's so connected in, you know, the media world. So there's precedent for people coming out of Hillsdale having published at places like the federal list or having published at places like the Washington Examiner, there are a lot of Hillsdale graduates working at those places. It'll help get you clips there. But as somebody who's looked at a lot of resumes and thought about, you know, entry-level positions a good bit, you just are not going

to, it's very rare to get a job in journalism if you don't have prior published pieces. It's just really important for people to be able to see that you were at some point able to turn in a draft and work with an editor and get it published. And ideally, that draft involved some original reporting. They want to trust that you are able to get your facts together. And then together enough that some outlet was willing to publish it. Like, that just gives you a huge leg up. So published clips. You know, I didn't, my first job wasn't in journalism. It was media adjacent because I was at YAF doing media outreach. So I published in a bunch of different media outlets, you know, just mostly upeds about crazy campus stuff. But I had that experience. I came to the examiner saying I had written

this piece, this piece, this piece. So they could tell, okay, you can put some words together. You can put some facts together. You know, you'd probably be good for this. You have to be able to pass writing tests too for most entry-level journalism jobs. But to even get past like the interview phase or even get an interview, you know, you can just toss a lot of resumes away if people don't of clips because the people who do have clips, it's just, you know, it's very competitive. And if you're published, it means that you have some basic level of competence. Yeah. Are there specific types of clips that really stand out to the people who are hiring at publications? Yeah, I mean, ideally, you've been published in a national outlet. And the reason that's ideal for somebody who's

hiring at a national outlet or even at a local outlet that's not a campus paper. What that means is you went through, you're familiar with the process of getting a piece from point A to point B, meaning you were involved in like submitting copy, you're reporting out a story or flushing out an opinion and then putting it into the publication. And that sounds easy. Like all you do is email someone a draft. But no, I mean, obviously there's fact checking. involved. It means you submitted something probably with decent grammar. Because most national

publications don't take junk. So if you were able to pass that threshold, it's just a good sorting technique when you're going through dozens of resumes for entry-level journalism jobs if you're in a hiring position. So if you can get published in a familiar national publication, so for example, if you're hiring at the Daily Caller, you might want to see someone get published in the Washington Examiner or the Federalist or the Washington Free Beacon or somewhere that, you know, you sort of know what the standards are like. You know the people who might have worked with them as an opinion editor or as a, you know, submissions editor. You can ask them what their experience was like. So those things are all really, really helpful. If it's, you know, if you're going for a local

journalism job, which is amazing, they're also going to want to see that you've been published in a professional outlet. So I've had a bunch of students apply for entry-level jobs with campus paper clips. And that's helpful. It's definitely helpful. But it's more competitive. It's more helpful if you've taken that next step and gone to a national outlet just because, you know, they tend to move clicker. They tend to have higher standards. You know, the Collegian isn't a league of its own when it comes to the quality. You guys are spoiled here. Other campus papers don't have that level. But you just, it proves an extra level of initiative and competence if you've gone to a national outlet and published about three times, I would say. Okay. My guest has been Emily

Jashinsky, Washington correspondent for unheard and the co-host of Counterpoints. I am Alessia Sandella on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.