This episode's guest is associate professor in the school of journalism and strategic media, Dr. Ken Blake. Ken is a native of Huntington, W.Va., and he holds bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism from Marshall University and a doctorate in mass communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ken joined the faculty of MTSU's School of Journalism and Strategic Media in 1996 and has taught undergraduate courses in writing and reporting as well as graduate courses in media theory and empirical research methodology. He heads the College of Media and Entertainment's Office of Communication Research, where Ken and his since-retired colleague Dr. Bob Wyatt co-founded the MTSU Poll, a twice-annual, statewide, scientifically valid telephone poll of Tennessee adults that ran from 1998 to 2016. His most recent scholarly project is a book, co-authored with colleague Dr. Jason Reineke, titled, Data Skills for Media Professionals. Before he earned his doctorate and joined MTSU's faculty, Ken worked as a reporter for The Herald-Dispatch, the Gannett-owned daily newspaper in Huntington. His wife, Amy, works as an inclusion teacher at Cedar Grove Elementary School in Smyrna, and they have two sons, one a senior in high school and the other a junior in video and film production at MTSU.

Books, articles, authors. and media mentioned

• Ken's website
• Data Skills for Media Professionals by Ken Blake and Jason Reineke
• Precision Journalism by Phil Meyer
• Texas Tribune Data
• GDELT Project
• How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff

Music: "Spreading the Disease" by Anthrax. This constitutes a fair use of any copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US copyright law.