New Project from Lisa Murtha, of Navigating News -
It's been a few months! I hope this note finds you all well and reading a wide variety of news sources :)
In true freelancer tradition, I’ve been busy with several different writing projects since we last connected. I’ve especially been putting my money where my mouth is, working as an investigative journalist for The Ohio Press Network and writing on everything from Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to a secret TikTok campaign with our schools, Ohio Legislation aimed at protecting kids from life-altering “gender affirming” medical procedures, and Covid vaccine-induced turbo cancers & heart conditions. It’s been a challenging and gratifying experience, and I am hopeful that I have been helping inform readers on stories that often don’t get much press.
Now, though, I’m ready to convert some of the writing I’ve been doing for both lifestyle and investigative media outlets into a twice-monthly podcast. My main goal is to let the people I interview do more of the talking, and give them both a platform and a voice. As I get more comfortable producing it, the podcast will also include some media analysis a la Navigating News. This new project is called Verbal Journal… ism, and it will be released starting tomorrow:
The first interview is with sixth-degree black belt and former Tae Kwon Do instructor Paul Korchak, who became disillusioned with martial arts after seeing other black belts fall victim to physical and sexual assaults. Korchak later trained with military and law enforcement before founding True Defense in 2018, guided by a strong personal faith and the mantra: "The earliest defense is always the easiest.”
In this episode, he’ll discuss his own journey form martial arts instructor to self defense guru, his philosophy on why learning basic self defense techniques is so important, and tips for all of us on ways to stay safe in an increasingly unsafe world.
As past Navigating News supporters, I’m reaching out to invite you to join in on the new adventure! Other upcoming guests include the founder of a nonprofit and group home for pregnant teens, my good friend Jim Rumford of Tobacco Wars fame and an Ohio woman who’s active in the national Convention of States movement.
I’ll be learning podcasting as I go along (kudos already to my oldest son Alex, the current defacto producer, whether he wants to be or not :) but I’m looking really forward to this new way of sharing my work and other people’s stories.
I hope you’ll join and listen!