Ever wonder who really decides what becomes “news”?

In this episode of Laid Off and Looking, we go inside the assignment desk, the nerve center of every newsroom with Professor Benjamin Davis, award-winning journalist and Chair of Multimedia Journalism at Morgan State University.

Davis has worked at ABC News, MSNBC.com, and NPR, and he’s here to break down the uncomfortable truth:

👉 The stories you see (and the ones you don’t) are shaped by business pressures, predictability, executive preferences, trending topics, and now… AI.

🔍 In This Episode, We Explore:

00:00 - Start

00:37 - Intro

01:46 - “Yellow Journalism” History Lesson

05:56 - Interview Begins

08:14 - Stacking the Rundown

11:12 - Selling a Story

14:02 - How to Know When You’re Show is Bad

16:30 - How to Do Local News

18:04 - Harsh Truths

20:23 - Citizen Journalists

32:51 - Follow the Technology

36:40 - What We’re Missing

40:00 - Oh Lord These People

42:56 - The Risks of Freelancing

46:01 - AI in the Newsroom

51:58 - Why Did You Become a Journalist?

🎧 Professor Benjamin Davis

Professor Davis is a veteran journalist, educator, newsroom leader, and soon-to-be founder of a citizen-journalism app designed to empower the public ethically to tell stories newsrooms can’t or won’t.

💬 Why this episode matters

The public often believes “the media refuses to cover certain stories.”

This conversation explains why newsrooms make the decisions they make, what’s missing, and how journalism must evolve if it wants to survive the era of distrust and digital chaos.