12:00: Journalism in 2025
1:00: River otters in Rochester: A conservation success story
In a report earlier this month, the group Reporters Without Borders said, "Trump's second term as president has brought a troubling deterioration in press freedom." For two decades, the number of American journalists has been in decline. The Star-Ledger in New Jersey is an example of a high-profile newsroom that stopped producing a print edition and cut more staff in 2024. Fewer than a quarter of American newsrooms are in growth mode. We discuss the state of the profession with our guests:
- Gino Fanelli, investigations and City Hall reporter for WXXI News
- Veronica Volk, senior producer for WXXI News
- Natasha Kaiser, rising senior in the photojournalism program at RIT
- Roisin Meyer, rising senior in the international relations and economics program at the University of Rochester
Then in our second hour, otters! The Seneca Park Zoo recently welcomed the first-ever North American river otters to be born at its facility. Zoo leaders say it's a conservation success story that has been decades in the making. It comes at a time when a shift in federal priorities has affected environmental and wildlife protections: funding cuts to USAID and a funding freeze for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have halted projects centered on animals facing various threats, including extinction. Can the local project serve as a model for continued conservation work, despite changes at the federal level? Our guests discuss it. In studio:
- David Hamilton, general curator at the Seneca Park Zoo
- Larry Buckley, Ph.D., senior associate dean of the College of Science at RIT
- Laura Gaenzler, community science coordinator for the Seneca Park Zoo Society
- Tom Snyder, director of programming and conservation action for the Seneca Park Zoo Society
*Note: "Connections" is livestreamed each day on the WXXI News YouTube channel. Watch here.
