Area of Expertise

Broadcast and online journalism, news media criticism

Additional Information

Before her faculty appointment in 1989, Jill Olmsted pursued a career that included stints as a Washington correspondent for WGN-Radio/TV, Chicago; an anchor and a reporter for WTOL-TV, Toledo, Ohio, an anchor for KCCO-TV, Alexandria, Minnesota, and a producer and news writer for KARE-TV, Minneapolis, Minn. For eight years, she hosted Ask Tom Harkin,featuring Iowa senator Tom Harkin, from the studios of the U.S. Capitol for Iowa TV stations. Olmsted provides media training for federal and local law enforcement agencies and has conducted seminars for the Pentagon, Voice of America, Meridian House International, and the U.S. State Department, as well as for international media professionals. She is the author of Exercises in TV News Storytelling,producer of Writing to Video, and a contributor to Vocal Expressiveness and Broadcast News Writing & Reporting. Olmsted has written for newspapers and professional and trade journals, including the Chicago Tribune,the Seattle-Post Intelligencer,the RTNDA Communicator, the Masthead—the Quarterly Journal of the National Conference of Editorial Writers,and Cotton Commentary, the American Senator. She was a researcher for the Tribune newspaper series that led to the book Blind Man's Bluff, the Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage,a Top-10 bestseller that was made into a televised documentary.