Mike Matson is a lifelong Kansan whose career has touched various aspects of communications: Deejay, radio news, TV news, press secretary to a governor, leadership development, systems advocacy, newspaper columnist, author, podcast/radio talk show host.

In what he laughingly refers to as “semi-retirement,” Mike hosts a daily radio talk show/podcast on KMAN in Manhattan. The premise of the effort is to dig deeper into local, regional and state conversations, business and societal trends, policy ideas from every level of government, with a particular emphasis on reason and common sense.

He strongly believes the key to today’s societal ills are members of society who think longer, deeper, and more critically. Journalism is the one constant to allow that, and it’s his belief this new talk show can help work toward that goal.

The talk show is one of a host of innovations stemming from purposeful efficiencies involving the Manhattan Mercury and Manhattan Broadcasting Company, each Seaton Family-owned media properties.

Teri Finneman is an associate professor in the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas and publisher of The Eudora Times, a nationally recognized news desert publication that she runs with journalism students. She previously worked as a print journalist and multimedia correspondent covering state government, business and enterprise.

Her research focuses on news coverage of U.S. first ladies and women politicians, as well as the U.S. suffrage movement. She is an oral historian who captures the histories of journalists in the Heartland. Finneman is also founder and executive producer of the Journalism History podcast and The First Ladies podcast.

She is the author of Press Portrayals of Women Politicians, 1870s-2000s, which was named a 2016 finalist for the Frank Luther Mott - Kappa Tau Alpha book award for best research-based book about journalism or mass communication. Her co-edited book, Social Justice, Activism and Diversity in U.S. Media History, released in spring 2023. Her co-authored book, Reviving Rural News, released in 2024. Her co-edited book, A Cambridge Campanion to US First Ladies, will release in 2025.

Stephen Wolgast, the Knight Chair in Audience and Community Engagement for News and professor of the practice of journalism, has three decades of professional and academic experience. He started his career as a photographer at the Topeka Capital-Journal, worked as a reporter at The Baltic Independent in Tallinn, Estonia, and as an editor at the Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune and The Times-Picayune in New Orleans. He became a newsroom manager at the Akron Beacon Journal, a Knight-Ridder newspaper, and from there worked as an editor at The New York Times for nine years. He was among the staff who contributed to the special section “A Nation Challenged,” which was published daily after 9/11 and which received the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2002.

Wolgast entered academia at Kansas State University, where he was director of Collegian Media Group, the nonprofit company that publishes student media. In that role he initiated the transition of the campus phone book to a student lifestyle magazine, and during his tenure student staffers won two Hearst Foundation Journalism awards, a national first-place award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and had a student named as K-State’s first Rolling Stone College Journalist of the Year. Wolgast also served as a professor of the practice of journalism, teaching classes in reporting.

Max Kautsch, licensed to practice law in both Kansas and Nebraska, focuses his practice on First Amendment rights and open government law. He helps news media and members of the public assert rights of access to court proceedings, court records, and government agency documents. He serves as the legal hotline attorney for the Kansas Press Association and the Kansas Association of Broadcasters, is president of the Kansas Coalition for Open Government, and is an adjunct professor at the University Kansas School of Law. Kautsch is also hotline counsel to both the Nebraska Press Association and the Nebraska Broadcasters Association.

Kautsch, a Lawrence native, received his law degree from the Washburn University School of Law in 2003, after earning an undergraduate degree in 2000 with honors in English Literature from the University of Kansas. He has been a licensed member of the Kansas bar since 2003, and has been admitted to practice in the state and federal courts of Kansas. His previous areas of practice included criminal defense and landlord/tenant law.