B.A.’03, Communication Arts and Sciences, DePauw University
M.A. ’04, Broadcast Journalism, Northwestern University
Ph.D. ’24, Mass Communication, Syracuse University

Stan Jastrzebski is a career broadcaster who’s worked in both public and commercial newsrooms. He began his career as a wire service editor in Indianapolis, writing and reporting news for 80 affiliate stations around Indiana, before moving to be a reporter at WGN Radio in Chicago, where he covered the 2008 Illinois primary election, the downfall of then-governor Rod Blagojevich and the final years of longtime Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s administration.

From there, Jastrzebski became a public radio news director. He helped to converge the newsrooms at WFIU Public Radio and WTIU Public Television in Bloomington, Indiana and was the inaugural host of the Emmy-nominated public affairs show InFocus. Additionally, in each of his first two years on the job, his small team of two full-time and three-part time journalists won more broadcast awards than any outlet in Indiana. 

Jastrzebski went on to helm the newsroom at WFSU Public Media in Tallahassee, Florida, where his team covered the Florida statehouse for the Florida Public Radio Network. This included production of the magazine show Capitol Report, which was distributed to all Florida public radio stations every day the legislature was in session. 

A move back to Indiana came in 2014, where Jastrzebski expanded the newsroom at Indiana’s oldest radio station, WBAA Public Radio. He helped train the first Purdue student ever to be named Indiana Student Journalist of the Year by the Indiana Society of Professional Journalists, and the small three-person news team won multiple regional and national awards. The newsroom was also a partner in winning grants from the Eli Lilly Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which helped establish a robust state network of beat reporters at the state’s public media affiliates.

In 2020, Jastrzebski decided to go back to school for his doctorate and was accepted into the PhD program at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication. Working under the direction of Dr. Lars Willnat, Jastrzebski contributed novel research about public media journalists to the long-running American Journalist survey, considered the gold standard in longitudinal research into the practices and beliefs of U.S. journalists. His dissertation research expanded on the survey’s findings by interviewing nearly four dozen broadcasters and investigating whether there are differences between how public and commercial journalists do their work, and whether this may have implications for how journalism research is conducted in the future.

Jastrzebski’s broadcast work has appeared on several public media shows, including the PBS NewsHour, Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Marketplace, as well as on ABC Radio, Radio New Zealand and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He has received more than 40 awards, including being a part of ten regional Edward R. Murrow awards (four for solo work) and three national awards from the Public Media Journalists Association. 

Reporters who have worked in Jastrzebski’s newsrooms have gone on to work in such places as Chicago, Miami, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Buffalo, Denver, and Washington, D.C. – and five have become news directors themselves!

In addition to his on-air work, Jastrzebski’s media research has been published in several flagship scientific journals, including Journalism, Journalism Practice and Electronic News. He has also written a chapter on his public broadcasting findings for the forthcoming book The American Journalist Under Attack: Media, Trust, and Democracy.