A former U.S. Department of State employee turned comedy writer said that comedy can be an effective means of distributing political information in an accessible way.

Linfield alumnus Ryan Jones served in the State Department for six years, mostly under Secretary of State John Kerry and the Obama administration, before taking a job as a researcher for Comedy Central’s news satire show “The Opposition with Jordan Klepper.”

Jones graduated from Linfield in 2007 with a mass communication major and minors in German and music, received a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Austria, and attended the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.

Jones spoke to a crowd of about 60 students and faculty Wednesday night on the topic of diplomacy in a digital age. “Everyone is an unofficial diplomat,” Jones said. He explained that, whether people realize it or not, their interactions with people from other countries, both online and in person, change their perceptions.

Jones said that through social media, more people are aware of foreign events and have the ability to participate in political conversation, but that doesn’t necessarily mean people care more. The goal of much of his work in the State Department was to increase public support in the United States and other countries for the government’s foreign policy goals.

He said communicating with the public and the press is important, no matter one’s business or organization, and no matter the content of the story one writes.
After his time at the State Department, Jones decided it was time for a change. It took two years of persistence before Jones was offered a job in late-night TV. Jones said there were some similarities between the two jobs: they both operated on a 24-hour cycle and plans often changed quickly because of a major event or development somewhere.

While Jones felt that working at the State Department was a more important job, he said that his work on “The Opposition” served a good purpose as well by telling “stories that others aren’t talking about” and providing real information in a more palatable form.

One story Jones developed for the show involved his hometown of Twin Falls, Idaho, and a Breitbart reporter who spun a local crime into a story about ISIS infiltrating small towns across the United States. Jones and “The Opposition” worked to refute that story with a segment titled “A Crash Course in Breitbart’s Conspiracy Journalism.” Jones said that filming a story in his hometown was “surreal” and something he could never have predicted.

The show’s host, Jordan Klepper, a former correspondent on “The Daily Show” who worked under both Jon Stewart and Trevor Noah, plays a satirical version of far-right pundits.

At the end of his talk Jones offered some advice to students searching for internships, graduate schools, and jobs. Jones said that after graduating from Linfield, people around him were going off to what he saw as “fancy and unobtainable” schools and internships and he “realized that I was just as prepared for them.”He said that the only thing you can be certain of when applying is “you won’t get it if you don’t throw your hat in the ring.”