This is Democracy – Episode 290: News Media

[00:00:00] Voiceover: This is democracy, a podcast about the people of the United States, a podcast about citizenship, about engaging with politics and the world around you, a podcast about educating yourself on today’s important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next.

[00:00:25] Jeremi: Welcome to our new episode of this is democracy.

[00:00:30] Today, we are going to discuss the changes in the mainstream media. If there still is such a thing as the mainstream media, how has news coverage and reporting on politics, national and local changed in the last few decades? And how have those changes affected us? What is driving those changes? And what does it mean to be informed, And to listen to watch or read the news in this setting today in comparison to the past.

[00:01:03] This is a podcast as always about history and its relationship to the present. And there’s nothing that’s affected us more than the ways we get our news and the changes in the ways we get our news in the last few decades. We are joined by a good friend and someone who has witnessed these changes, uh, in the trenches, as well as at the top of the mountain.

[00:01:26] Uh, our good. friend and distinguished journalist, Martin Di Caro. Martin, thank you for joining us today.

[00:01:31] Martin Di Caro: Jeremy, I am very excited to be on your show.

[00:01:36] Jeremi: It’s true. Uh, I have been on Martin’s wonderful show many times. I hope all of you listen to history as it happens. It is a show that really does a fantastic job of going behind the headlines and providing us the history we need to know sometimes in great detail.

[00:01:53] Uh, on current controversies and current issues in our world. Uh, and Martin does a fantastic job, uh, putting together that show. And of course he brings on the very best guests, right?

[00:02:03] Martin Di Caro: 26 appearances, as I pointed out to you last time you’ve been on 26 times. So

[00:02:08] Jeremi: this is my first time here. I’m excited. Wow, we’re really excited to have you on.

[00:02:11] I’m glad you made the time. You’re usually so busy. Martin is based in Washington, D. C., and he began history as it happens in 2021. This is after decades of working for major radio stations and news organizations such as the Associated Press. Press, Bloomberg, uh, and many others. So no one is better placed to understand, uh, the changes in the media than, than Martin Di Caro.

[00:02:34] Before we get to our conversation with Martin, we have, of course, uh, Mr. Zachary’s scene setting poem. Uh, what’s the title of your poem today? Zachary.

[00:02:44] Zachary: If anyone is listening.

[00:02:46] Jeremi: if anyone is anyone out there, great. Let’s hear it.

[00:02:52] Zachary: In the chamber room of city hall, the windows all are dark. The meeting stretches on into its third hour, the snow falls, the microphones fail, and it isn’t clear if anyone is listening or speaking at all.

[00:03:10] In the corner sit the reporters. Taking notes on long pads, still in their coats and snow boots, counting the minutes by the ancient clock that sits ponderously by the door, like a guard. There they are, and there they have been, no matter the weather, no matter the man in charge, no matter war or peace, they have, for some reason, always stayed.

[00:03:38] But how much longer?

[00:03:42] Jeremi: That’s a very, um, concerned poem, Zachary. You seem to be concerned about the future of reporting in this poem. And I know this reflects some of your own experience with local reporting. What’s the message in this poem, Zachary?

[00:03:56] Zachary: I think this poem is about, um, two things that we take for granted.

[00:04:00] Um, first the workings of local government, uh, that often don’t make it into the headlines. Uh, and all the sort of kinds of governance and politics that happens at a local level. Even when we’re distracted, um, by chaos on a national stage. Um, and number two, the kind of local journalism that remains in the room, even when we aren’t paying attention.

[00:04:24] Uh, and holds politicians accountable, but also informs the public of this kind of, uh, local, uh, government and politics that really makes a difference in people’s lives.

[00:04:34] Jeremi: And, and this is what you’re trying to do as a reporter for the Yale Daily News, right? To cover local news in this way, yes? Yes.

[00:04:41] Zachary: Certainly, and I think it’s something that a lot of young and old reporters alike are trying to do these days. Uh, some might say it’s a dying art, but it certainly has a lot of talent.

[00:04:51] Jeremi: So, so Martin, I think this is a perfect place to turn to you. Zachary’s teed you up very well. Uh, you were once Zachary.

[00:04:59] Martin Di Caro: Yeah, I can relate. I covered meetings 1 a. m. Local zoning boards, city councils. County councils, local government, you know, listening to everyone get their, uh, 15 minutes in and then, uh, doing interviews after the meeting breaks up at, you know, midnight and filing my stories for the next morning. But, you know, we’re going to talk a lot about how there’s so much national, right?

[00:05:24] The intensity of the national glare right now that, uh, that your son, Jeremy, uh, Zachary alluded to, but what really matters is what’s happening in your community. Right. That affects you directly and faster than say, some national policy. I mean, they’re both important, right? But how many people are interested or invested in what’s going on at their local board of ed or zoning board?

[00:05:46] What have you, people usually show up to these meetings after something’s already really bad has happened, or there’s been some type of scandal. And we saw this in recent election cycles with. Boards of ed, right? There are some cantankerous meetings and confrontations at boards of ed over say critical race theory.

[00:06:01] But, uh, I think Zachary’s right. It’s the day to day workings of government. And if there’s nobody watching local bureaucrats, local politicians, that’s when corruption, people get away with corruption.

[00:06:12] Jeremi: And, and it’s really interesting to me, Martin, because historically, at least for the, the last century before this, uh, period we’re in now, uh, the local newspaper was a major business, and the local newspaper owner, even in a relatively small town, was usually a rich guy, and he got rich by, uh, Because the paper made a lot of money and people received a lot of local news, um, through that, um, well regarded newspaper, whether they agreed with it or not.

[00:06:40] And that was often the main news source for people. I remember during my research on the late 19th century, looking at how many people were following national news through the Texas Republican, which was their local newspaper or various other local newspapers of that sort. What has changed? How has Uh, coverage and the nature of both the way the media works as you’ve seen it and the business model.

[00:07:04] How have those things changed in the last few decades?

[00:07:06] Martin Di Caro: Well, we can start with the business model first. Uh, we can talk about just the business model for the entire time here, but I’ll keep, I’ll keep it relatively brief because that has had a direct impact on local journalism and the extinction of Local newspapers, anyone can go on Google and just type in, you know, local newspapers, you know, how many are left, something like that versus say 25 years ago, and you can see it, I think newspaper advertising revenue based on some figures, according to the Newspaper Association of America, newspaper advertising revenue for print peaked in the early 2000s around 67 billion dollars, today adjusted for inflation, you know, It’s at around 16 and a half billion dollars.

[00:07:51] Wow. Wow. Yeah. Brands. Companies are not, you know, advertising in local newspapers or newspapers. They’re going to Google, they’re going to Facebook. I mean, what I’m about to say here is not my original conclusion. This has been pointed out by others that Google did not kill the newspaper advertising market, but it replaced it with an entirely different market, uh, where brands and companies, et cetera, want to have their advertising.

[00:08:17] So. When, when I launched history as it happens in 2021, I was doing it at the, the Washington times. I’m now independent. And I, I lasted at the times for almost four full years. And I remember, you know, being at the times, Washington times, is that a mainstream paper? We can talk about how to define what mainstream is anymore.

[00:08:35] But one of my guests on one of my podcasts was my boss, the executive editor of the newspaper, the president Christopher Dolan. And he shared an anecdote with me, uh, that really, I think, uh, We’ll illustrate this problem in the old days, the newspaper boy or girl would chuck the paper out onto your, onto your patio or your, your, your step, your front step.

[00:08:56] And the newspaper didn’t care which parts of the paper you were reading because you were subscribing to the paper and there were advertisements in the paper. And if the person read the front page or just did the crossword puzzle or just read the sports section, you know, it didn’t matter. That person was.

[00:09:12] Your customer got the entire paper every day. Well, those days are over. I mean, who reads printed newspapers now? It’s like an article by article thing where you know, how do you make money off of articles? Is it um Clicks. Well, no the whole click thing. You don’t really generate a lot of revenue generate pennies per per click, right?

[00:09:31] Is it, uh, online subscriptions? Well, sure, but you have to have great content in order to get people to subscribe because they’re subscribing to any number of other things in their lives, Netflix, what have you, right? And then of course, uh, you can get, um, well in the, in the public. media sphere. We have a very small public media ecosystem in this country compared to, say, some European countries.

[00:09:55] You know, they rely on things called underwriting, right? And that that’s really not all that sustainable either. If you’ve been paying attention to the public media landscape in our country. So, I mean, that was, that was a long answer there, but you know, we can talk about the advertising situation, but that that’s really, Uh, that’s really the main catalyst behind the extinction of local newspapers.

[00:10:17] Now, as far as, I mean, if you want to jump in with another question, Jeremy, but as far as, you know, biggest shifts, I think we could start with, you know, how do we define the mainstream? I’d actually be curious to hear what you guys. Think of what is a mainstream news outlet today.

[00:10:33] Jeremi: Zachary, before we get to that question, I know you wanted to ask another question about the business model and local coverage.

[00:10:40] Zachary: Yeah. I just wanted to ask from your perspective, what, what is lost when, when our media ecosystem sort of as, as we’re, I think also about to discuss like collapses into, um, A series of larger news outlets, or at the same time sort of disintegrates into small sort of social media fields, but the sort of middle players, those local newspapers whose names we’re all familiar with, but maybe no longer read in print sort of disappear.

[00:11:05] Martin Di Caro: Oh, you know, all our hat, we no longer have an informed. Populous. Uh, people also, uh, lose a connection with their community, right? Uh, local newspapers, more than just words on a page, right? It’s part of the cultural milieu in any town or county, right? And also, uh, your question raises another issue. You know, if people aren’t getting their, their news from, uh, professional journalists that are fact checked and edited, at a local newspaper that’s been there for generations, and therefore the editors have institutional knowledge, and they know the scene, they know everybody, they have great sources.

[00:11:42] If they’re not getting it from there, where are they getting it from? Just some junk they’re finding online,

[00:11:47] Jeremi: so. And I think, Martin, that comes to your point. point about the difficulty defining what the mainstream media is. For better or for worse, for at least half a century, the mainstream media in the United States was defined as a group of mostly men who were trained as journalists, who had experience and followed a certain set of ethics, whether we agreed with these ethics or not.

[00:12:13] Sometimes these ethics meant they were too close to the individuals they were covering. I remember realizing, uh, When I was writing a previous book that Walter Lippman, this very distinguished journalist, was often writing Kennedy speeches and then reporting on those speeches. And of course, reporting on how wonderful Kennedy’s speeches were.

[00:12:32] That of course, yeah, crosses, crosses the line. Um, but there were certain standards, uh, of how you, uh, understood an issue. of how you wrote about an issue, uh, certain, a certain consensus about the kinds of questions you would ask. And, and today it seems it’s a free for all. And there’s some positive elements of that, right?

[00:12:52] It means we’re not as restricted and we might be able to get information on things we couldn’t get information on before. Uh, again, in the era of John F. Kennedy, the president’s personal life was not covered and maybe it should have been covered. Today, maybe it’s Overly covered. Um, but, but in a, in a freer flowing space and a space with fewer limitations, it seems, it seems we sometimes don’t know what the news is, what entertainment is, what click bait is.

[00:13:17] I think that’s the challenge, Martin, right?

[00:13:19] Martin Di Caro: Absolutely. And you know, this raises an important question, media literacy, you know, do people know enough to discern what’s Legitimate, in my view, of course, these are very subjective terms, but as a longtime journalist, what is legitimate fact check journalism, professionally done, impartial, no partisan bias versus just any old stuff you find that, um, you know, squares with your prejudices.

[00:13:48] You’re just looking for something that gives you emotional support online. So, you know, in the mid 1990s, Fox News was not considered mainstream. When it, when it launched in the mid 1990s, who would say that Fox is in a mainstream outlet today? It’s arguably the most influential of all the news outlets today, at least on cable as the largest audience, right?

[00:14:07] Um the democratization Of the news media is I think what you’re getting at there Jeremy there is more of it now So the mainstream is wider And this has some benefits. Go on Substack. You might find somebody who’s really interesting. Right? But there’s probably no one editing that. And there’s probably no one fact checking it.

[00:14:26] And it’s probably more in the realm of opinion journalism than it would say reading an article at the Associated Press. So I worked at the Associated Press for 10 years as a national correspondent, part time, based in their, uh, Washington, D. C. bureau for AP radio. And, uh, you know, it was not doing well, and I was part of a group of people who were given a buyout some eight, nine years ago.

[00:14:49] That was fine. I was ready to move on and do other things. But the AP, my point here had Standards. You have to take a test before you work there on a number of things. A writing test, kind of an ethical test, or you’d ask questions on how to approach something, right? There are layers of editing. There were, uh, you know, ethical expectations, uh, standards for using, say, Unnamed sources.

[00:15:14] I mean, how many times do you read a newspaper article today that quote unnamed sources and those unnamed sources are giving their opinion at the Associated Press? That was not allowed. Unnamed sources could only be used for factual information and only if there was some pressing public interest to grant that source anonymity.

[00:15:33] For instance, they could be, uh, endangered if they gave their name, right? But you can’t just protect a government source from embarrassment. But that’s often what you see, even in the pages of the New York Times. And I read the New York Times every day, and its use of unnamed sources, just to focus on that issue, because there’s so many layers to this, I think has gotten out of control.

[00:15:53] But you know, how else are they going to bring you that coverage? If they don’t grant anonymity, you may never see that story. Right. You have to then trust the journalists and the editors that they’re doing this the right way, because they can then ignore, the sources can ignore the New York Times.

[00:16:09] There’s just so many other places where you can go. And we just saw this, uh, the past few days where The new administration, uh, at least at the Pentagon, maybe this will happen at the White House briefing room, or has happened already, where they’re, uh, giving the seats to different people, right, who I do not consider legitimate sources of journalism, like Breitbart or any of this other garbage, in my opinion, that you’d find online.

[00:16:31] So yes,

[00:16:32] Jeremi: I guess Martin, what you’re getting at that’s so important is, um, journalism is built upon trust. I have to believe the person, the newspaper, the site that they are actually investigating this issue and that they’re providing me with the facts or as close to the facts as they can come. Used to be, I think, just until quite recently, we trusted certain news sites because we believed in their professionalism.

[00:17:00] Now it looks as if trust is much more, do they agree with me ideologically? Is that a shift you’ve witnessed?

[00:17:06] Martin Di Caro: Absolutely, and it’s difficult for all people in this business to, uh, you know, get over this, I’ll call it an obstacle. We’re not here to cater to people’s feelings. I’m not here to cater to the audience’s feelings or to our sources feelings.

[00:17:22] You know, this whole thing about access journalism. There’s all this talk, you know, for a long, long, long time, media liberal bias. Mainstream media liberal bias. And for a long time, I always would push back on that. I think that the mainstream media has always had biases, but I always used to fight people, argue with people about whether it was for.

[00:17:41] You know, liberal versus conservative, pro Republican, pro Democratic. I always thought that the problem with the mainstream media was that it guarded its access, right? So it didn’t want to ruffle too many feathers. And, you know, for people who always wielded that cudgel about everything you read, say in the New York times, talking about the news here, not the opinion pages.

[00:18:02] New York Times, Washington Post, Network News at Night on NBC, CBS, ABC, and NPR. It’s just a lot of liberal drivel. And I would always come back to them with one example. So if the New York Times is so pro Democrat or pro liberal, why did they run one front page story after another about Hillary Clinton’s email problems in 2016?

[00:18:23] I mean, there’s any number of ways to poke holes in an argument. But, but, but, but I will say this in recent years of one change I’ve noticed is more partisanship in the pages of, if not the pages of these newspapers on the part of the journalists and their Twitter feeds. And this gets into the area of, you know, you raised the trust issue.

[00:18:46] There’s been a lot of self inflicted wounds. By the mainstream press again to use that term. Um, I would say outlets that I always considered to be impartial, not Fox News. Fox News has always been right wing propaganda, but, um, there’s been too much of that. And we saw this, you know, in the early Trump years where this whole idea of can our existing standards and ethics, the way we’ve covered politics in the professional era of journalism, certainly not the 19th century.

[00:19:13] As you know, Jeremy, you wrote your book about civil war by other means when newspapers were published. You know, in one party or the other, the professional era of journalism, say post 1945, what have you, uh, can those same ways of doing journalism? Can they apply to the Trump era? And I think a lot of places got themselves in trouble when, um, Especially in places and Zachary, I don’t, I’m not throwing you into this lot with a lot of young, young, overeducated, uh, Ivy league journalists who thought their role was to be more activists because objectivity was no longer any good or impartiality was no longer any good because Trump was some alien force that, you know, was outside our American experience.

[00:19:55] You know what I mean?

[00:19:56] Jeremi: Yes, absolutely. I mean, it’s, it’s difficult to balance, um, strong ideological beliefs, strong concerns about democracy with, shall we say, a less, uh, opinionated coverage of certain, uh, activities. Uh, Zachary, I know you struggle with this, right? Uh, how do you think about this?

[00:20:15] Zachary: Well, I think it’s, um, It’s something that I’m thinking about a lot when I cover politics here in New Haven.

[00:20:20] I think it’s particularly difficult as a student journalist because there are many things that as a student you want to be involved in. Um, and sometimes they conflict with the demands of journalistic integrity. But I think, uh, we think very seriously, at least at the Yale Daily News, about, about what it means to cover politics impartially, even as student journalists.

[00:20:43] Um, obviously I think there’s a slightly lower standard, but we try and hold ourselves to the highest standard. Um, I think the most important thing, or the way I view it at least, is that the most important thing as a journalist, for example, I cover education here in New Haven, and the most important thing, I find, is to listen to people.

[00:21:01] Um, everyone is not to always go to the same people, uh, as sources and not to always only go to the same kinds of meetings or organizations for, for quotations or for background information, but instead to listen and go to all, all sorts of sources on these questions and, and, and, um, If one story you write, uh, focuses on some particular angle or policy question, there’s, there’s nothing wrong with it.

[00:21:29] In fact, it’s the best thing, I think, for your next article to focus on a completely different or even contradictory policy question or, or angle.

[00:21:36] Martin Di Caro: Yeah, we’re here to portray the reality and present the audience, the reader, the listener, the viewer with all of the information, right? Not necessarily, I hate this throwaway line, so they can make up their own minds.

[00:21:51] No, I mean, yeah, that’s true. But you also want to portray the entire picture so they can make up their own minds in an accurate way. So accuracy. Impartiality, transparency, all those things are very, very important putting your own personal views aside because once you start going into a story thinking it has to be one way, as Zachary just said, you’re going to miss everything else and then you’re going to put out stuff that’s not trustworthy.

[00:22:17] So,

[00:22:18] Jeremi: that makes a lot of sense. How does one deal with the proliferation, Martin, of disinformation? There’s always been some of that. There’s always been propaganda, but there’s no doubt that another historical shift, uh, and some of this has to do with technology, is that in the last 20 to 30 years, uh, foreign and domestic actors have become much better at trying to fool us, uh, overwhelming us with, uh, information and images that, that’s just not true.

[00:22:44] Uh, how, how do journalists deal with that?

[00:22:47] Martin Di Caro: I don’t know how to deal with this problem. Um, fact checking, does that work? I mean, there’s been professional fact checkers basically installed at every major outlet over the last ten years. Does that change people’s minds? The response you get is, well, the fact checkers are biased too.

[00:23:03] I don’t know how to control disinformation. We are overwhelmed by it. We are, we’re drowning in it. Um, the only thing, you know, I could do as an individual or as an institution like the New York times can do is point it out and then also, um, make sure that their own reporting is accurate and fair, uh, because as I mentioned, there have been self inflicted wounds.

[00:23:24] I mean, I remember the Columbia journalism review did a, a big piece last year on, uh, the reporting about Russia. Trump and Russia and that investigation, and it pointed out how some, you know, Pulitzer prize winning pieces had a number of mistakes in it. So, I mean, there is some asymmetrical warfare here, you know, some of the shoddy outlets, they don’t ever have to be right.

[00:23:50] I mean, they’re, they’re trying, they’re not trying to be right, but, you know, the APs, the New York times, the Bloomberg, I worked at Bloomberg radio for several years, we have to be right 100 percent of the time. So you make one mistake, you know, you get the entire, you know, Oh, look at this, look at that. Well, whereas where the other people are wrong, although I mean, just turn on right wing radio and that’s not kind of a little bit outside or even left wing radio, right?

[00:24:12] That’s a little outside of what we’re talking about here. But think about how the average person approaches all this stuff. It’s all part of one large ecosystem to them. They may not be saying, okay, well, this is a newspaper here and I can trust this. This is professional journalism versus what they’re saying.

[00:24:25] Hearing on the Rush Limbaugh show. I mean, I’ve known people over the years who say, Rush Limbaugh’s telling you the truth and what’s in the New York Times is all lies. So, you know, Rush Limbaugh could lie and be wrong all the time and then people don’t care. Yeah. We’ll point out one mistake. That a mainstream outlet has made and say, look, you can’t trust it.

[00:24:43] Jeremi: What does it mean to be getting it right though? Let’s take something like the Russia investigation as you just described it, uh, which involved a longstanding investigation of Russian efforts to interfere in our elections. Um, th there are a lot of uncertainties about what’s Correct. And what’s not, what does it mean to be getting it right as a serious journalist?

[00:25:07] Martin Di Caro: Wow. Well, I think we can look at examples of what was correct. And that is As we know from, uh, the federal investigation that Russian entities, Russian operatives did try to influence the election, right? But then if you take a look at what some of the, a lot of the things that say was on MSNBC, which is opinion journalism, but it’s MSNBC, NBC is a, a major journalism brand.

[00:25:34] A lot of the things that Rachel Maddow said that turned out to be completely inaccurate or false. You know, going from what we knew was correct. To riding this wave of Donald Trump is actually a pawn of Putin or some kind of Russian asset. That’s where things really, you know, that’s where things went astray.

[00:25:52] And how did that happen? I think it’s part of what we started talking about the business model, the incentive. Uh, and this is certainly not, so what about say is not new is that the fixation on Scandal, especially personal scandal. And that’s something I’ve always detested about my own industry. I just read about a great example of this.

[00:26:13] Again, this is nothing new. Nelson Lichtenstein’s great book about the 1990s called A Fabulous Failure. He’s talking about the Monica Lewinsky scandal in the book, uh, 98, around there. He counted up the number of articles in the mainstream press that were focusing on that. It was literally thousands of articles.

[00:26:35] Thousands upon thousands of articles, news segments, uh, radio segments, TV, what have you. Versus coverage of other things that turned out to be much more important in the long run. There was some bank failure around the same time, and there was a hearing going on in Congress where there was basically no media.

[00:26:54] No media present. You can find this hearing. I forgot the name of the bank or the entity that failed, but it was a harbinger of what was to come 10 years later in the oh, a crash, but no one was paying attention to it at the time because all eyes are on scandal. I think some of that, I mean, and the incentive for scoops and personal brands of journalists, especially on Twitter, who is going to break the next trump scoop because that had a white house that was leaking like a sieve.

[00:27:19] I think you get the point I’m getting at here. Absolutely.

[00:27:23] Zachary: Zachary. Yeah, I wanted to ask, how do you think this, these changes in the media landscape that you so well outlined have changed how politicians think about their communications and changed how they interact with the media?

[00:27:38] Martin Di Caro: Well, just look at the most recent presidential election.

[00:27:42] How many interviews did Donald Trump do with, say, CBS, NBC, ABC? Maybe he did a couple. I mean, J. D. Vance was on TV quite a bit. But for the most part, both candidates, Kamala Harris, she did no interviews at first. They just skip. They skip the places that might be too challenging and go on podcasts. And I think, you know, that’s not all bad.

[00:28:04] I think you can reach people who may be listening to, what was that one podcast that Kamala Harris did? Call me. Daddy or something. She reached a large audience with that. I mean, does it make a difference or what? I don’t know. Um, I’m not sure if that’s all that bad or, um, or what the positives and negatives are that of that are right this moment.

[00:28:24] I mean, as long as you’re reaching people, right? I mean, as more of a traditional journalist, I think that candidates should sit down with The Tim Russerts of the world. I don’t think there are any Tim Russerts anymore, to be honest with you, but sit down with the mainstream places that get the largest audience and sit there for a grilling.

[00:28:40] But, uh, to answer your question, Zachary, cause I do have a tendency to meander in my answers. Politicians feel they can just ignore who they don’t want to speak to.

[00:28:50] Jeremi: Zachary, I thought maybe I’d ask you, uh, since you’re a young journalist, a young rising journalist, uh, is the nature of the business model not only changing the way politicians interact, but also the kinds of people who go into journalism?

[00:29:05] What are you seeing from that point of view?

[00:29:08] Zachary: I don’t know. I still think the people who go into journalism, um, go into it At least with an ideal in their head of, uh, we just described a sort of impartial journalism that, um, you know, is as critical to government and politics and citizenship, um, as, uh, elections or campaigns.

[00:29:29] Um, and I, I do think that most of the journalists I’ve interacted with and certainly the journalists I work with, um, Come in with that mindset. I think what’s more challenging is to think like, what will those journalists think or be doing in 10 years? And unfortunately, the answer for many of them is probably not journalism.

[00:29:49] And I think that the problem is more with Uh, the business model than with the people. Absolutely. I mean,

[00:29:56] Martin Di Caro: no one gets into journalism. Sorry to interject there, Zachary. No one gets into this business to make millions of dollars. Now, some journalists are very well paid. Most are not. Uh, I’ve done fairly well in my career.

[00:30:10] I have nothing to complain about. As I say, this is the business I’ve chosen. If I wanted to make a lot of money, I would have done something else. I’m in this because I love it. My first wage was not a salary. My first part time wage working at WGHT Radio in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey was 6. 25. So no one gets into this for the money, but the point I’m making is not to tell you about, uh, how poorly paid I was in 1997.

[00:30:35] It’s because of the extinction of local newspapers. Where are journalists going to cut their teeth and learn how to do their jobs? Right. So it’s not just a factor of bad pay, you know, and maybe driving away people who don’t want to, you know, work hard and the blood, the sweat and the tears. And then you’re making 25, 000 a year working for a small newspaper somewhere.

[00:30:58] Right. Right. It’s where are journalists going to learn how to do this? I could not have worked at a major radio station when I got out of college in the late 1990s. I needed to learn how to do this craft. And it took me about a decade to finally break through for my first, you know, real job in a major market.

[00:31:14] I needed all that experience because journalism is difficult. It is a mistake prone profession. Profession. And, uh, I just worry, uh, to Zachary’s point, you know, where, where, where are young journalists going to come from? There’s no, you know, minor league system anymore. Go, you know, go find a local newspaper somewhere.

[00:31:33] It’s hard to find those jobs.

[00:31:35] Jeremi: What about the other side of that argument, though, Martin, which is that, uh, traditionally, um, the world of journalism, tended to be very elitist. Um, and at least, uh, in many cases, uh, and many areas, journalists were chosen. They started their careers from the same, uh, few schools, uh, and they had a similar background and that the current fragmented environment that we’re talking about in, in great detail here, that that offers more opportunities that you could start Transcribed by https: otter.

[00:32:01] ai your own podcast, you could start your own website and eventually get attention and then eventually become part of a larger journalistic enterprise. Isn’t that more democratic factor and opportunity for some? I think so. I would agree with

[00:32:16] Martin Di Caro: what you have. Actually, I can’t even improve on what you just said because no, it’s true.

[00:32:20] It’s true. Um, that does raise issues of quality, but you know, we shouldn’t like, um, I think your point is we shouldn’t idealize the past here. Right. Uh, there was a time in the news media. I mean, just go watch that movie. Great, great movie. All the president’s men.

[00:32:35] Jeremi: Yes.

[00:32:35] Martin Di Caro: They show the newsroom at the Washington post.

[00:32:37] Yes. No women, Yale

[00:32:39] Jeremi: in Yale.

[00:32:40] Martin Di Caro: Yeah. No women, no minorities. Now I think the Washington post probably does have, still has a lot of Ivy league graduates, but, um, you know, it’s, this is not the 1970s anymore. You just can’t have a newsroom with Uh, men, uh, white men, I mean, I don’t want to, uh, I don’t want to, um, generalize, but it’s true.

[00:33:02] Jeremi: And how do you think, Martin, about your role now as a journalist in light of this really rich and problematic painting that you’ve given us of the business model, of the changing nature of the distribution, of the changing audience, of all these things? How do you think about your podcast and the work you do?

[00:33:24] Martin Di Caro: Biggest challenge is breaking through all the noise, right? We’re all after an audience. That, uh, as we’ve been discussing, gets their news, gets their information from any number of sources and also it’s not, we’re, we’re, we’re competing for attention as well, you know, in the old days when, you know, look at an old photograph of the subways in New York City, everybody’s reading the morning newspaper, right?

[00:33:49] We consume news all throughout the day now. There’s no cycle. It’s just a constant flow. Right. So trying to find people, meet people where they are, you know, I get up in the morning and I’ll see, I got a, a New York times news alert at three o’clock in the morning. I mean, why would I get it on my iPhone?

[00:34:08] Right. It’s like, so, um, trying to break through a stab, you know, establish an audience, all this jargon, all this, um, industry jargon that I hate content. Right. Audience size, you know, all this stuff, but it’s, it’s the reality that we’re facing right now. Um, I think that’s, that’s what I face every single day trying to, you know, grow an audience and find a loyal audience through my podcast and you face this as well.

[00:34:36] And, but also I think on a more personal level, just being ethical and accurate and fair, you know, informing my show. I hope my show is entertaining, but I want it to be informative. Because there’s enough junk out there, right? I’m not going to participate in the race to the bottom.

[00:34:51] Jeremi: That makes sense. And that’s what makes you a good journalist, that you’re sticking true to your craft, even as you work to reach a changing audience in a changing environment.

[00:35:01] That’s, that’s, I think. That’s what makes you a great journalist, Martin. You know what they say, the high road is a, the high road’s a lonely place. It is indeed. It is. And history teaches that. And we’re encouraging our podcast listeners to take the high road, even if it is a lonely place. Uh, we’d like to close, Martin, always with, um, a way of bringing this historical and contemporary analysis, uh, to the present.

[00:35:24] And really coming away with something we can go forward with that might even be positive. It doesn’t have to be positive. What should our listeners, who are consumers of news, obviously, and consumers of history, they’re listening to us, hopefully they’re listening to your podcast as well, History As It Happens.

[00:35:42] Um, what should they take away? What, what can make them better readers, listeners, watchers of the news? What, what advice would you have for them?

[00:35:51] Martin Di Caro: I would say. Less time scrolling, less time on your phone, and maybe make a routine each day. Uh, if, if you don’t want to have the paper, the printed paper delivered to your home seven days a week, I get it.

[00:36:08] I only get the printed newspaper on the weekends because I like to leaf through it. I’m shocked, Martin. I’m shocked. You should get it every day like me. Come on. I would have, I mean, I already have a mountain of old newspapers, so, uh, I take them out once a week sometimes, but no, um, I think maybe create a routine, habituate, create a habit out of, um, taking a step back from the junk, and we’re all guilty of this, scrolling through junk, and seek out, Your favorite two, three, four sources of news, whether it’s a major newspaper, a magazine, like, I don’t know, the Atlantic.

[00:36:45] I have my own. I read the New York times. I read the Washington post. I read the New York review of books. Uh, there’s a couple of others in there and I read the sports section as well. I got to keep up on what’s happening with my favorite teams, but, and I, but I try to do it in a way that’s more assist, like more of a system.

[00:37:01] I don’t know that people don’t want to have their lives be excessively regimented, but I find that I. Assimilate and understand and get more perspective on what’s happening in the world rather than just picking during the day. It’s like, you know, I’m learning a new language now. I’m taking language classes every Saturday morning.

[00:37:21] Italian. Yeah. Studia Italiano. Bene. Yeah. And, uh, I find that being present for those two hours, I learned more. Be present while you’re consuming the news. Don’t watch TV news. I feel like TV news is just a waste of time. And last point, Jeremy, subscribe, support, because that’s, that’s unfortunately the future.

[00:37:43] I don’t really want to say it’s the future. It’s the present. These places need people to subscribe to their content. No one likes a paywall. We’re all oversubscribed. We all have too many subscriptions, but subscribe to the ones that you want to support.

[00:37:54] Jeremi: That makes a lot of sense, and I love the emphasis upon deep reading, being present, it’s a something we come back to time and again, that being serious about something requires you to take time to turn off other distractions and dig deep, uh, and, and learn and think, and um, our, our present world makes that hard sometimes, and we have to be disciplined to do that.

[00:38:15] Zachary, does this resonate with you? Do you think that what Martin is suggesting, which in some ways is the classical mode of learning and thinking, do you think this resonates with your generation of news followers?

[00:38:28] Zachary: Yes, I think so. I think also that in our, in our day and age, there’s a lot of innovation being done to try and see sort of what are new kinds of business models that Sure, but, uh, publications, uh, can take, uh, to try and sustain, uh, serious journalism without, you know, sacrificing on their integrity or, you know, On the quality of their journalism.

[00:38:51] Martin Di Caro: Zachary, when was the last time you read a printed newspaper? That’s not your own newspaper that you’re working at right

[00:38:56] Zachary: now. Oh, that’s a good question. Um, Pretty recently. I mean, we get the New York Times every day at home. So, probably last time I was home.

[00:39:04] Martin Di Caro: Oh, good. Well, you know, I know people have never, on the younger side, they’ve never read a printed newspaper.

[00:39:09] Wow.

[00:39:11] Jeremi: And, and that’s okay because I, I have students, Martin, who read deeply in, uh, and, and not just the New York Times and, uh, the Washington Post, but they read deeply in, uh, let’s say Jacobin or, you know, various other publications online. I don’t think you have to have it in print. I’m a print guy. I like print.

[00:39:31] Martin Di Caro: No, I mean, the amazing thing about the digital revolution, sorry to interject, Jeremy, but the amazing thing is you can read any newspaper, journal, magazine, what have you. Anywhere in the world in the palm of your hand. So that is great. I mean, that is a true positive.

[00:39:44] Jeremi: I mean, for me as a news junkie and someone who likes to read news from different parts of the world, I mean, it’s a golden age.

[00:39:51] I mean, I used to have to go to the reading room at Sterling library or green library or a Pena Castaneda here and, you know, read newspapers that were three, four days old from France and Germany. Now I can read it in real time. Like I can read how Germany is responding to Trump and its effects on the German election in real time.

[00:40:09] Uh, and read deeply in that. It’s such an opportunity if we just turn off the scrolling, as you said, and find sources that we find are analytical and trusted, and spend time with them each day. I think that’s what you’re saying. It’s a kind of slow food approach to news, yes?

[00:40:25] Martin Di Caro: Yeah, I, uh, exactly. And, you know, I equate, uh, flipping or leafing through the pages of the printed paper, uh, I see so many stories that I otherwise wouldn’t see deep into the, in the page.

[00:40:36] It’s like the difference between shopping for books online on Amazon versus walking around it. The aisles of a bookstore, you’re going to see things that you didn’t know were there and it’s a just more comforting and I don’t know, nourishing experience I find. But no, you can’t expect people to have 18 different newspapers and magazines showing up, you know, piled up on their, on their living room table every single day.

[00:41:01] So yes, you can be thoughtful about it, even though you’re looking at the screen in the palm of your hand.

[00:41:07] Jeremi: Martin, this has been an enlightening and, uh, even an inspiring conversation. I think you are a model for us of the serious journalism we need more of today. And I think Zachary has reminded us that, uh, not only are people interested in serious journalism, many people are going into it as a field, perhaps Zachary himself, and, uh, there are many opportunities out there if we can just get beyond the click bait, if we can force ourselves to support and And encourage and pay attention to the serious news sites versus those that are trying to simply sell us stuff of one kind or another.

[00:41:44] Martin Di Caro: Man, you know, one thing I know you, it sounds like you’re wrapping up one thing we didn’t even talk about and that is newspaper ownership. We were in the era of the billionaire newspaper owner here and I don’t know if. That’s good or bad, but I mean, uh, the Washington Post when it was purchased by Bezos was not doing well and it’s not doing well right now, but it’s doing better than it was before he bought it.

[00:42:07] Jeremi: Except in their editorial space, but that’s a different story. Martin Di Caro, thank you so much for joining us. I want to encourage our listeners to subscribe and listen to your podcast, which is multiple times a week taking history from the news and really taking us back to understand that history, uh, with various historians, sometimes even me, uh, history as it happens.

[00:42:32] Uh, you can follow it on substack or just Google history as it happens. It’ll come up. There’s a wonderful image of Martin, uh, that you get to see, uh, there. Martin, thank you for joining us. History as it happens. com. There you go. There you go.

[00:42:46] Martin Di Caro: History as it happens. com.

[00:42:48] Jeremi: Zachary, thank you for your inspiring poem about, uh, the loneliness, but still necessity, of local journalism, and for all the work you do as a journalist, Zachary.

[00:42:58] Thank you. Are you there, Zachary?

[00:43:00] Zachary: Yes, I am. Sorry.

[00:43:01] Jeremi: I usually don’t respond.

[00:43:05] Martin Di Caro: You don’t even answer them. What’s going

[00:43:07] Jeremi: on. And thank you most of all to our loyal listeners and subscribers to our sub stack. And I’m very grateful that many of you do subscribe. I hope many more will subscribe. Thank you for joining us for this week of this is democracy.

[00:43:30] This podcast is produced by the liberal arts ITS development studio.

[00:43:33] Voiceover: And the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harris Codini. Stay tuned for a new episode every week. You can find This Is Democracy on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

[00:43:49] See you next time.