This is Democracy – Episode 327: Local Journalism

2026-08-17_this-is-democracy_local-journalism_NC
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Intro: [00:00:00] 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

Jeremi Suri: Welcome to our new episode of This Is Democracy.

After a short summer break of a few weeks, we are back, and we’re back today to talk about a really important issue, an issue that, uh, I think transcends many different parts of the United States and other parts of the world, um, the challenges of local news coverage. Democracy depends upon citizens, um, having information, good information about what’s happening in the world around them, including their local communities.

And, uh, what the United States and other countries have experienced over the last decade is the rapid decline of local journalism [00:01:00] simply because the business model is more difficult. People are not buying local newspapers. They don’t want to pay to subscribe to websites that cover local news. Um, local news coverage on television gets fewer viewers.

Um, so much of what happens in our towns and cities and communities is no longer covered by as many journalists as before. Today, we’re going to talk to our own Zachary Suri about this topic. Uh, he spent, Zachary did, this last summer working as a local journalist in Milwaukee. He will talk about that, and we’ll talk about how he sees local journalism, the challenges it faces, the opportunities, and, uh, where we might go from here, and how the history of journalism can help us to think about the future.

So we’ve got a lot on the plate, Zachary, huh?

Zachary Suri: Yes, we do.

Jeremi Suri: It’s good to have you back.

Zachary Suri: Good to be back.

Jeremi Suri: Did you have a good summer, by the way?

Zachary Suri: I did, yeah.

Jeremi Suri: Excellent. It was a good time. Excellent. So, so maybe let’s start by, um, telling our listeners what you did this summer.

Zachary Suri: Yeah. [00:02:00] Well, I think, um- One thing that probably a lot of regular readers of newspapers don’t think about very often is what does the life or the daily work of a journalist look like?

Um, and part of why I love it, part of why it’s so much fun is it looks different every day. You start projects in the morning that you finish in the afternoon, or sometimes you’re working on longer term projects, but a lot of the time it means showing up at an event or a press conference and, um, you know, asking questions and coming back to your office and within an hour writing something about it.

Sometimes it means doing s- investigative work that involves following the paper trail, um, even historical archival work, sometimes speaking with people who witnessed or experienced things that haven’t been covered enough. Um, it’s a real mix of, of important work. Um, but I will say I think the basic bread and butter of what a journalist does is ask questions.

Um, it’s why I find it so much fun. You know, y- your job is to ask annoying, difficult questions that are hard to answer, um, but-

Jeremi Suri: Comes naturally to you.

Zachary Suri: Yeah. [00:03:00] But are, are critically important. And, um, you know, the reality is policymakers, even those with the best of intentions, have a lot on their plate, and they’re also balancing a lot of real political concerns.

Um, and if there isn’t someone in the room, even just one person, um, to ask a, a difficult question or even just to report on decisions that are often made with little oversight or accountability from the public at late night meetings or early morning, uh, press conferences, uh, then those questions often don’t get answered at all.

Um, and no one knows the answer, um, which is especially a problem, you know, when Something later becomes a real problem down the road. If a decision made 25 years ago, you know, causes a massive financial issue today, um, and, uh, there’s nobody, uh, 25 years ago who asked difficult questions about, um, that one particular financial decision, then we don’t have a record of who to blame adequately, basically.

Jeremi Suri: Right. Right. You’re referring to, uh, a number of stories you wrote [00:04:00] on, uh, pension decisions that were made 25 years ago in Milwaukee, pension decisions that continue to affect Milwaukee. We’re not gonna talk about that story because our, our listeners can go and read it actually. Uh, all of these stories that might come up in our conversation today are on the website for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Um, but building on what you just said, Zachary, um, what is your response to those who have the exact opposite view of the media, which I think we hear more often than what you just said, which is that those in the media, those reporters, they’re annoying people who are seeking to find scandals and misinterpret and misconstrue what is going on, and it’s a kinda gotcha approach.

Uh, and many politicians, many business people, many ordinary citizens are skeptical of the need for journalists because they see them as sort of scandal mongers. What’s your response to that?

Zachary Suri: Well, I think the irony of that skepticism is that the primary job of a journalist is to be just that, skeptical.

And I think that’s part of why journalists often have a reputation for being annoying or [00:05:00] asking nitpicky questions, um, is that, you know, the job of a journalist at some level is to piss e- everyone off, um , and to ask-

Jeremi Suri: Again, that comes naturally …

Zachary Suri: ask difficult, um, questions that often, uh, you know, th- th- they don’t reflect the opinion of the journalist, but they reflect, um, potential, uh, answers, potential, um, uh, policy options that haven’t been considered or aren’t on the table, and they can be difficult for policymakers to answer.

Um, you know, I’ve asked many questions that I wouldn’t know how to answer myself if I were in the position of the person I asked, but that’s kind of the point. Um, and I think-

Jeremi Suri: But are you asking to embarrass them? Are you asking to expose them? What, what drives and motivates your questions?

Zachary Suri: I, I think at a fundamental level it’s about accountability.

It’s not about embarrassing anyone. Um, and I think journalists probably more than In any profession besides maybe, um, doctors think very [00:06:00] deeply and spend a lot of time thinking about the ethics of what they do, um, particularly less so in the case of public figures and politicians. Um, but definitely when that verges on questions about their private lives or their personal affairs.

Um, you know, journalists may not always come to the conclusions that, um, private citizens or those public figures themselves would like. Um, obviously the tendency of a journalist, um, and the default is to make information public, um, because our readers expect us to, and that’s our duty. Um, but, uh, journalists do actually think seriously, um, if they’re doing their job about the real ethical implications of their work.

Jeremi Suri: Mm-hmm.

Zachary Suri: Um, but when it comes to asking policymakers difficult questions, um, that are related to policy, um, I think that all of us in the public, um, and I include myself in this ’cause I’m obviously not just a journalist, I’m also a reader of journalism, I rely on journalism, um, as a citizen, uh, you expect and you want your journalists to ask difficult policy questions, even of people that you might agree with, [00:07:00] because even people you agree with can be wrong and make bad decisions that can hurt, hurt you.

Right. Or they can make really good decisions that no one’s giving them credit for, and that’s the job of the journalist to report on as well. Mm-hmm.

Jeremi Suri: Mm-hmm. So, so how does one do this as a local journalist? How do you pick the stories? When, when people think about local journalism, I think they generally think about sports, right?

Um, what are the ways that you learned to do this, and what is the value of not asking questions just of presidents? Everyone sees the value of that. But, uh, you spent your summer asking questions of ordinary citizens, of, uh, county executives, local judges, et cetera. What… How does one do that? Why is that important, and how should we understand that?

Zachary Suri: I think the most important part of, of local journalism is showing up. Um, you know, I, I think- You– One would be surprised, someone who doesn’t pay close attention to local politics, which, um, for very understandable reasons is most of us, would be surprised how many of the important decisions that really impact your lives, from the roads that you drive on to the schools you send your kids to, are made in [00:08:00] late-night meetings or meetings in the middle of a workday where there’s no one besides the people making the decisions actually in the room.

Uh, and it is, I think, for obvious reasons, really important that there is someone else in the room, and not just someone else in the room to listen to what’s going on, but someone who actually knows all the information that the decision-makers have as well, um, and can ask difficult questions, not to try and come to some political, politically feasible or, um, politically palatable answer, but to actually get at the truth of what’s going on.

Um, in some ways, the job of the journalist is to show up to those kinds of meetings, those places where decisions are made with little oversight, um, and be a voice for truth. Um, but not just a voice for truth, but someone who can keep a record of what actually happens, uh, and, and share that with the public.

Um, I think it’s actually critical for local democracy. Um, you know, we often talk about the critical elements of American democracy, you know, going back to Alexis de Tocqueville, being [00:09:00] participation in local associations, voting, running for local office, all things that Americans participate in, uh, in, in ways that are, are, are uncommon around the world, even in other democracies today.

Um, but a critical part of that has, in the United States, always been, uh, a critical press. Mm-hmm. And, um, especially in an era when levels of citizen participation, particularly in local government and local politics, um, are, are going down, um, it’s even more important that we have journalists in the room who can tell us what’s happening and, and ask hard questions, um, and also connect the dots between those policy decisions that often seem very abstract and the real concrete impacts they have on people’s lives, even people who don’t recognize that the pain that’s being caused, uh, or the benefit that they’re accruing is coming from that decision.

Jeremi Suri: Yeah. Uh, of course, our tradition of a critical press has never really been, with few exceptions, [00:10:00] an objective press. Historically, the press has been biased, right? Most newspapers historically, especially local newspapers, have been owned by one wealthy person or one wealthy corporation or another, and most cities, in the early 20th century, for example, had multiple newspapers with multiple points of view.

There was a Democratic newspaper, there was a progressive newspaper, there was a Republican newspaper. Um, and so when public figures criticize reporters, they often criticize them for being partisan Uh, especially at the local level, right? There’ll be the reporters who, uh, are not sympathetic to realtors, and there’ll be the reporters who are sympathetic to realtors, right?

They might work for different kinds of presses, right? Um, and the other criticism, of course, is that reporters often are young people like you who don’t understand what it actually-

Zachary Suri: Mm …

Jeremi Suri: takes to run an organization. How do you respond to those two criticisms, the criticisms of partisanship and the criticisms of ignorance?[00:11:00]

Zachary Suri: Well, I think there’s two s- two separate parts to that. There’s the criticism that you get from the people that you’re actually working with and that you’re reporting on, and I think that criticism as a journalist, one has to take seriously, um, and be willing to listen. I think, um A lot of– I think there’s actually a lot more power in, uh, l- ha- in the feeling of being listened to by a journalist, um, than people often realize.

I think it, it, often what, what people are looking for is really for a journalist to hear their point of view and convey that in some way, or even not even convey that, but listen to it and show that they, they care and understand. But what

Jeremi Suri: if you don’t buy their point of view?

Zachary Suri: Um, and also ask critical questions.

I think the, the two can go hand in hand. Um, but I don’t think the job of a journalist is to be purely objective. Um, journalism is really boring when it’s simply a regurgitation of facts, and particularly in a world of AI, the journalist isn’t really adding anything to the equation- Yeah … if you’re just reporting minutes from a meeting.

Jeremi Suri: Yeah.

Zachary Suri: But the purpose of a journalist is to write a story that has an angle, but an angle is different from a thesis. An angle is to say, [00:12:00] like, “This is the important information,” or, “These are the– This is the significance of what happened,” which is a, a very important interpretive act, and one that can only be done successfully when someone brings a lot of knowledge and experience to the table, or at least, uh, the hard work and elbow grease that’s necessary to come to a legitimate conclusion.

Um, and what’s important about those kinds of angles is they’re not conclusions per se. They’re not the end of the story. What makes the job of a journalist special is you’re not writing a book on the topic where at the end of the book you have a conclusion chapter. You’re writing a story and you’re gonna write another story on a very similar topic in the same subject area the next day or the next week, and it might take a completely different angle.

And so I think the most important, the most important thing for a journalist to be is not try and pretend that they can be fully objective and never interpret anything, but simply regurgitate facts. Instead, a journalist has to be willing to constantly change their mind and look at things from different points of view, and also to be skeptical of everyone and everything and ask difficult questions of everyone.

Yeah. What I would be concerned by is if, is if, [00:13:00] um, you know, only politicians of a certain party or a certain race or a certain gender or a certain, um, uh, po- policy position are getting difficult questions in your community or are having their finances or their personal lives, uh, investigated. Uh, I think that the answer though is not that those people shouldn’t be investigated, but that the journalist is failing to investigate everyone else.

Jeremi Suri: Right. Right. So it’s, it’s in a sense everyone should be fair game to the same difficult questions. The, the potential sexual scandals of one group should not insulate another group from being investigated for those, right?

Zachary Suri: Precisely. And also, also, there’s a distinction here between public figures, um, and private citizens.

Um, you know, again, journalists think very, very s- seriously about these ethical questions, particularly when it comes to private citizens, to minors, to people who are in vulnerable positions in our community. And so I don’t think that, um, what I’m saying doesn’t apply to everyone across the board, but to public figures, yes.

Jeremi Suri: So much of what you just said is that, you know, you have an angle [00:14:00] but you follow the facts. That makes a lot of sense, and you have to be willing to change your mind. That’s good.

Zachary Suri: Even while writing the article. Yeah. The angle isn’t something that you… You might have a sense of what it’s gonna be, but you really have to report the story

Jeremi Suri: first.

And, and the angle probably changes as you follow the evidence, right?

Zachary Suri: Certainly, and it has to be completely grounded in fact.

Jeremi Suri: So how do you assess facts? This is, I think, what a lot of people don’t, don’t really understand, especially for local journalism. How, h- did you as a, as a local journalist in Milwaukee this last couple of months, how did you check the factual veracity of stories when you heard rumors or people, even powerful people, told you things?

Uh, how does one check facts? How do you know a fact is a fact? This is something that is obviously a big debate in our society now.

Zachary Suri: Well, I think, um, and a lot of it comes down to something that is actually a very human process, which I don’t think AI or will, will ever be able to replicate, which is the process of assessing the truth value of statements, and it’s, it, it involves judgment calls.

It’s not like a machine that you can put, [00:15:00] um, something in and, and know for certain that you’re getting the right answer out of it. Um, but at the same time, a lot of it is, is about transparency. It’s about following the receipts and showing your reader the receipts as well. Um, and as a reporter, I think our job is to do that whenever possible.

Now, there are some cases and some stories where, for very important ethical reasons, you cannot reveal, you can’t show all your receipts, and that’s part of why it’s important for the journalist, uh, to show all of their receipts when they can so that someone can trust that they’ve actually gone through the right process, uh, on this article because they’ve done it before and they know, they know the facts and they know who they’re talking to.

But, um, a lot of it also comes down to building trust with the reader. Um, and it, it’s an art, not a science. Uh, sometimes journalists get things wrong. Sometimes I spell a name wrong and it gets printed in the newspaper, and that’s embarrassing and not-

Jeremi Suri: But then you correct it …

Zachary Suri: not fun, and then you correct it, and you’re transparent about the correction that you’re making, uh, and the change that you’re having to make.

Um, and again, you know, you’re writing the first draft of [00:16:00] history. You’re not writing the history book. Mm-hmm. So you can write the second draft a different way-

Intro: Mm-hmm …

Zachary Suri: or, uh, to, to, to display a different point of view. Um, so, uh, you know, what I always say if someone tells me, “Oh, you know, you’re missing something,” or even, “You got this fact wrong,” usually I, usually…

I mean, obviously every time I, I check and double-check my receipts. Most of the time it’s not that I got the fact wrong, it’s that they didn’t like the fact that I printed. Mm-hmm. Um, but if I’m missing something or if there’s a blind, a blind part, a, um, uh, like a, what’s, what’s the term? Like a blind spot in my article- Mm-hmm

then, uh, I simply say, “You know, the next article will perhaps include that or-” Right … “look at it that way,” and, and-

Jeremi Suri: So it’s an evolving process. Right.

Zachary Suri: But also journalism is one of those jobs, it’s like being a politician in this way, where you can’t please everyone.

Jeremi Suri: Mm-hmm.

Zachary Suri: And the, the goal is not to please your reader every time or even, um- You know, to, to build trust with every single person who could possibly reading the newspaper, but to build, [00:17:00] um, trust and a sense of reliability and, uh, honesty and, uh, you know, equal opportunity skepticism, uh, among the people that you work with as sources, the people you question, and the people who read you.

It’s a kind of a bridge between the two.

Jeremi Suri: Right. And part of that then is having an audience. How do you reach an audience, a local audience now? We know what, uh, websites and even national newspapers do to get an audience. They create national sensational stories, right? That dri- that drives, um, clickbait, it drives traffic.

Local stories often aren’t as sexy, and certainly the local reporting you’re talking about is not about, you know, one sex scandal after another, though that might be reported every now and then. What you did and what your colleagues at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel did this summer that I read was, you know, bread and butter reporting on transportation and budgets and things of that sort.

Um, how do you get people to be interested in that? It doesn’t have an effect unless you have readers, right? So how do you get people to read that? [00:18:00]

Zachary Suri: I think part of the… That, that’s one of the hardest things to do as a journalist, is like it’s actually the, the easier part, particularly if you’re someone who, who, who enjoys or finds politics fascinating as I do, is getting the facts sometimes.

Oftentimes the hardest part is actually explaining them in a way that makes people care or that’s even understandable. Um, and so I think, um, that’s really like why a journalist is important because even the politicians, even the most competent politicians, the ones who really understand the policy and the budgeting and the finance, are often the ones who are the worst at explaining it to people.

Right. And so, um, even in the case where you have, you know, perfect savant leadership, you need a journalist to explain what they’re actually doing. Um, and I think, uh, a lot of it comes down to focusing on human stories and showing people how policy decisions matter in their lives.

Jeremi Suri: Mm.

Zachary Suri: It’s something politicians are, uh, particularly at a local level sometimes aren’t good at, um, which is, uh, saying, you know, “This fiscal decision or this budgeting decision I made 10 years ago has impacted your [00:19:00] life in XYZ way.”

Um, and it’s hard as a journalist sometimes to find the time or the space to do that, but I think those are often the stories that get the most interest, is when people can see a connection between either big political events nationally and their lives and their neighborhood, um, or small local decisions that nobody even knew about and their lives and their neighborhood.

Um, and also- S- in some ways at a local level, it’s actually easier to do this. I mean, there was a Pulitzer Prize-winning story by The Connecticut Mirror last year, uh, about how cars in Connecticut were getting towed and impounded within, like, 15 days. Um, and, and, and there were a lot of predatory towing companies that were making, uh, a lot of money off of this.

And that immediately got a lot of attention, uh, and it, it ended up changing state law in a matter of months because everyone who drives a car in the entire state, this is relevant for them. I mean, if you’ve ever gotten a parking ticket or ever gotten your car towed, this is clearly a relevant story. Uh, and that’s not the kind of thing that’s, you know, sexy or that gets a lot of clicks online [00:20:00] unless, unless you live in that jurisdiction and that affects you in your daily life.

Um, so I, I think it’s just important, uh, for journalists to show the human side of these political stories and these political fights and not get too caught up in the sort of drama of politics, which can be fun and interesting too, but it often doesn’t have the same appeal to people who are, you know, busy or trying to make ends meet.

Jeremi Suri: Mm. Mm. Uh, that makes a lot of sense. Uh, can you give us an example from one of the stories you published, uh, of how you did this?

Zachary Suri: Yeah. I mean, one of the stories, we mentioned it earlier, the story about the Milwaukee County pension scandal of 2001. It’s a very complicated story about, um, poor fiscal decision-making 25 years ago, before I was even born, um, in Milwaukee County and how it had impacted county services, investment in parks, the bus system, pools, et cetera.

And I talked to a lot of, you know, experts, policymakers, people who were there at the time, the former governor, [00:21:00] about, um, these issues. Um, but I also realized that, like, nobody who was living in Milwaukee today who wasn’t a journalist or involved in politics really knew about the scandal period, cared about it, would read the story-

Jeremi Suri: Because it was 25 years ago, right?

Zachary Suri: So what I did is I spent a few days going around to random bus stops in town and pools and parks and just talking to people, not about this pension scandal, because I, I wasn’t gonna, you know, explain to them, uh, you know, in person exactly the complicated financial mechanisms. What I was trying to understand is how the services from the county that they relied on had changed over the years and how that had affected their lives.

And those are the kinds of questions that people don’t always expect from a journalist, but, um, are often the most willing to answer. You know, like, how does the bus routes changing affect you? Yeah. Yeah. How does the rise in bus fare affect you? Like, what does it mean for your family that the pool you used to swim at has been closed for seven years?

Jeremi Suri: So, so how did you do that? Um, you know, I, I imagine you, and, and I know we talked about it at the time, you’re going to a bus stop, and there are people getting on the bus who are very different from you. Yeah. [00:22:00] They look different. They have different life histories than yours. Um, how did you approach them?

How did you get them to talk to you openly and honestly about these issues?

Zachary Suri: Well, I mean, a lot of it is, is, is just being willing to, like, you know, bang your head against the wall enough times. Like, a, a lot of– there are a lot of people who aren’t willing to talk to you, a lot of people who don’t have interesting things to say, don’t understand the questions.

Um, uh, it-it’s important to always be listening to people, even if they s- a conversation starts out that way, because you never know what direction it’s gonna go in. And it’s also important just to be gathering information, not just from the people who say the thing you’re looking to hear, but the things that you might not be looking to hear.

Right. I heard from a lot of people who were very happy with the bus system in Milwaukee. Um, and, uh, you know, that wasn’t what I was expecting to hear. Um, uh, but I– uh, it became a small part of the story that people– there weren’t just people who were upset about it, because that’s, you know, part of the information that I found.

So, uh, you can’t come in just looking for the one person, the– selecting the person, um, who, who fits your narrative or the narrative you’re looking to tell. Um, so [00:23:00] instead, I think, I think what it is is just sort of being willing to listen to people and ask them questions that feel relevant to their lives.

Jeremi Suri: But how did you get them to open up to you? Because one of the hard parts in our- Yeah … society now is the lack of trust with journalists, academics, a-anyone who’s outside of your area. People are just– They’re, they’re concerned that maybe you work for ICE or maybe something else. So how did you get people to open up?

Zachary Suri: I mean, I think the answer is, is, is ask questions that are relevant to their lives. I didn’t ask them, you know, “What do you think of the county executive?” Or, you know, like, “W-how should the county spend its money?” Or, like, or, you know, “Who’s your, who’s your county board supervisor?” You know, political questions that, like, matter to me as a political journalist, but don’t have, you know, immediate saliency in someone’s life.

But, you know, you ask them questions like, you know, “How often do you use this park?” Like, “What does this park mean to you and your family?” Like, questions that, you know, doesn’t take brilliance to come up with, but are actually, um, questions that people have real answers to and often have thought about or have feelings about.

Um, a lot of the job of a journalist isn’t to ask the most [00:24:00] brilliant, um, question that, like, puts someone off their feet, but to, to ask a question that gets at what someone actually feels.

Jeremi Suri: Right. It’s not a seminar room or a courtroom. Yeah. You actually have to meet people where they are and get them to open up, yes?

Yeah.

Zachary Suri: And it, it– it’s– there’s a danger in viewing every conversation as a kind of cross-examination. You have to be willing to have a human conversation too.

Jeremi Suri: Yeah. Yeah. What are the limits of local journalism? What did you run up against that frustrated you?

Zachary Suri: Well, I mean I, I think there are, there are– obviously there are a lot of limits to our current local media landscape.

Um, certain places get covered way better than others. Um, you know, certainly if you live in Milwaukee, you have better local journalism, um, than if you live, uh, you know, in the middle of nowhere in northern Wisconsin. Um, you know, there are people doing great work up there, but there’s just more to cover, more area, more governments to cover.

Um, I think also, you know, it’s become easier and easier for politicians and policymakers who don’t want to talk to the press to [00:25:00] not talk to the press, particularly with social media. Um, people don’t rely on the press i-in the same way or with the same, to the same degree as they used to for information from their politicians and policymakers.

You know, if you can go on social media and, uh, hear what Zorah Mamdani has to say, uh, about, um, you know, XYZ policy, um, you’re not necessarily gonna read in the newspaper about it. Um, and so that changes how politicians look at the media and their relationship with the media. Um, and I think also just like, you know, financial changes and the changing business model has made it harder for a lot of newspapers to justify or find the resources for the kind of human stories we’re talking about, the kind of stories that bridge policy and people’s lives.

Um, and oftentimes there’s a tendency to wanna focus either on the sort of like gotcha investigations, which are really important, um, and also play an important role in holding politicians accountable, or the, you know, just basic going through the motions like day-to-day [00:26:00] coverage. Um, and so there’s less energy, less personnel, fewer resources for that kind of coverage.

Thankfully, not at The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, but at a lot of other, um, publications, there isn’t really the space or the attention to do that kind of work. Um, and I think that’s also, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like people, fewer people sub, have subscribed to newspapers, so newspapers have less money to do the kind of work that really matters to people, and so fewer people subscribe to newspapers.

Jeremi Suri: Right. Right. Right. What, what about, um, the role of press secretaries, press handlers of one kind or another? Um, first of all, politicians didn’t have them in the same numbers half a century ago that they do today. Um, and there used to be, at least at the national level, a presumption that the press secretary Would always give you the perspective from the boss, but could not lie, right?

There was an ethic around that. That’s obviously something that’s been broken recently. It doesn’t mean they never lied, but there was a presumption of truthfulness in what they did, which I don’t think is there today. And as you said, [00:27:00] many powerful figures, they don’t just have to be, um, politicians, they can be business leaders.

They now speak to their audience by going around the press. So, so how did you navigate that? How did you navigate press secretaries, press handlers, people whose job it is to spin you when you’re doing your reporting at the local level?

Zachary Suri: Well, I think there’s two ways to handle that. The first is, maybe it’s a good thing, you know, that people have more combative relationships with, with, uh, press secretaries and others because we should be checking the facts always, even if it’s someone we trust, even if it’s someone we work with regularly.

Um, you know, part of the job of a journalist is just to do that basic due diligence, um, that nobody else has time to do. R-

Jeremi Suri: right, but it’s not just about checking facts. Sometimes they say things, and this happens for all kinds of people, we’re not picking on anyone, that are just patently false, but they still expect you to print them because they’ve said that, said what they’ve said.

Zachary Suri: Yeah. And I think that that’s part of the power and the fun of being a journalist is you get to… You don’t just get to, you have to look into whether something is true or not. And, you know, you might end up printing [00:28:00] that lie, but you’re also gonna print, “This is not true for XYZ reason,” or, like, the proof that it’s not true as well.

So you get to– You… Part of the job of a journalist is just to call s- call out people on their, on their BS. Um, to get at the deeper part of the question, though, about, you know, how do you, how do you work with people who don’t need you in the same way they used to, um- I, I think it’s a challenge. Um, part of it is, is showing your willingness to listen.

I mean, again, the most powerful thing a journalist has is their time and their, their, their willingness to listen to someone, even someone who’s trying to spin them, can actually make a really big difference and make it easier for that person to see them as someone they can work with. Um, and also the truth is journalists actually, even today, particularly when you’re working on a story that, you know, isn’t simply positive about a particular person or a particular policymaker, you know, journalists need the press people a lot to lis- need to the press people to listen to them a lot [00:29:00] less than the press people, uh, need the journalists to listen to them.

You know, journalists can always report around a, a difficult source or someone who isn’t giving them the information they need, um, and find that information elsewhere. Um, whereas, uh, a politician or a policymaker who wants to get their perspective across, uh, in the context of a particular issue doesn’t have as many options.

Jeremi Suri: Yeah, that’s a really good point. We live in an information-rich environment which allows principals to get around the journalists, but it means journalists can get the information without the principals also- Right … without the key, the key figures. I, I think anyone listening to you, Zachary, the content and also the enthusiastic tone of your, uh, descriptions can, can get a sense of how much fun this is, how exciting.

Zachary Suri: It’s very fun.

Jeremi Suri: This, this was not a summer making coffee for other people. This was a summer really learning and exposing and understanding and, and providing education to the public through your journalism. Is it common and is it possible for other young people, particularly young people who are listening to us now, to do this [00:30:00] kind of work as young people?

Zachary Suri: Well, I mean, I think one of the amazing things about journalism as an industry is it’s so product dependent. I mean, there’s a lot of networks and, uh, there’s plenty of problems that it’s not just merit-based obviously, but it is one of the few professions where, like, you really are judged by your product in so many ways.

And, um- I, I think the most important thing to remember is that you can do really good work anywhere, and sometimes the most interesting work, uh, is to be done is in places that, where that work hasn’t been done- Right, right … in far too long. Um, and I think one of the challenges with journalism is there’s a perception that it’s sort of not a lucrative career.

There’s not place for advancement. Um, and certainly all those concerns are grounded in, in, in real problems and, and things that affect journalists, and you don’t wanna discount that. But at the same time, journalism is also one of those fields where if you do good work, uh, it gets recognized. Um, your product matters.

Uh, and, uh, you can learn on the job, too. Um, all you need to do is find someone crazy enough to [00:31:00] trust you, uh, to do one thing, and if you do it well, they’ll trust you to do another thing.

Jeremi Suri: You can also freelance, right? Right. You can find a story, a local story that you think is important, that you think others will want to read about, and even if no one initially sees that, you can write that story and then try to sell it to, uh, an appropriate publication.

Am I correct?

Zachary Suri: Yeah, there are plenty of journalists today who, who, who make a living or at least have a following and have readers, you know, writing on Substack or even on social media. They’re not always the most reliable, but sometimes they are actually the most reliable- Yeah … information, particularly in a small local community without a major newspaper.

Um, and you never know who’s reading. Right. I think that’s one of the fun things, too, is, uh, you know, you write as a journalist, unlike, you know- When you’re doing communications work or when you’re doing, um, you know, other kinds of jobs that involve a lot of writing, you’re writing to be read by as many people as possible.

Yeah. And, and not just people of a particular point of view, but people across the board. Um, and you’d be surprised what stories get the most attention and what stories don’t. [00:32:00] Um, and I think part of the fun of being a journalist is reacting to that in real time and, and, and having obviously a real sense of purpose and duty and what people should be reading, but also reacting to what people want to read as well.

Yeah.

Jeremi Suri: So this is something you’re considering doing as a career, yes?

Zachary Suri: Yes.

Jeremi Suri: What do you say, uh, and it builds on the prior comment, what, what do you say to people who say, “Well, the, the world of journalism is, is a failed business and there’s no future here. You’re not gonna make money doing this”? We have friends who have said this to you.

What do you res- what do you say to that?

Zachary Suri: Well, I think, you know, particularly in, in a world with such fast-changing technology, um, the ability to assess the truth value of something, and not just that, but to collect information from real people in real time, um, you know, you can call it data, you can call it, you know, stories, whatever you wanna call it, it’s so vital and it’s only becoming more valuable.

I mean, you know, an AI model might be able to write, uh, a, [00:33:00] a, a, a fairly decent story about, you know, what happened in Congress yesterday if you feed it the C-SPAN feed, and it might even be better than what, you know, a st- early career journalist can write a- about that. But it’s not gonna be able to go out on the street and talk to people at bus stops and ask them human co- questions and show them that they’re listening and paying attention to what they have to say.

And it’s certainly not gonna be able to, you know, uh, ask a politician a difficult question in real time. Um, so I think those skills are becoming more and more valuable, not just because, um, there’s more need for them in a world with more misinformation, but also because the new technologies that we’re using- Yeah

and that we’re building rely on human inputs-

Jeremi Suri: Yeah …

Zachary Suri: that have to be, you know, built, strung together by real human beings who understand, who understand, um, the topic that they’re covering, the community that they’re covering, and also how to tell a good story.

Jeremi Suri: Right, and make sense of it all.

Zachary Suri: Yeah.

Jeremi Suri: So our final question, it’s a two-part question.

Uh, I hope our listeners are, are enthusiastic, even [00:34:00] more enthusiastic about high-quality local journalism and a new generation of, uh, Zacharys writing it. Um, how can those who want to become journalists like you, how can they get started? And how can those, uh, who want to support local journalism, how can they support it?

Zachary Suri: I would say, you know, first of all, write about what you’re passionate about, whether it’s, you know, high school sports or, you know, climate and the environment, or local politics like me. And, um, you know, you can always– You just have to start somewhere, and you have to do good work. Um, so if you’re a student, write for your student paper.

You know, maybe your student paper has never sent someone to the city council or the board of education, doesn’t mean they can’t send them tomorrow. Um, and, uh, you know, if you’re not a student, uh, you know, first of all, read good journalism. Uh, reach out to journalists. Journalists are always happy to talk about their work.

And, um, you know, start writing yourself and showing up at places and learning about things. I, uh, th- A lot of the basic skills [00:35:00] of a journalist are the basic skills of a good citizen as well. Um, and you can participate in this process and support journalism, uh, and be a part of, uh, good journalism in your community without being a journalist or changing your career or doing XYZ.

Um, and sometimes it requires money. Oftentimes it doesn’t, um, and it just requires your time.

Jeremi Suri: Yeah. Yeah. You know, it’s often said that, uh, journalism is the first draft of history. I think that underrates the importance of journalism. I think journalism is often the foundation for democracy and history, and, uh, you’ve given us so much reason in this conversation, Zachary, uh, to be optimistic-

Zachary Suri: Mm

Jeremi Suri: about the future of democracy through the work of young journalists working at the local level. Start local, get involved, ask real questions, write about it, share information with people. Uh, that’s what our founders did. That’s how our republic was [00:36:00] started, and that’s how our republic will survive.

Zachary, thank you for your insights and your passion and sharing it with us today. Uh, maybe you’ll write a poem about this at some point for us.

Zachary Suri: Probably not.

Jeremi Suri: Thank you most of all, uh, to our loyal listeners. Uh, we hope you all had a wonderful summer. We are now back to our regular cadence. Uh, thank you to all of our listeners who, uh, listen to us each week, who subscribe to our Substack, and, uh, and join us for this and other episodes of This Is Democracy.

Outro: This podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts ITS Development Studio. And the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Scott Holmes. Stay tuned for a new episode every week. You can find This is Democracy on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

See you next [00:37:00] time.