Local Journalism Challenges

Tim Fulton 00:11Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. We are a weekly, Columbus-centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. This week, a conversation about the challenges facing journalism. Today's episode was recorded at the Gateway Film Center as part of their series, Broadcast News: Journalism on Film. The discussion features Columbus Underground's own Walker Evans, Susan Tebben from the Ohio Capital Journal, and Michael Ouimette from the American Journalism Project. They discuss the challenges facing journalism today, including the rapid changes in media outlets, the impact of the culture wars, and threats to journalists' personal lives. You can hear more discussion like this at the Gateway Film Center this Thursday evening, before the screening of Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes. More information at gatewayfilmcenter.org. Enjoy the interview.

Chris Hammel 01:17Let's begin with introducing our panelists. Tell us about yourselves — why you took this class, where you're from — and welcome to our panelists. Go ahead.

Susan Tebben 01:27Hi. I'm Susan Tebben. I'm a reporter with the Ohio Capital Journal, where I cover the Statehouse, and it's all donor-based. It's free to subscribe — you know, plug all that. I took this class because I'm an OU Bobcat, and I like taking a lot of —

Walker Evans 01:43My name is Walker Evans. I'm the co-founder of Columbus Underground. I'm here because we're working with the fine folks at the Gateway Film Center on this film series. We started Columbus Underground 22 years ago, in 2001, which I always say is like dog years, you know? So 20 years on the internet is like a century. You have to think back before MySpace, let alone Facebook, before Yelp. The internet was a barren wasteland in terms of local information. So we got started back then, and we're still kicking today and covering all kinds of things.

Michael Ouimette 02:26Hi, everyone. I'm Michael Ouimette. I am the Senior Vice President for Startups at the American Journalism Project, which is a national organization that is trying to help communities start local news organizations. I'm also a very proud board member of Signal Ohio, which, as you may know, launched a newsroom in Cleveland in November. Really excited to be here to talk about all things local news and information.

Chris Hammel 02:48Well, we're certainly glad to have all three of you. Thank you. And when we do get to the audience questions, just let me know. I'll come up with the microphone so everybody can hear your question. But just to start it out — I was thinking about this — right now, with the constantly changing nature of journalistic outlets, as well as the inclusion of the press and members of the press in the culture wars, can you imagine a more complicated time right now for journalism in general?

Susan Tebben 03:16No, you're right. It's definitely changed. I was a print journalist. I came out of OU as a print journalist. When I left, we were told to do whatever you could for a job. When I started as a freshman, they said you can specialize, you can figure that out. So it changed in the span of four years, but it's changed leaps and bounds since then. Like I said, with the Ohio Capital Journal being completely online, that's something that even the Ohio Legislative Correspondents Association, which is the group of reporters that cover the Statehouse, had never seen before. So we had to sort of make our case for why we were legitimate when we started at the Statehouse. But you know, we're all just trying to adapt. And we're all reporters that are just trying to get the news out and inform the public, so we just have to figure out how to adapt.

Walker Evans 04:14Yeah, you mentioned the culture wars thing. What a loaded question. Softball. The culture wars are fake. It's fake. It's all just distraction from more important things in our lives, right? It's an invention of, like, right-wing media to make everyone think that transgender athletes are coming for your children, when in reality we should be talking about the economy, you know, and the fact that everything's more expensive and, like, real things. So it's a problem for journalists who want to relay real information, because you have to cut through this idea that, oh, now it's gas stoves — gas stoves are coming for your children. It's hard if you really want to inform people when you have to first uninform them about things that mainstream media has beat into their brain as being important when it really has nothing to do with their daily lives. Does that answer the question?

Chris Hammel 05:19No, those are important points. But also, I was thinking about the threats to the personal lives of reporters when they're called the enemy of the people, right? Well, go ahead.

Susan Tebben 05:31Part of it is — I guess this is sort of a soapbox — the mainstream media, that idea that it's just this giant cloud of things. I hate that, because it's like the capital-M Media, where you have Columbus Underground, you have all these different people that are hyperlocal journalists just doing jobs, and Signal Cleveland doing jobs to inform the public, and have had to adapt to make that hyperlocal thing work. And then what happens is people say, "Well, the media is doing this," and the media can be movies, can be cartoons, anything. So it's really hard when you're out there getting screamed at and getting put in pens and things, because you're being lumped into this stereotype, basically, when you're just journalists trying to do what you can to inform the public.

Michael Ouimette 06:21And I think so much of that too is because there's myopic focus on the national media. When you ask people about their experience with news, their brain goes to cable TV automatically, as opposed to kind of real local journalism about things that are happening in communities day to day. So it's really frustrating that that's your experience with the media, given that the media they're talking about actually has absolutely nothing to do with anyone who works here in Ohio, right?

Chris Hammel 06:48Can we get the audience involved? Who has a question? Don't be shy.

Susan Tebben 06:55We answered them all.

Audience Member 07:00Sometimes things that are hot aren't the culture wars. And I think an interesting time is always an interesting time. So, House Bill 6, the Householder trials in the state of Ohio.

Susan Tebben 07:13Oh, boy. I think it's interesting how you put that — that some things that are hot are not always culture wars, but this stuff is. As you say, we have Householder up for trial, which, yes, sure, that is a big deal. And everything that had to do with FirstEnergy, that's all very important, because it matters to people paying their electric bills and whether they're actually paying bills. But I cover the non-controversial issues of abortion and education and all these things. So it's hard to get bogged down in that stuff, because — yes, an audience member and I were talking about the Pike County murders. This is all very interesting and all very flashy, but what it boils down to is: how much does this affect our electric bills? How much does this affect us? So the journalists that are out there doing that — yes, the people that are covering the trials, that's amazing, and we need that stuff, because accountability is a thing that we all should have, including in the legislature. But covering it in a way that people in Highland County, people in Noble County, can say, "What is this going to do to my everyday life?" is also the important part of what we do as journalists.

Walker Evans 08:31Yeah, I think today, whether it's TV, radio, print, or digital, it's all about measuring analytics, and what's popular isn't always important, and what's important isn't always popular. And while the Householder trial is an incredibly popular story this week, the coverage that more people maybe should have been paying attention to two, three, four, five, however many years ago was probably more important, but wasn't as sensational. So now we're in the situation where you've got to cover this stuff while it's sensational and everybody wants this information, and it's like, maybe we could have avoided this situation if people were paying more attention to what reporters were trying to tell you years ago. So it's a Catch-22 to some degree.

Michael Ouimette 09:23Well, I also think it's about journalistic resources too, in some regards. There's got to be what, an 80% decline in the number of journalists covering state government and the Statehouse in the last couple of decades? So, you know, we're asking a lot of you all. I think it's partially what are people paying attention to, but also how many people are devoted to telling stories in advance, before it becomes the sensational headline?

Walker Evans 09:50Yeah, I spoke on a panel earlier today over at OSU, but this one is my favorite panel. They were the warm-up; you guys are the real deal. One of the other panelists works with the Dispatch and covers K-through-12 education. And I asked her if she's the only person, and she said, "Well, I had a colleague, but they were just let go." So the Dispatch has one person writing about school — not just Columbus City Schools, but all suburban schools. We have one person assigned to that at the Dispatch. That's where we are in terms of resources right now, from our major publication.

Susan Tebben 10:33And then it comes down to news judgment, right? We only have so many people to cover these things. What do we need to cover? What do people actually need to know about to be able to do this stuff? And yeah, it's not always the things that are most popular.

Chris Hammel 10:47Sure. Other questions?

Walker Evans 10:52Run, George, run. Yes.

Susan Tebben 10:53Getting them in.

Audience Member 10:57Sorry. That's all right. Good evening. It seems like a lot of outlets, in order to not seem biased, are trying to kind of bend over backwards to tell both sides, even if, you know, one side says water is wet, they're scouring to see that no, not really. In your opinions, how important is it to try and give the whole picture in things where it seems fairly obvious that one side is right and the other side is just kind of bullshitting? And also, where do you fall on that? Do you call it out, or do you try and remain objective, when it seems fairly obvious that one side is telling the truth and the other side is just kind of messing around?

Susan Tebben 11:44I had a professor at OU — oh yeah, that's the last time I'll say it, I promise — who said, if they're not hacked off, you're not doing your job. And he didn't specify which side. He just said, if they're not hacked off, you're not doing your job. So that's always how I've run things. I've gotten this question a lot, and it's a really good question, because we have to deal with a lot of — obviously, journalists, we have feelings about things, and we have to sometimes suppress those things, and sometimes it helps inform our questions. But at the same time, the way I see it is, if I don't tell you what someone on the other side of abortion is saying, whichever side you fall on, you're not going to know what they're saying. And in that way, you're not going to know how to go about the argument the other way. And people that are looking at policies — I'm not saying I'm important enough that people are reading my stuff thinking about how they're going to testify on a bill, but if you're looking at that stuff, you're going to know, this is the argument that they're making, this is how I can disprove it, if that's what you can do. So I've always seen it kind of that way. Obviously, I was trained to have both sides, because both sides are important, but I see it more as a sports game kind of thing, a defensive move, than having to have 50-50 ready to go.

Walker Evans 13:15Yeah, we don't do as much political writing. We do republish a lot of the Ohio Capital Journal stuff to, you know, let the experts do their thing and share the great work that they do. But we try to stay pretty objective and just write about things that are happening. We do sometimes catch a little bit of flak that we're not presenting it from an angle, because I think everybody nowadays wants to see their own opinion kind of regurgitated back to them. A really good example of that is the very fresh news yesterday that the Beer Stoop across the street might be going away. I don't know if everyone heard about that or not. Yeah, exactly. So if you read our story, it's sort of the who, what, when, where, why: this is who owns it, this is what's happening, this is the proposal, this is the history, this is what it is. And we often see comments that say, like, "You guys should start a petition to save the —" and it's like, that's not our place to do that, you know? But people do want that kind of both-sidesism — like, if you're not doing this, you're not doing that. If you fall in the middle somewhere, you're not doing enough for my cause. But at the end of the day, I think all of us just want to inform people so they can make their own decisions on those things.

Michael Ouimette 14:30I think fundamentally, what's underneath the question is, how do you build trust? And telling people things that aren't true is not a way to build trust. So we do want to tell the complete story, but saying that water is wet is telling the complete story. So I think you've got to sometimes just know what facts are and be unapologetic about that.

Chris Hammel 14:56A good question. And thank you for reminding me what a good phrase "hacked off" is. I'm going to try to use that. It's so applicable. Who else has a question?

Jason Manley 15:06Hi, my name is Jason Manley, and I appreciate you guys coming to talk, so I'm a little nervous. What you guys have been addressing is sort of like the blending of editorial and news, and that has sort of happened in my lifetime. This movie came out the week I was born, basically, in 1976. So in my lifetime, I've seen cable news come to the fore. And I'm just curious — well, you kind of already addressed it — but how do you fight those impulses to editorialize when you're just trying to tell the who, what, when, where, why?

Walker Evans 15:44I think just being transparent about that is the most important thing. Right before we came over to this event, I published an opinion piece. And if you go to Columbus Underground and read it — which I encourage everybody to do — it says right up front, "Opinion:" and then the headline. So you know that this is my thoughts on this topic, and it's a topic that we've covered. I don't want to spoil it — go read it — but just letting people know what's editorialized and what's factual, I think that goes a long way toward building reader trust and letting people know what's what. If this is an advertisement, it's an advertisement. If it's not, it's not. Just spell it out and be transparent, be honest.

Susan Tebben 16:27At the Ohio Capital Journal, we have an editor who writes the commentaries. He does all of them for OhioCapitalJournal.com, and on that website it'll say "Commentary." He does them all, and — you know, we have a small staff, so sometimes he has to write articles, but it's very clear, it says "Commentary," and he's the only one that does commentaries. I don't. And part of it is, the Ohio Capital Journal is owned by a donor-based company, so the reporters themselves don't see the donors, whoever's donating, because we don't want that to impact what we're doing. So I think that helps partly. I'm not saying it's not hard. We all have opinions. There are certain elements — I'm looking at something, and if I know something about it, or I have an opinion about it, then maybe we want to report on it more, but I have to do that self-check of, what am I writing and how am I writing it? But the bottom line is, keeping that editorial stuff separate in a separate column of the website helps, and not knowing who's supporting us and who's not supporting us, that helps too.

Chris Hammel 17:43I had a question here. And this was your first time at the Gateway, right? Yes. Well, welcome.

Audience Member 17:48It's here for the first time. This is a local news question. I worked for a small local newspaper in Madison County, just west of here. It went out of business. It was purchased by a big corporation out of McAllen, Texas — AIM Media — and it wasn't making enough money, or wasn't making any money, I guess. What advice do you give for people who might want to restart a local newspaper of some sort? I mean, we hear endless complaints about the fact we have no local newspaper in the county now, and it's a real problem, because we have no idea what the county commissioners are doing. We have no idea what the city councils and the village councils and all the little villages around the county are doing. What do you advise for an online newspaper, and how do you go about starting something like that?

Michael Ouimette 18:49That's a big question. So first of all, I would love to personally connect with anyone in Ohio who is asking that question — Michael at theajp.org — and send them over to Tom Katzenmeier as well, who's sitting in the first row. A couple of points. Start it as a nonprofit rather than a for-profit. The commercial business model for local news has failed us. We need to admit that local news is a public good and should be supported philanthropically. That's the most important thing. Second, start it as a digital organization. Daily print by default is over. There's a great place for certain types of print, certainly, but starting it digitally helps keep your costs down. And I think fundamentally, you've got to make a really great case for support to philanthropy — whether it's your local community foundation or a couple of donors who are willing to step up and help get something started, that this is something that's really important. Finally, I would also point to — especially in the case you're describing — we have a program in Signal Cleveland called the Documenters program. That's a program that trains and pays residents to go to government meetings and take notes. What that does is it puts a person, almost always the only person from a news outlet, in a meeting, and then those notes are publicly available for other news outlets who might want to use the information, or for community members who just want to know what's going on. So there are really exciting models for this, and I think we're going to get more journalism in your area soon enough.

Susan Tebben 20:35Yeah, that speaks to — I don't have any business acumen on that, but the community part of it, the partnership part of it. We, the Ohio Capital Journal, have a Creative Commons license. So unlike the AP, where any paper that uses the AP has to pay for the subscription to use it, we have a Creative Commons license where any paper in any county anywhere can use our stuff, as long as it's attributed, and you don't have to pay for it. It's just there to use. That's why Columbus Underground can use it. So I feel like there needs to be systems like that too, where we have people covering specific things, as you said, that have the experience — they're journalists, they're perfectly adequate at what they do — but being able to share that stuff to other places in rural Ohio or wherever, to be able to use that, rather than taking more of their resources just to be able to get people information from places that they don't live around.

Walker Evans 21:32Yeah, I agree with what was said. I think one thing that a lot of organizations, especially in smaller communities, are kind of realizing is that building email subscribers — whether that's a newsletter or just a mailing list — is so much more critical to reaching an audience that opts in. You know, people who want to receive this kind of information. I think we were all kind of sold a false bill of goods with social media 10, 12, 15 years ago. If you're trying to build a Facebook audience today, you might as well just be watching paint dry. These platforms are kind of the new gatekeepers — you build an audience and then get to your audience through them. So email kind of seems to be the way to go, the sort of newsletter type of format, so that when you publish a story and you send it to your audience, they receive it, rather than having Facebook say, "We need you to pay $1,000 to reach the audience you built." And that goes for Twitter. That goes for anything algorithmically based. To reach an audience is kind of a non-starter, especially in a small community.

Michael Ouimette 22:43So, start it as a nonprofit weekly newsletter. Bingo. Great.

Chris Hammel 22:49Got time for another question.

Audience Member 22:53I was wondering where you see long-form, and particularly investigative, journalism going, just with the speed of our world and attention spans and all that. Are you seeing any sort of shifts toward longer form, or anything like that?

Michael Ouimette 23:13I think we're seeing shifts the opposite way. Certainly, movies like this one have celebrated the important role of investigative journalism, but I think communities have daily, weekly, monthly information needs that are far more important in many cases than long-form investigations. So I think what you're seeing is journalists really understand that depth and accuracy and nuance is really important, but taking six months to kind of hide and then come out with a massive spotlight story is probably a model that's old. I actually had the fortune of meeting the team from the Boston Globe that was featured in the Spotlight movie, and I was really taken aback when they said, if they were doing that work today, they would have broken that up into 12 different stories. So I think the high-quality reporting that goes into investigations is critical, but perhaps there are better ways to distribute that than, you know, 10,000-word stories that we don't always have time to read.

Susan Tebben 24:28I'm a writer, so I'm going to say every word is important. But I would agree. You know, with the resources we all have, there are certain things we have to do — we have to fill a new nonprofit newsletter and all that. But you do see The Atlantic, you see The New Yorker, you see those sort of — I don't want to say niche areas, but certain areas that people are looking to for long-form. When they have time to read it, they will read it. And I think those are beneficial. We can't do them all the time — we don't have the resources or the time to do them all the time — but when we can do them right, I think they really stand to be something important.

Walker Evans 25:11Yeah, I think, as much as people say that attention spans are getting shorter, you're all here tonight, right? It's really just that the extremes are being pushed further to both ends of the spectrum. So you've got people on TikTok just doom-scrolling from the toilet or whatever — I don't use TikTok, I don't know where you're supposed to sit — but on the opposite side of the spectrum, there are so many podcasts, there are YouTube channels with videos that go on for hours about really specific topics. I think the challenge is getting people interested in something once; once you capture their attention, they'll watch something for hours. There's an OSU graduate who is in Los Angeles — and I hope we can get him for a future session at this quarterly series — who does a YouTube channel called Some More News. Has anyone heard of Some More News? Did you know he was from OSU? Oh, there you go — learn something new every day. Their shows are like an hour long, and they do podcast supplements for that, but it's long-form content, like deep dives into topics. I think the most recent episode, which I've only listened to half of, was about why rents are so high — like, what's wrong with the housing market in America. So I think there's an appetite for that. And this is a channel that has like 750,000 followers, and their videos get millions of views with every publication. So there's a market for long-form stuff. I think it's just getting more people to consume it that is the challenge.

Susan Tebben 26:47And making sure it's authentic.

Chris Hammel 26:51Right, right. Well, we're getting ready to see All the President's Men. You mentioned Spotlight, another Oscar winner. There was one just last year — She Said — which was a fantastic movie about journalistic investigative reporters, that was just forgotten about really quickly. Let's close with: how do you feel about the representation of journalism in pop culture, movies, TV, things like that?

Susan Tebben 27:14Things tend to work out in movies that don't always work out. No, I think this one particularly — I watched it this afternoon just to reacquaint myself, and it feels authentic. It feels like an observation of the hard work they had to do, especially when you didn't have Google to do all of those things — and rotary phones, or ChatGPT, right? Slack, all those things. But yeah, I mean, it's like anything else. I think there are exaggerations, but Spotlight, I felt, was really authentic — the knocking on doors and all that stuff. We actually do do that stuff.

Walker Evans 27:55I was trying to think of the last movie we watched that had some sort of news media representation, and the first thing that came to mind was Don't Look Up.

Susan Tebben 28:03I was thinking of Anchorman.

Walker Evans 28:08Which — I mean, I guess neither of those were a pleasant representation. But yeah, I don't know. When you look at people's ability to consume news across so many spectrums of platforms and different forms of content, I feel better that there are so many options. I think it's just getting people connected to the right options that is still the biggest challenge.

Michael Ouimette 28:38I think what I reflect on is just how lucky we are to have the local news that we do have — you two especially — and hearing about the K-through-12 education reporter at the Dispatch as an example. I think with all of the economic challenges in the industry, we have trained a generation of people that journalism is not a craft, a profession to pursue. So I feel great that there are representations in media that do celebrate the great work of working journalists, and I hope we get more.

Chris Hammel 29:13Well, we've got one of the best tonight. In 35 millimeter, we'll have All the President's Men here in just a few minutes. Thank you for coming. Let's thank our panelists, Susan and Walker and Michael, for some very insightful answers, and some great questions from the crowd. So thank you very much for coming out tonight, and stand by for All the President's Men. And thank you to Chris Hammel and the Gateway for making this possible.

Tim Fulton 29:42Thank you for listening to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. You can get more information on what was discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Please rate, share, and subscribe to this episode of the Confluence Cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite journalist. If you're interested in sponsoring the Confluence Cast, get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info@theconfluencecast.com. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Philip Cogley. Special thanks this week to the Gateway Film Center. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.