The news media and journalists themselves are faced with a crisis of confidence and trust. The internet broke the old business model of locally-based newspaper reporting and replaced it with national opinion journalism written by and for well-educated metropolitan elites.  

Our guest is Nikki Usher, Associate Professor at the University of San Diego, who studies journalism, politics, tech, and power. Nikki's recent book is "News For The Rich, White and Blue: How Place and Power Distort American Journalism".

In our conversation we look at the loss of place in American journalism, the gap between "news haves and have-nots", and how technology can be used to challenge old journalistic models and lead to new ways of delivering news to audiences that have been poorly served in the past.

For decades trust-media-remains-near-record-low.aspx">the polling firm Gallup has been asking Americans: "How much confidence and trust do you have in the news media?" In the 1970's more than two-thirds of the public said they had a great deal or a fair amount of confidence. Today, the proportion is down to one-third. Most Americans distrust what they read, see, or hear from news outlets. A minuscule 7% of Americans have "a great deal" of trust and confidence in the media.

We ask how do we fix it? and how journalists can gain a better understanding of why so many readers, viewers, and listeners believe that they tell lies or simply don't care about the truth.

In this episode, we hear about efforts by The Los Angeles Times and Philadelphia Inquirer to reassess their roles in the community. We also learn about growing non-profit regional news organizations such as The Voice of San Diego and the Connecticut Mirror. Jim and Richard also discuss the work of the online platform Substack. 

Recommendation: Richard enjoys listening to the podcast series, "Rumble Strip", produced and hosted by Erica Heilman. This extraordinary show was profiled in The New Yorker and won a 2021 Peabody Award for the episode, "Finn and The Bell".

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In much of the country local news has collapsed, threatening civic pride and a sense of community for countless towns and cities. This dramatic change has also deepened America's divides.

As our guest, journalist and public policy researcher Anna Brugmann explains in this episode, "the internet disrupted the local journalism model". Newspaper advertising revenue fell 80% since 2000. Thousands of local and regional publications closed. Most surviving newsrooms faced drastic cutbacks. Coverage of all kinds of local events— from city hall, school board meetings and football games to local businesses and zoning decisions — disappeared.

First, Craigslist displaced print-based classified ads. Then Google, Facebook and other online firms became the main source of consumer advertising. We discuss the impact on local journalism. In recent decades, the news we read and listen to has largely shifted from local reporting to often highly polarizing national opinion journalism.

In the first of two episodes on the changing face of the news media, we look at the retreat of local journalism and discuss solutions. These include non-profit media and changes in for-profit business models. Today, many newspapers get more revenue from subscriptions and fundraising drives than from advertising. We ask: how sustainable are these initiatives?

Anna Brugmann is policy director for the advocacy organization, Rebuild Local News. According to her group, since 2004, as the U.S. population has grown, the number of newsroom employees has dropped by 57%.

"By almost every metric by which you measure a healthy community and a healthy democracy, the trends are in the wrong direction when local news leaves," says Anna. "In the past twenty years more than two thousands newspapers have closed in The United States."

Recommendation: Jim is listening to a lot of podcasts since he unplugged his TV and stopped watching broadcast and cable news. Among his current favorite podcasts is "The Reeducation With Eli Lake". The show "challenges the common narratives the mainstream media and others push".

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Rising interest rates and the end of easy money were two factors in the valley-bank-collapse-how-it-happened.html#:~:text=Within%2048%20hours%2C%20a%20panic,and%20the%20second%2Dlargest%20ever.">sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and a subsequent stock market run on shares of regional banks. Questions were raised about the safety of the entire U.S. banking industry. 

We examine risk in banking, investing and the broader economy.

Federal regulators faced harsh criticism for the latest bank failures. Progressives blamed politicians who eased regulations on medium-sized and small banks. Some on the right claimed that DEI — Diversity, Equity and Inclusion — distracted SVB from focusing on risk management. 

Our guest is economist and risk expert Allison Schrager, author of "An Economist Walks Into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk". She also writes frequently for Bloomberg Opinion and journal.org/contributor/allison-schrager_1488">City Journal. 

This episode looks at the causes of the recent bank panic and the current outlook for the financial industry.

"Safety is the foundation of finance and it is also how we price risk," Allison tells us in this episode. Everyone assumes that holding government-backed securities is safe. "But long-duration bonds are very sensitive to changes in bond yields." If interest rates go up, "bond prices on long-dated securities go down a lot." 

SVB was heavily invested in these securities. But many of its depositors, including tech firms and venture capitalists, were highly sensitive to rate rises. In mid-March, despite reassurances from top executives, SVB's depositors pulled their money out. It was a sudden online version of an old-fashioned bank run.

We look at potential solutions and hazards for investors and the economy, including the perils of inflation, the dangers of groupthink, why investors and bank executives should feel some pain when an institution fails, and the need for risk management that takes a broad range of economic possibilities into account. 

Allison recently journal.org/can-silicon-valley-remake-itself">wrote this about why Silicon Valley is facing rising threats to its business model. The latest column for Bloomberg cautions savers and investors: don't make the same mistake as SVB with your 401k.

Recommendation: Richard plays this word game almost every day: Spelling Bee, a somewhat addictive game from The New York Times. 

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The people of Ukraine are facing down a military giant. Their unity and bravery in the bloody, cruel year since the Russia invasion are an inspiration to the rest of the world.

Instead of talking about politics or the state of the war, we consider the battlefield of ideas. Above all this show is an attempt to put the war into context: What’s at stake for Western democracy, and what space does Ukraine fit in our history? 

We speak again with Marci Shore, professor of European cultural & intellectual history at Yale University. She first appeared on "How Do We Fix It?" a year ago. In 2018 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship for her current book project, a history of phenomenology in East-Central Europe, tentatively titled “Eyeglasses Floating in Space: Central European Encounters That Came about While Searching for Truth.” Her most recent book is “The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution”. This show is a companion piece to episode #380 with Jacob Mchangama.

We hear a very thoughtful, passionate account of the war. "These are my friends and colleagues who are being slaughtered," Marci Shore tell us."That is first and foremost why the war is so personal for me." She describes the war as "the decisive end of what Francis Fukuyama had called the end of history."

Marci is Jewish, and a well-known scholar of Eastern Europe in the post-Soviet era. As a young child she listened to elderly relatives who had once been victims of Tsarist pogroms— riots aimed at expelling and killing Jews and other members of ethnic or religious groups in a region that includes present-day Ukraine. She tells us why "Ukraine has emerged as a subject and not an object in world consciousness."

In this episode we also discuss the work of The Reckoning Project— a coalition of human rights activists, journalists and archivists who are using the power of story-telling and legal accountability to document truth. The project has uncovered evidence and is conducting first-person interviews about Russian abuses and cruelty in occupied parts of Ukraine. 

Recommendation: Jim is looking at the extraordinary work of photojournalist Lynsey Addario and others who risk their lives to capture vital moments during the wars. Her work photos have been published by The New York Times.

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By any measure this has been a momentous week for global politics. President Biden’s surprise trip to Kyiv, his “freedom” speech in Warsaw, the visit of China’s top diplomat to Moscow, and new-start-treaty.html">Vladimir Putin’s decision to suspend Russian participation in the last remaining nuclear arms treaty with the U.S. are all signs of deepening big-power tensions. 

This coincides with the first anniversary of the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War Two. In the early hours of February 24 last year Putin’s tanks rolled across Ukraine’s borders.

Our podcast guest is well-known human rights advocate, int.org/en/about-justitia/jacob-mchangama/">Jacob Mchangama, CEO of the Danish think tank Justitia, and author of the recent book, “Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media”. We discuss the Ukraine war's broader implications for fundamental values that are a vital part of the growing struggle between the West autocratic powers.

One of the biggest surprises of the past year has been the strength of European and American support for President Zelenskyy and Ukraine.

“I’m very heartened by it,” says Mchangama. “It’s a good antidote to a decay of the West and complacency of democracies narrative that has been driving some of the authoritarian backlash.”

“Even a year in, there still seems to be solid support in many countries for the Ukrainian cause and for continuing to supply them with the means to defend themselves and hopefully decisively turn the tide.”

Today, it could well be argued that Joe Biden is the first cold war President since Ronald Reagan. In this episode, we learn why free speech is so vital to oppressed groups and racial minorities. We examine the recent "free speech recession", and how to ensure that young people are better equipped to deal with misinformation on social media and the internet.

Recommendation: Richard has recently watched and enjoyed three movies on the big screen in theaters. They are: "Everything Everywhere All at Once", the British film "Living" and the Irish movie "The Banshees of Inisherin".

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The last time the U.S. faced a major showdown over the debt ceiling was a decade ago. Much like today, House Republicans insisted on spending cuts before they would vote to raise the amount of money the government could borrow. Then-President Obama and now-President Biden said they would not negotiate.

Who will blink first? 

Nearly all economists and financial experts say that a debt default would have extremely serious consequences for the everyday economy and America's place in the world.

We look at debt-history.html?searchResultPosition=1">the massive U.S. debt mountain, which has leverage in the current game of chicken, and discusses why both political parties are so reluctant to get serious about the debt. Our guest, fixed income specialist, and economist, Chris Low of FHN Financial comes up with potential fixes.

This show is an explainer— ideal for anyone who wants to learn about the crisis and understand the fundamental difference between debt and annual deficits. We look at reasons for the huge increase in government red ink in recent years, which include the impact of the COVID pandemic, and recovering from the 2008-9 financial crisis.

U.S. debt is an astonishing six times what it was in 2000— the largest it's ever been compared with the size of the economy. The Government hit the $31.4 trillion legal limit last month, forcing a potential crisis. By law, the ceiling must be raised or the U.S. will fail to pay some of its debts. If this happens, a recession or worse could be one of the consequences.

"If you miss a payment it is a default," Chris Low tells us. "The U.S. credit rating would go from the second highest possible to the lowest possible overnight."

A default "would be painful, and that pain would be felt by every business, every consumer, every household that borrows."

Recommendation: Richard has just read "The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family From a Lifetime of Clutter." During their conversation at the end of the show, Jim says "death cleaning" is a terrible way of describing a sensible practice. Richard suggests that "streamlining" might be easier on the ear.

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Sixty years ago in his most famous speech, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of his vision of an America transformed. "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character," he said. 

Was this an argument for a color-blind society, or should racism be thought of as structural and systematic? Ibram X. Khendi, author of the best-selling book, "How To Be An AntiRacist", argues that "the most threatening racist movement" is the drive for race-neutrality. Our guest, Bion Bartning, argues that instead of emphasizing our common humanity, the approach of Kendhi and others lumps people into simplistic racial groupings.

Bartning founded the non-profit group, The Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR). In its mission statement, FAIR calls for "advancing civil rights and liberties for all Americans, and promoting a common culture based on fairness, understanding and humanity."

"Really, we should be anti-racism, the ideology, and not anti-racist, the individual," Bartning tells us. He calls for a pro-human approach. "There is a burning need to reaffirm the core principles of the civil rights movement... integration, healing divisions and moving forward together as one people." He says that in recent years a different form of anti-racism has emerged that goes against these ideas.

Bartning launched FAIR after york-private-schools-racism.html">pulling his two children out of one of New York City's most prestigious private schools because he thought that the new anti-racist curriculum was encouraging kids to look at themselves and others primarily through the lens of race and see the world in a pessimistic, grievance-oriented way. We discuss his personal story and ideas in this episode.

Recommendation: Richard has just read and thoroughly enjoyed John Steinbeck's beloved 1962 memoir, "Travels With Charley, In Search of America"

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One way to help solve America's polarization crisis is to hang out with someone not like you. Someone who sees the world differently or comes from a cultural background, social class, racial or ethnic group other than your own.

While social media, political elites and national news outlets profit from polarization, the rest of us do not. This episode looks at one highly successful local initiative to push back against the conflict entrepreneurs who want to make us angry, fearful and divided.

Our guest is Liz Joyner, founder and President of The Village Square, a non-profit based in Tallahassee, Florida, dedicated to reviving civic connections across divisions inside American communities. For the past 17 years she's been the leader of an organization that describes itself as "a nervy bunch of liberals and conservatives who believe that dialogue and disagreement make for a good conversation, a good country and a good time"

Most of us live in neighborhoods and among friends who think like us, especially about politics. That’s a problem because not only are we divided, but don’t understand the other side. The number of people who say our country is headed in the wrong direction has remained very high throughout most of the past decade.

Liz believes that with the help of food and a sense of humor all kinds of people can be in the same room. They don't have to agree, but in many cases she says, Americans are not as divided as we think. "We disagree in soundbites that professional polarizers are working to divide us over, but in paragraphs we agree way more than we think we do," she tells us.

As for the polarizers? "l think they're playing us all, and we ought to be done with them," Liz tells us. The Village Square has organized dozens of public events, ranging from a few dozen people to audiences of more than a thousand breaking bread and enjoying a lively conversation.

Recommendation: Jim is reading "The Matter of Everything" by physicist and science communicator Dr. Suzie Sheehy. The book is a journey through the experiments that not only unlocked the nature of matter and shaped our understanding of the cosmos, but also changed the way we live.

Bonus Recommendation: Jim enjoys listening to The Glenn Show podcast with economist Glenn Loury.

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2022 was another year of COVID-induced anxiety with widespread worries about democracy, polarization, climate change and threats to democracy. But in this new year special Richard and Jim say we have reached peak fear. America may well be calming down and headed towards a new sense of normal. Our co-hosts throw caution to the wind with a series of fresh outside-the-box forecasts for the twelve months to come.

We make predictions about the retreat of COVID, the outlook for inflation, and the migration crisis on the southern border that threatens havoc for the Administration. Hear what could happen next in Ukraine's war against Russian aggression. We also look closely at China's new struggles with COVID, street protests, and slowing growth.

In a special section on technology and science, we focus on stunning advances in cancer and Alzheimer treatments plus new innovations in AI and the likely impact of ChatGTP, the app that's just been released to the public and is already raising ethical issues for schools, universities, and employers.

We promise to release a scorecard of how we did at the end of the year. Is Jim right when he says there is a real likelihood of a new energy crisis in 2023?

Is Richard's forecast about the 2024 Presidential race on target?

Jim and Richard also share their year-end hopes for the new year and recommendations.

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In some ways, our culture is less tolerant and more fragile than it once was. The teaching of literature in schools and colleges is often caught in the crossfire of the culture wars. Support for canceling books and authors by the illiberal left and demands to ban books from the reactionary right have led to the removal of important literature from classrooms and libraries. 

In this episode author and literature professor, Deborah Appleman mounts a rousing case for teaching troubling texts in troubling times. "Our classrooms need to remain a space where critical thinking is taught, tolerance from different viewpoints is modeled, and the sometimes-harsh truth of our history and literary heritage are not hidden," she says. Her latest book is "Literature and The New Culture Wars."

Professor Appleman taught high school English for nine years before receiving her doctorate from the University of Minnesota. She is chair of Educational Studies at Carleton College. Her recent research has focused on teaching college-level language and literature courses to the incarcerated.

We discuss how free speech and free thinking are under assault from puritans from the right and the left. We examine the costs to curiosity as well as to open and free inquiry— so essential to a thriving democracy. We look at the impact of the recent global pandemic on teaching and education. 

"Life is tough. Life is hard and full of bumps and bruises,' Professor Appleman tells us. "You can't hide the hurt of life from young people. Literature is not life but it can be in some ways a preparation for what life has to offer us."

"Doing no harm does not mean causing no discomfort for students. Learning requires cognitive dissonance. Learning requires that you are off-balance both psychologically and emotionally sometimes....It's in disequilibrium that we learn."

Read more banning-censorship.html">here from Pamela Paul of The New York Times. She wrote this year about the impact of book bans on the publishing industry: "Parents, schools and readers should demand access to all kinds of books, whether they personally approve of the content or not. For those on the illiberal left to conduct their own campaigns of censorship while bemoaning the book-burning impulses of the right is to violate the core tenets of liberalism. We’re better than this."

Recommendation: Richard has read "This Is Happiness" by Niall Williams and set in a remote village in Ireland. Richard calls the novel "enchanting and wonderful." 

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