There are only about 76 daily newspapers left in America that are not owned by a major corporate chain or billionaire-backed private owner.

Seventy-six.

In a country with more than 19,000 cities, towns, and villages, that number should stop us in our tracks.

Chapters

06:43 The State of Local Journalism

09:15 Challenges of Independent Voices

14:17 Reflecting Community Voices

16:01 The Role of Local Journalism

17:41 The Impact of Digital Disruption

19:26 The Soul of a Newspaper

22:55 Community Engagement and Trust

24:52 Building Relationships with Public Officials

27:44 Navigating AI in Journalism

44:46 Engaging Voters and Civic Responsibility

53:17 The Future of Print vs. Online Journalism

59:01 The Importance of Supporting Local News

01:02:17 The Importance of Content in Media

01:03:05 Engagement and Community Action

In this episode of the American Dream Factory Podcast, Nick Smoot and Joe Toney sit down with Clint Schroeder, President and Publisher at Hagadone Media, for a conversation about local journalism, civic trust, the First Amendment, AI, news deserts, and why every community still needs someone watching, listening, verifying, and telling the truth.

Clint oversees newspapers, magazines, and media properties across the Inland Pacific Northwest, Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Hawaii. After nearly 30 years in the industry, he has watched newspapers move from being the dominant civic voice in town to fighting for survival in a world shaped by Craigslist, Cars.com, social media, shrinking newsrooms, and now AI.

But Clint does not talk about newspapers with nostalgia. He talks about them as mission.

Local newspapers are not just businesses. They are civic infrastructure. They are archivists, watchdogs, conveners, mirrors, and defenders of the First Amendment. They record the story of a place. They cover school boards, city councils, local elections, public institutions, infrastructure fights, community victories, and warning signs that no national outlet will ever care enough to cover.

And when they disappear, the information does not disappear.

The verification disappears.

The context disappears.

The accountability disappears.

Clint makes the case that healthy local media is one of the last remaining foundations of healthy civic life. As he says in the conversation, the press is the only industry named directly in the U.S. Constitution. That means newspapers carry a responsibility that goes far beyond content, clicks, ads, or subscriptions.

Nick, Joe, and Clint explore what happens when a community loses its paper, why opinion pages and letters to the editor still matter, how local media can preserve balanced civic conversation, and why communities should not take their local newspaper for granted.

They also discuss the difference between real reporting and content generation, why AI should not replace original journalism, how young people consume news, and what it would take to rebuild local news in places that have become news deserts.

In this episode of the American Dream Factory Podcast, Nick Smoot sits down with Morgan Linton, co-founder and CTO of Bold Metrics, early Sonos employee, AI builder, and one of the most compelling people experimenting at the edge of artificial intelligence.

Morgan’s path is not linear, which is exactly what makes it valuable. He studied computer engineering and computer science at Carnegie Mellon, then turned down traditional software jobs to become an unpaid intern in the DreamWorks story department. From there, he joined Sonos before the product had launched, when the company had only a few months of runway left, and helped it grow into a billion-dollar company.

That unusual path gave Morgan a rare mix of technical depth, storytelling, taste, sales experience, startup scars, and founder judgment. It also prepared him for the moment we are in now, where the future will not belong only to people who can write code. It will belong to people who can see what the world needs, imagine something better, and use machines to help build it.

Today, Morgan and his wife Dana lead Bold Metrics, a machine learning company helping major apparel brands reduce returns, improve fit, and design clothing around real human body data. Bold Metrics can predict dozens of body measurements from simple inputs, then map those insights to garment data so brands can recommend better sizes and make better products.

Nick and Morgan talk about why that matters in the AI era. As software becomes easier to build, the real moats become harder things: data, momentum, distribution, taste, and trust. Morgan explains why proprietary data is so powerful, why most people underestimate distribution, and why building something useful still requires judgment, creativity, and real-world understanding.

The conversation then moves into the new world of AI-powered software development. Morgan shares how he moved his engineering team into agentic coding workflows and why he believes leaders now have a responsibility to use these tools. They discuss Codex, GPT-5.5, Cursor, Droid from Factory AI, Grok Build, Devin, Graphite, Claude Code, model routing, agentic code review, and the difference between a model and a harness.

Morgan explains that a model is not the whole product. The model is the intelligence. The harness is the system that tells it how to behave, use tools, execute tasks, and interact with the user. The same model can perform very differently depending on the harness around it. That means the future is not just better AI models. It is better combinations of models, harnesses, workflows, and human judgment.

For people just beginning with AI, Morgan’s advice is simple: do not start with a book, a course, or a four-hour tutorial. Start by building. Pick one repetitive thing you do every day and ask an AI coding agent to help you automate it. A spreadsheet process. A report. A tax calculation. A file cleanup task. A simple internal tool. Once you build something useful, you cannot unsee what is happening.

The deepest part of the conversation is not technical. It is human.

Nick frames AI as the next wave of the internet, and Morgan pushes the idea further. This is not just the next wave of the internet. It is the next wave of humanity.

Morgan argues that non-creative work can and will be done by machines at scale. That should not terrify us. It should free us. The computers can do the 996. Humans get to return to the work that makes us human: creativity, love, emotion, imagination, risk, beauty, invention, and solving real problems with people we care about.

This episode is part founder story, part AI field guide, and part hopeful argument for the future. Morgan’s message is clear: stop watching from the sidelines. Start building. Use the tools. Experiment. Automate something small. Follow your curiosity. Take the weird path. Build with taste. Create something useful.

In this episode of the American Dream Factory Podcast, Nick Smoot sits down with Daron Babcock, Managing Director of Community Transformation at Stand Together Foundation and founder of Bonton Farms, for a powerful conversation about poverty, dignity, health, faith, entrepreneurship, and what it actually takes to transform a community.

Daron’s story begins far from the nonprofit world. He started his first business at fifteen, wrestled at the University of Oklahoma, worked in corporate America, helped run a beverage distributorship, launched a startup, and eventually entered the world of private equity after his company was acquired by Blackstone.

But after the death of his first wife, Daron’s life took a different turn. Through grief, friendship, faith, and a hunger for deeper human connection, he found himself drawn into Bonton, a struggling neighborhood in South Dallas. What began as a desire to be a better friend became a long-term commitment to living in proximity with people most of society had overlooked.

At the time, Bonton faced staggering challenges. Median household income was around $19,000. High school graduation rates were low. Teen pregnancy, infant mortality, incarceration, chronic disease, and early death were painfully common. But Daron did not see a community defined by failure. He saw trapped potential.

The first lesson was simple but profound: listen and respond.

Residents told him they needed jobs, so Daron started with workforce development. But that effort quickly revealed deeper barriers. Many people were too sick to work. Others lacked transportation, access to fresh food, safe housing, health care, banking, or the confidence to articulate their own value. What looked like a jobs problem was actually a system problem.

That insight led to the creation of Bonton Farms, which became far more than an urban farm. It became an economic engine, a health intervention, a gathering place, and a catalyst for local businesses including a coffee house, farm-to-table restaurant, security company, facility maintenance company, landscape business, and more. As dollars began circulating inside the neighborhood, wealth and confidence began to build.

Daron explains that real community transformation requires more than charity. It requires building the conditions where people can flourish: relationships, economic opportunity, health, transportation, education, safe housing, and access to the basic tools needed to participate fully in life.

Over eight years, Bonton saw dramatic improvement. Median household income more than doubled. Home values rose. Graduation rates improved. Teen pregnancy dropped. Crime declined significantly.

Nick and Daron also explore the failures of modern philanthropy, the danger of toxic empathy, the limits of giving money without proximity, and the need to measure what actually matters. They discuss why downstream interventions alone will never solve upstream problems, why human flourishing must be measured by the people experiencing it, and why the future of community transformation depends on believing in people enough to hold them accountable to their own potential.

This is a conversation about dignity, systems, friendship, health, faith, business, poverty, and the hard, slow, beautiful work of helping people and places become whole.

Key Themes

• Proximity creates the will to change.
• Jobs alone are not enough.
• Poverty is a systems problem, not a people problem.
• Market-driven solutions can restore dignity.
• Health is foundational to human flourishing.
• Charity without accountability can become harmful.
• Human flourishing must be measured.

Resources Mentioned

• Bonton Farms
• Stand Together Foundation
• Poverty, Inc.
  
• 
  Toxic Charity by Robert D. Lupton
  
• 
  The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
  
• 
  Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
  
• 
  The W. Edwards Deming Institute
  
• Believe in People by Charles Koch and Brian Hooks
  

Nevada is putting real capital behind founders, manufacturers, builders, and companies ready to scale.

In this episode of American Dream Factory, Nick Smoot sits down with Kyle Ferguson, head of Nevada’s Battle Born Growth Escalator venture program, to unpack how Nevada is deploying nearly $40 million into high-potential companies through venture capital, debt programs, and state-backed financing tools.

Kyle is a sixth-generation Nevadan with a background in hedge funds, private equity, fund operations, and entrepreneurship. Early in his career, he helped evaluate and allocate capital into some of the most successful hedge funds in the world, including Renaissance, D.E. Shaw, and Paul Tudor Jones. That experience shaped how he now thinks about risk, discipline, patience, and backing great operators.

Battle Born is not a grant program. It is investment capital for companies that want to grow in Nevada, hire in Nevada, build in Nevada, or relocate meaningful operations to the state.

Through the SSBCI program, Nevada was allocated up to $112 million from the U.S. Treasury, released in tranches as the state hits deployment milestones. After deploying roughly $40 million over its first 10 to 11 years, Battle Born is now moving faster, with another nearly $40 million expected to go into the market over a much shorter window.

Kyle breaks down the three major ways Battle Born can support companies:

Venture capital: equity investments typically ranging from $250,000 to $2 million, with an average check around $750,000.

Collateral support: state support for up to 80 percent of collateral on qualifying bank loans.

Loan participation: Battle Born can participate alongside Nevada banks to lower the blended cost of capital for companies seeking debt.

Nick and Kyle also discuss why Nevada is becoming one of the most compelling states in America for founders. The state has favorable tax policy, room for manufacturing, major industrial momentum, a growing AI and data center economy, and a strong builder culture rooted in mining, logistics, energy, construction, and hard work.

The conversation covers major opportunity areas including advanced manufacturing, energy, batteries, robotics, drone systems, defense technology, industrial AI, aerospace, precision manufacturing, and companies looking to leave higher-cost states.

This episode also introduces the partnership between Battle Born and Build Cities through the Build Nevada network. Founders can now explore challenge areas, submit projects, connect with other builders, and use UDAYOS, Build’s AI engine, to discover capital, collaborators, workforce resources, and state-aligned opportunities.

The message is simple: if you are building a serious company and Nevada could be part of your future, do not sit on the sidelines. Get into the Build Nevada network, submit your project, ask questions, and start the conversation.

Nevada is not just talking about the American Dream. It is writing checks to help build it.

Start here: Go to BuildCities.com, search Build Nevada, and explore the Battle Born challenge opportunities.

For questions, introductions, or help figuring out where your company fits, email [email protected] .

In this episode, Nick & Joe sit down with John Keisler, CEO of Sunstone Management and former Economic Development Director for the City of Long Beach, for a conversation about public-private partnerships, civic expertise, investment, and what it really takes to build stronger communities.

John brings a rare perspective from both sides of the table. He spent more than 20 years in public service before moving into the private sector, where he now helps connect capital, entrepreneurship, infrastructure, and community.

The conversation explores the power of P3s, why government often serves as a market maker, and how private capital can align with public purpose. John also shares a simple but powerful lesson for cities: know what you are if you want to grow who you are.

At its core, this episode is about how government, capital, and community can work together to build places where people belong, contribute, and create the future.

About John Keisler
John P. Keisler is CEO & Managing Partner of Sunstone Management, a Southern California venture capital firm that invests in diverse early-stage technology startups through public-private partnerships across government, education, and private sectors. Before joining Sunstone, John spent more than 20 years in public service, most recently as Economic Development Director for the City of Long Beach. His work has focused on inclusive economic growth, private-sector investment, entrepreneurial ecosystem development, infrastructure, and community-building strategy.

Links
Sunstone Management: https://www.sunstoneinvestment.com
Sunstone Cities: https://sunstonecities.com
John Keisler on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jpkeisler/

In this episode of American Dream Factory, Nick Smoot sits down with Morgan Dixon, a 24-year-old PhD student in artificial intelligence and machine learning at the University of Idaho.

Morgan represents a rare but replicable archetype: a young man preparing to launch into the world with technical competence, grounded character, and calm confidence. While many of his peers feel uncertain about the future of work, Morgan is building inside it. He works as a consulting data scientist and software engineer, contributing to healthcare and behavioral health systems, including AI-driven modernization efforts connected to state-level crisis infrastructure.

This conversation is not about hype. It is about formation.

It is about how young men develop direction in an era of automation, distraction, and drift.

What This Episode Covers:

The Launch Path

Morgan shares how his path was shaped by:

• Early entrepreneurship in his teens

• Dual enrollment in high school

• Pivoting degrees after academic setbacks

• Walking resumes door-to-door in Seattle

• Working full-time while pursuing graduate studies

His story reinforces a simple truth: initiative compounds.

Proof of Work Over Credentials

A degree is common. Proof of execution is rare.

Morgan explains why many computer science graduates are struggling and why building real projects, writing models, and demonstrating competence now matter more than ever. In a world where AI lowers the barrier to entry, differentiation requires depth, discipline, and visible output.

AI Is Changing the Shape of Opportunity

The conversation explores:

• How AI has democratized software development

• Why domain expertise now matters more than surface coding ability

• Why Morgan is exploring hardware and security-heavy industries

• What he has learned from working inside healthcare data and reimbursement systems

Innovation follows incentives. Understanding those incentives creates leverage.

Healthcare and Government as Builder Environments

Morgan offers insight into working within healthcare and state systems:

• Data fragmentation and interoperability challenges

• Billing structures that shape innovation

• The need for simplicity in behavioral health and remote monitoring

• The patience required to work in public infrastructure

These are complex systems that reward serious builders.

Raising Men Who Build

Nick asks a direct question:

“What should I do so my kid’s not a turd?”

Morgan’s answer is direct:

Send them into the real world.

Have them job shadow.

Let them see real work.

Expose them to adults who build and solve problems.

Direction comes from exposure. Confidence comes from competence. Drift comes from isolation.

Key Takeaways

For young men:

• Stop waiting. Go build something.

• Meet people in person. Initiative creates luck.

• Develop technical depth and real-world exposure.

• Do hard things before you feel ready.

For parents:

• Exposure beats lectures.

• Responsibility builds identity.

• Encourage initiative, not comfort.

In an era where machines are accelerating and many young people feel unmoored, this episode offers a grounded alternative: calm confidence, technical competence, and the discipline to build.

Learn more at buildcities.com or Morgan Dixon

Nick Smoot sits down with Doug Erwin, the entrepreneurship lead at EDAWN in Northern Nevada, for a wide-ranging, high-energy conversation about two things happening at once:

1. AI is moving from “chat” to “do.” Agents are booking meetings, running workflows, and changing the cost and speed of building.

2. Reno is quietly turning into a real startup boomtown. And EDAWN is literally putting money behind the people who want to strengthen the ecosystem.

The punchline: Doug’s team has a grant program called BESTI that funds community-led events, meetups, and builder gatherings. Nick shows how to submit an idea through BuildCities.com by linking a project to the BESTI challenge.

What BESTIE Is (in plain English)

BESTI = EDAWN money to help you host ecosystem-building events.

Not top-down programming. Not “EDAWN's event.” It’s community-led.

• Typical awards: around $1,000

• Larger requests: up to $5,000

• Purpose: reduce friction, validate community leaders, and get more builders in the room together

Examples they want to fund: founder meetups, workshops, pitch nights, Startup Weekend, niche communities (AI, art, games, hardware), and simple gatherings that create collisions.

Why This Matters Right Now

Doug and Nick both make the same point in different language: the future is not coming. It is here.

AI is turning into an “autonomous assistant” era, which means anyone can build faster than ever. That is awesome. It is also chaotic. The communities that win will be the ones that create places for people to:

• meet consistently

• learn together

• get unstuck

• build real things people actually want

Nick’s frame: we’re splitting into two worlds.

• World A: amuse-yourself-to-death consumption

• World B: disciplined creation with friends

BESTI is a lever to help people choose World B.

The Best Stuff Doug Says

• Ecosystems are rainforests, not row crops. They need culture, collisions, and long-term consistency.

• The role of economic development is often to be the “ghost in the machine.” Reduce friction so the community can lead.

• BESTIE is partly funding, partly social validation. Sometimes people just need permission and support to lead.

The Best Stuff Nick Says

• If you want to run an event, do three, not one. Your first one will be awkward. Your third one will have momentum.

• The real shift is from consumption-based social life (restaurants, concerts) to creation-based social life (build nights, learning nights, show-and-tell).

• The winning community model is Discover, Dream, Design, Deliver. Gather people through those phases so building becomes a rhythm.

Reno’s “Wait, What?” Moment

Doug teases a big local milestone: Reno’s first homegrown unicorn announcement is imminent.

Nick uses it as a reminder: “overnight success” is usually two years plus a lifetime of experience, relationships, and timing

How to Apply for BESTIE (simple steps)

1. Go to BuildCities.com

2. Create a profile

3. Create a Project for your event idea (name it, describe it, add collaborators)

4. Search BESTIE and link your project to the challenge

5. EDAWN gets notified, and you are in the pipeline

Nick’s advice: keep it low lift. BBQ + builder conversation is valid. Pizza and folding chairs counts if the room is full of creators.

Talked About in the Episode

• Brad Feld and the “entrepreneurs lead” thesis

• Better ecosystem thinking

• AI agents, MCP, automation, and the new workflow era

• Startup Weekend as a proven collision engine

• The deeper reason communities matter: loneliness, purpose, belonging, and getting unstuck

Guest and Contact

Doug Erwin

Director of Entrepreneurship, EDAWN (Economic Development Association of Western Nevada)

Nick Smoot

Email: [email protected]

In this solo episode of the American Dream Factory podcast, Nick Smoot explores a simple but powerful idea that keeps people stuck. Waiting.

Waiting for permission.

Waiting for perfection.

Waiting for someone else to go first.

Nick shares a personal story about solving a ridiculous traffic problem with a bucket of yellow paint and a little courage, and how that small act quietly changed behavior for hundreds of people and eventually the city itself.

This episode is a reminder that cities do not change because of committees alone. They change when ordinary people take responsibility for the problems they see and act on them.

If you feel lonely, disconnected, or frustrated with your city, this conversation is for you.

• Why waiting for permission keeps cities stagnant

• How perfection becomes an excuse to avoid meaningful action

• A real story of grassroots problem-solving that actually worked

• Why no one will ever invite you to build the world you see

• Taking responsibility for the chaos you notice around you

• Creating beauty, value, and order through small actions

• Why community begins with initiative, not authority

You do not need permission to care about your city.

You do not need perfection to get started.

The gap between the life you want and the impact you could have is often one small action.

Nick also shares how Build helps people take action together. Build is a community platform where you can:

• Post projects you are working on

• Share challenges your city needs solved

• Create events and third-place hubs

• List skills you want to learn or contribute

• Get introduced to people nearby through AI-powered matching

Learn more at buildcities.com

Nick invites listeners to the upcoming Build Summit on January 16–17, featuring two legendary mentors:

Flint Dille

World-builder, storyteller, and creator behind iconic universes including work with Steven Spielberg, Pokémon Go, Transformers, G.I. Joe, and Chronicles of Riddick. Flint will lead a workshop on world building, games, and creative storytelling.

Amish Patel

Inventor, technologist, and venture builder whose work includes the Xbox controller, smartwatch sensor technology, and advanced robotic surgery systems. Amish will teach a workshop on venture capital and what is investable in 2026.

The summit includes workshops, fireside chats, pitch sessions, community-voted micro-grants, and time to connect with builders working on real projects.

• Website: buildcities.com

• Email Nick: [email protected]

If this episode resonated, subscribe, share it with someone who needs encouragement, and take one small action this week that creates beauty and value in your city.

The world does not need more spectators.

It needs builders.

If this episode resonated, subscribe, share it with someone who needs encouragement, and take one small action this week that creates beauty and value in your city.

The world does not need more spectators.

It needs builders.

America is running out of workers and time. The baby boomers are retiring, birth rates are collapsing, and colleges are struggling to prove their value. In the middle of that chaos, a new movement is forming built on skills, not degrees.

In this episode of The American Dream Factory, hosts Nick Smoot and Joseph Toney talk with Josh Wright, Head of Growth and Partnerships at Lightcast, one of the world’s top labor market data firms. Together they explore a defining question for America’s next chapter: can the nation rebuild its workforce fast enough to handle the coming labor storm?

Josh, a former journalist turned data storyteller, shares insights from Lightcast’s Rising Storm report, revealing how demographics, education gaps, and untapped human potential are reshaping the labor market. The conversation moves from workforce data to civic purpose, showing how cities, schools, and employers can realign around skills and human creativity instead of outdated systems.

This is more than an economic discussion. It is a moral one about how we value people, purpose, and contribution in the next American century.

The Great Workforce Reckoning

Baby boomers are aging out while the next generation is smaller and slower to engage. Labor shortages are hitting manufacturing, healthcare, trades, and public works hardest. America’s talent pool is shrinking, and the gap between open roles and available skills is growing.

Degrees Are Losing Their Power

A four-year degree no longer guarantees opportunity. Employers are shifting toward skills-based hiring, yet systems for verifying skills are still forming. Parents remain one of the biggest barriers, pushing children toward traditional degrees even as the trades and new credentials gain traction.

Data as Civic Infrastructure

Lightcast’s 34,000-skill taxonomy shows which abilities matter most right now and where. When data flows between educators, employers, and governments, cities thrive. Without shared data, everyone is guessing and losing.

The Hidden Workforce

Millions of Americans already have valuable but invisible skills. Unlocking that hidden capacity can fill jobs, drive innovation, and rebuild civic pride. Cities that activate this potential will outcompete those that do not.

The Moral Imperative of Work

Work is not only about money. It is about meaning, belonging, and participation. The Skills Revolution is the path to restoring human purpose in an automated world.

• The Demographic Drought series and its warning for U.S. labor markets

• The decline of degree-based hiring and rise of digital credentials

• How cities can use data to align workforce pipelines

• Immigration’s impact on the workforce crisis

• The role of parents, perception, and pride in shaping the next generation of workers

• Real examples from Greensboro, North Carolina and Fargo, North Dakota showing how data builds resilient cities

“You cannot separate skills from the individual, their learning, and their lived experience.” — Josh Wright

“The data does not solve the problem. People do. But the right data helps people take better action.” — Josh Wright

“There is a missing dataset, the skills people already have but no one can see. That is the next frontier for cities.” — Nick Smoot

• Lightcast — Global leader in workforce and labor market data

• The Rising Storm report — Insights on the demographic labor crisis

• Guest: Josh Wright, Head of Growth and Partnerships, Lightcast

• Hosts: Nick Smoot and Joseph Toney

• Learn more at AmericanDreamFactory.com or email [email protected]

In this episode of The American Dream Factory, hosts Nick Smoot and Joseph Toney sit down with creative veteran Lee Davis, founder of Clean, a Raleigh-based agency known for its soulful approach to branding. Lee’s three-decade journey spans legendary firms like Wieden+Kennedy and J&J, giving him a rare vantage point on how brands—and cities—can rediscover their essence.

Together, the trio unpacks what it means to build belonging in an age of isolation. Lee reflects on how communities lose their identity when they chase growth without soul, and why cities need to stop marketing for tourists and start engaging their residents. From Raleigh’s “City of Oaks” to Durham’s bold “Marry Durham” campaign, they explore how design, storytelling, and community behavior can transform a place into something people feel.

Key Themes:

• The difference between brand and marketing—and why cities often get both wrong

• Why it’s okay to “offend” people in branding—and why not every city can (or should) be for everyone

• The hidden cost of moving from the front porch to the backyard

• How sports, design, and shared storytelling can rebuild civic pride

• The spiritual side of place-making—and how “we” must matter more than “me”

Takeaways:

• Great cities, like great brands, are built on truth and tension, not slogans.

• The best marketers for your city are its residents—if you give them something to believe in.

• Growth without identity breaks community; design for the people who already live there first.

Learn More:

Follow Lee and his team at Clean Agency and connect with him on LinkedIn.

Join the American Dream Factory community at AmericanDreamFactory.com for updates, live events, and tools for city leaders and builders.