Journalists Are My Heroes

It was inevitable with this podcast that I would begin to spend a little more time talking with journalists as they stream through Iowa, the site of the first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses, on the 2020 campaign trail. Christopher Cadelago of Politico popped up on my radar after he filed a surprise story from the depths of a furious blizzard that stranded him in the middle of rural Iowa: "My bone-chilling adventure trying to cover Kamala Harris in Iowa." Suffice it to say that Cadelago was lucky to share the Oscars telecast and goulash with Mike and Janet Shock after they rescued the Californian from his snowbound rental car in nothing more than a paper-thin jacket. But this isn't an interview about road safety. Cadelago and I dove into numerous issues of modern political coverage, including the climate for reporters (where they get both booed and pestered for autographs) and how the rise of new partisan media affects his job. Thanks for listening to Journalists Are My Heroes, the podcast that talks to working journalists and journalism advocates everywhere. Because a healthy news environment helps build a shared sense of community, especially on the local level. 

When billionaire Joe Ricketts of TD Ameritrade and Chicago Cubs fame in 2017 shut down digital news network DNAInfo, Stephanie Lulay and two of her colleagues didn't scatter to other industries. They co-founded Block Club Chicago, a hyperlocal nonprofit news site dedicated to granular coverage of the Windy City's storied neighborhoods. The site launched in summer 2018 after a record-setting Kickstarter campaign that raised $183,000 from 3,000 backers. Lulay, managing editor, trusts her reporters to live and embed themselves in their neighborhoods and largely set the agenda for what they cover. One crucial component: Block Club doesn't focus only on crime and other sensationalism. The site's stories span everything from potholes to serious police misconduct. Block Club Chicago is published on the Civil platform, a digital news network on the blockchain. In this episode of Journalists Are My Heroes, Stephanie talks about her career path into hyperlocal news, how her site approaches coverage, and the newsroom's prospects for long-term sustainability. Please subscribe, rate and review us wherever you listen to podcasts. And find and support us on the Anchor network. 

Collaborative journalism has become more of a trend in recent years. Newsrooms, struggling to remain ambitious as they cope with a sour media economy, are launching all manner of projects in which they're colleagues rather than competitors. The Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University has tracked some 180 such projects in the last year. For this episode we focus on one collaborative series that investigated how some communities across Iowa have been left with scant if any options for child care. It involved four different newsrooms, including the Iowa Fall Times-Citizen and Editor Sara Konrad Baranowski. Please subscribe to this podcast, rate and review us, support us on the Anchor platform, and follow @JournalismHero on Twitter and Instagram. 

Veteran journalist Sam Quinones is a self-described "immersive journalist" with the heart of a punk rocker. He began his career as a crime reporter in Stockton, Calif. In the decades since he has roamed around the U.S. and Mexico. He has been a full-time staffer for newspapers such as the L.A. Times but today prefers the life of a freelancer -- without a boss breathing down his neck so that he can spend the proper time investigating each story. The approach has worked out for him, considering his 2015 nonfiction blockbuster "Dreamland," a deeply reported and richly detailed book on America's opiate epidemic, won numerous awards and is working its way through Hollywood. And now Sam is writing a sequel. As the nation sees more fierce and familiar partisan battles over immigration and a border wall, Sam is a good voice for a gut check: Here's a tireless journalist who has spent decades on the front lines of these monumental issues. As always, please subscribe to this podcast wherever you prefer to listen. And find us on Instagram and Twitter, @JournalismHero. 

I was rummaging through my basement this weekend and found early mementos from my journalism career, including copies of my first publication, "6th Grade News Flash." That got me thinking about (1) what gets journalists hooked on this business in the first place, and (2) why they stick around to gut it out despite all challenges. Those are two different things. This quick interlude of a not-really-an-episode roams from "Knight Rider" to Lionel Richie to journalism ethics and, finally, to the struggle to support objective news orgs in the digital economy. This is an impromptu appetizer on the way to many more full-length interviews to be dished up in the days ahead. Please follow, rate and review the podcast. To my listeners: Please support your local news providers. To my brothers and sisters in media: Do the stories that make you proud. 

Laura Belin of Bleeding Heartland has spent more than a decade and produced more than 7,000 posts as a progressive political blogger. She's also on the front lines of changing notions of journalism in this scrappy era of digital media. She's a research analyst by training who once covered Russian politics and now sees herself occupying a "no man's land" somewhere between traditional journalism and academia. Some of her staunchest critics tend to be fellow Democrats -- something that can't help but be on her mind as she covers a new glut of presidential candidates who will compete in the 2020 Iowa caucuses. Belin is an example of the rise of partisan digital media that includes other sites such as Big League Politics that first uncovered the racist yearbook photos tied to Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam. Now that everybody with a smartphone qualifies as a "publisher" or potential news source, who should be considered a journalist, or credentialed as one?  Listen in as Laura and I roam through a conversation on reporting, transparency, technology and politics. 

Investigative reporter Amber Hunt of the Cincinnati Enquirer built a news career that led her through Iowa and Detroit before Ohio, where in 2016 with colleague Amanda Rossman she created the hit podcast "Accused." Hunt had no idea how drastically her career would pivot to podcasting, as "Accused" shot to the top of the iTunes charts and spawned sequels. "Aftermath" is a podcast that roamed the nation to report on the lingering trauma that haunts victims of gun violence. Meanwhile, Hunt was part of the Enquirer team that won a 2018 Pulitzer for its local reporting on the heroin epidemic. Her LinkedIn bio lists her as the current CIA director. (You'll have to listen to the interview for the explanation.) She's also a true-crime author; her latest book, "Unsolved Murders," is due to be published this month. Hunt and her colleagues now are in production on season three of "Accused." Much of her work, Hunt says, is meant to encourage empathy so that a listener one day "maybe will stop and not pull the trigger." Hit play for all the gritty, fascinating and heartfelt details.

Nikki Usher, associate professor of journalism at George Washington University and the University of Illinois, joins JAMH to share some of what she's learned from years of interviewing journalists and studying their industry. She also discusses the "three sins" that she fears national media will continue to commit in 2019, based on her recent article for Nieman Lab. We talk about: the different frustrations audiences have with national versus local media; "horse race" coverage of political campaigns; journalists making the mistake of making the story about themselves; the fallacy that facts alone can change people's minds; the fact-checking trend in journalism; "day-to-day systemic outrage" in modern journalism; "the objectivity police" and "the view from nowhere"; objectivity as a method versus a philosophy; what happens when journalists legitimize fringe groups; how coverage of mass shootings has changed for the better; how journalists should approach 2020 campaign coverage; the need for more diversity in newsrooms; the "place-based realignment" in journalism; and how digital scale is shifting power in media away from local newsrooms. 

Whether in Indiana or Hawaii or Iowa, Erin Sommers, 37, has loved her lifelong job as a professionally nosy newshound. Now the reporter and driving force behind the Pocahontas Record-Democrat in northwest Iowa, Sommers sat down to talk about: covering her neighbors' tragedies or controversies as a journalist; teaching local officials about how to run open government; cultural pitfalls by fellow journalists who parachute in for campaign coverage; how the "fake news" attitude against journalists has filtered down even to students in local classrooms; how she approaches her job primarily as a print journalist; and the prospects for her rural community to begin to grow again.

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