Juan Perez, Jr.

Rick Alloway Author

07/06/2023 Added

25 Plays

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Juan Perez, Jr., is the education reporter for Politico, based in Washington D.C. He is a 2009 graduate of the UNL College of Journalism & Mass Communications where he majored in Journalism. He worked for The Omaha World-Herald and The Chicago Tribune before moving to Politico in 2019. He spoke with Campus Voices as part of a series on the future of the media and communications industries.

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[00:00:05.670]Good morning. Welcome to "Campus Voices".
[00:00:08.010]I'm Rick Alloway, and as always, I thank you for your time.
[00:00:11.490]We're continuing in our series of "Campus Voices" features
[00:00:14.790]that deal with a look toward the future and how the future
[00:00:18.480]of the various mass media organizations and entities are,
[00:00:24.030]how it looks for them, how they're adapting,
[00:00:26.220]how they're changing in an ever-changing marketplace.
[00:00:29.280]And toward that end, our guest this week
[00:00:31.500]on "Campus Voices" is Juan Perez, Jr.,
[00:00:34.200]the education reporter for "Politico" and a 2009 graduate
[00:00:39.480]of the College of Journalism and Mass Communications,
[00:00:41.880]who joins us to talk about his career
[00:00:43.868]and where the industry is headed.
[00:00:45.780]Juan, thank you for your time today.
[00:00:47.010]Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:48.390]Thanks for having me.
[00:00:49.830]So, let me kind of back up
[00:00:52.170]and get a little bit of history first.
[00:00:53.310]What brought you to the university in the first place,
[00:00:55.740]and what was your goal when you came here for a career?
[00:01:00.570]Boy, I'm not sure I had a clear idea
[00:01:02.790]of what I wanted to do for a career
[00:01:04.380]when I started my higher education journey.
[00:01:06.780]I wish I did.
[00:01:08.670]But I started out as an English major.
[00:01:12.000]And I didn't immediately go
[00:01:13.790]to the College of Journalism and Mass Communications,
[00:01:16.530]although I'm glad I did.
[00:01:18.750]I think, what I first needed to do was kind of establish
[00:01:25.200]what I was gonna do for the rest of my life.
[00:01:26.700]And then, when I was a freshman in college,
[00:01:28.980]I was definitely at a bit of a crossroads.
[00:01:31.080]There was a decision I had to make,
[00:01:33.000]whether I was gonna go into more
[00:01:34.170]of a traditional business track,
[00:01:35.700]whether I wanted to pursue a career in the law,
[00:01:38.640]or perhaps, in academia.
[00:01:40.710]But ultimately, what became an inflection point,
[00:01:45.750]for lack of a better term,
[00:01:46.950]was joining the college newspaper, "The Daily Nebraska",
[00:01:50.670]and finding not only a group of people
[00:01:53.814]that I could call a community and home,
[00:01:57.030]but also a thing that paid money. (chuckles)
[00:02:01.990]And not only that, but something
[00:02:04.380]that I could potentially use a broad array of skillsets,
[00:02:09.210]and not just,
[00:02:10.973]and the other things I was studying at the time,
[00:02:13.080]whether it was Political Science or International Affairs,
[00:02:15.540]and meld it all into one job or career path and place.
[00:02:21.180]So it really started there.
[00:02:23.790]From there, it was kind of a traditional pathway
[00:02:26.010]that I think that a lot of my colleagues
[00:02:28.740]and fellow classmates took, too, you know.
[00:02:30.147]You get the internship here. You get the internship there.
[00:02:33.030]You sort of find out what you like to do,
[00:02:35.310]where you want to grow, where your skills kind of are.
[00:02:39.030]And like many of us, it grew into something,
[00:02:41.760]at least journalism, grew into something
[00:02:43.290]that I really loved, and I haven't looked back since.
[00:02:47.970]So leaving the university in 2009,
[00:02:49.660]where was your first stop on the employment ladder?
[00:02:54.240]The "Omaha World Herald".
[00:02:56.460]And part of the reason for that
[00:02:57.870]was because the college had an excellent fellowship program
[00:03:01.350]at the time.
[00:03:02.610]If I recall correctly, it may have been the inaugural year
[00:03:05.550]that the college had a straight up partnership
[00:03:08.310]with the "Omaha World Herald" to bring in a group of interns
[00:03:11.700]who worked out of the Lincoln Bureau
[00:03:13.860]and contributed to a whole variety of stories
[00:03:16.200]for the publication.
[00:03:18.270]So that's how I got my start.
[00:03:19.500]It turned into a summer internship.
[00:03:21.180]And from there, I was fortunate enough,
[00:03:23.400]given the job market at the time
[00:03:25.170]and then realities of the economy,
[00:03:26.670]to land a job at the paper there, covering breaking news.
[00:03:31.050]And then cops, courts, city politics,
[00:03:33.441]any number of different topics,
[00:03:35.400]which was essential for, you know,
[00:03:38.460]an essential foundation for my growth as a journalist.
[00:03:42.750]What has led you to "Politico"?
[00:03:45.150]What was between the "World Herald" and where you are now?
[00:03:49.140]So after my time at the "World Herald",
[00:03:51.120]I spent about seven years
[00:03:52.680]at the "Chicago Tribune" in Illinois,
[00:03:54.930]which was, honestly, one of the best experiences
[00:03:59.460]of my professional career.
[00:04:01.560]So was Omaha, for that matter.
[00:04:02.940]But Chicago was a place where my world really just expanded
[00:04:06.690]in a whole number of different ways.
[00:04:07.980]Because you're covering the same kinds of stories,
[00:04:10.860]but on a much bigger scale and in a city and in a community
[00:04:14.550]that is enormously challenged,
[00:04:17.160]but deeply, deeply rich at the same time.
[00:04:20.100]And so it was, it's a beautiful city.
[00:04:24.210]And honestly, it's probably a place
[00:04:26.760]I would hope to still be today
[00:04:29.370]if it wasn't for the fact that there was a good opportunity
[00:04:31.650]that came up in Washington.
[00:04:33.420]And part of the internal debate
[00:04:35.580]that I had at the time was, you know,
[00:04:38.040]I always wanted to work closer to the federal government
[00:04:41.520]and closer to the centers of political power
[00:04:45.240]and policy power in the world.
[00:04:46.800]And of course, there's nowhere else to go
[00:04:48.030]in the United States than than D.C.
[00:04:49.980]And gratefully, thankfully rather,
[00:04:54.217]"Politico" just had an opportunity,
[00:04:55.980]and I was in kind of the right place at the right time.
[00:04:58.860]And so now, after a very long initial three year stretch
[00:05:04.980]during the pandemic, now I'm, you know,
[00:05:08.070]completing my fourth year here at the publication.
[00:05:10.260]And it's been nonstop, to put it mildly,
[00:05:13.980]not just with elections and the machinations of Congress,
[00:05:17.610]but also just the ever-shifting landscape
[00:05:21.540]of policy development in Washington.
[00:05:24.150]And learning about how, you know, the levers of power
[00:05:27.109]at this form of government has a very real impact
[00:05:30.570]on the everyday lives of people,
[00:05:32.910]has been really a rich experience.
[00:05:36.480]You started, as you said, right at the,
[00:05:38.820]about at the outbreak of COVID.
[00:05:41.306]So many new things all at once,
[00:05:43.320]a new job, a new market to work in, new responsibilities,
[00:05:48.060]and then an entirely new working environment.
[00:05:50.430]How did the onset of the pandemic
[00:05:53.610]affect the way that you worked?
[00:05:55.920]Oh, man.
[00:05:58.350]I feel like I'm still trying to get my bearings
[00:06:02.490]from the consequences of what happened during that time.
[00:06:06.600]And you nailed it.
[00:06:08.520]I arrived in Washington, I wanna say,
[00:06:12.840]let's call it six months before the pandemic started.
[00:06:15.540]And as you can imagine,
[00:06:18.210]when you're starting a new job is challenging enough,
[00:06:21.330]but when you're in an environment,
[00:06:23.580]in an utterly new newsroom like this one,
[00:06:25.830]it's really important to build connections with people,
[00:06:28.110]meet face-to-face with people,
[00:06:29.730]and just do the things that a newsroom does
[00:06:32.520]on a day-to-day basis.
[00:06:33.570]And it's really hard to do that
[00:06:36.420]in any other kind of environment but the physical space
[00:06:38.850]that we occupy every day here at the office.
[00:06:42.510]I really thought there was no other way to do it.
[00:06:44.520]And you know, starting in March of 2020,
[00:06:47.010]I got a pretty rude awakening
[00:06:48.660]that we would have to, you know,
[00:06:49.920]take on some forced adaptation
[00:06:51.450]to figure out a new way of doing things.
[00:06:54.510]And we did it.
[00:06:57.090]And we've, I think, started transitioning into the new world
[00:07:00.390]that, you know, a hybrid of remote and home-based work
[00:07:04.530]is gonna look like here for the foreseeable future.
[00:07:08.100]But as far as what changed, we had to get,
[00:07:10.740]like everybody else, we had to get so savvy so quickly
[00:07:13.950]on just the few digital tools that we were gonna rely on.
[00:07:17.820]You know, an utterly new workflow
[00:07:20.070]for how a story not only gets conceived
[00:07:23.520]from that initial conversation
[00:07:24.930]between an editor or a colleague,
[00:07:26.790]but how it actually moves through the process
[00:07:28.830]of getting onto a page, getting into the system,
[00:07:31.897]you know, moving through the process of edits
[00:07:34.080]and it getting out into the world.
[00:07:35.460]All of that is done
[00:07:36.660]in a completely decentralized and utterly foreign
[00:07:39.660]and unfamiliar environment for me, at least.
[00:07:42.360]That was unlike anything I had ever done before.
[00:07:46.350]But you get used to anything, and so did we.
[00:07:49.110]You know, my workspace at, (chuckles)
[00:07:51.900]at my home is still just as cluttered
[00:07:54.270]as it was for the course, as it has been over the course
[00:07:57.150]of the past three years or so.
[00:07:59.100]That hasn't changed, although maybe I should work on that
[00:08:01.020]when I get back tonight.
[00:08:02.910]But it's, I think what's,
[00:08:06.810]part of the lesson that I'm trying to bring out of this
[00:08:09.270]was like, "Okay, what worked then?"
[00:08:11.970]You know, "And how can I apply that to what works now?"
[00:08:17.550]And, for lack of a better term, "What worked before this?"
[00:08:21.030]I'm talking to you from our office right now,
[00:08:23.730]where I spend, you know, three or four days a week here.
[00:08:27.870]And that's just the way it is now.
[00:08:30.210]I'm not in five days a week anymore.
[00:08:32.250]I don't know that I will be any time in the near future,
[00:08:37.230]because that fifth day is either spent on Capitol Hill,
[00:08:40.380]or out, you know, with folks in the community
[00:08:42.990]or sources who themselves aren't necessarily home
[00:08:46.260]or in their offices downtown or anywhere else.
[00:08:49.680]So I'm still getting used to that,
[00:08:50.790]and I think a lot of my colleagues
[00:08:51.930]are still getting used to that.
[00:08:52.920]But I gotta say,
[00:08:54.652]I am really grateful to be back in a newsroom,
[00:08:57.840]because there is still nothing
[00:09:00.870]quite like having the opportunity to just communicate
[00:09:04.230]with somebody who's sitting next to you
[00:09:05.520]with either just a glance, or a glare,
[00:09:07.980]or a couple of quick sentences.
[00:09:09.960]It's something you can just can't do over Zoom or Slack.
[00:09:14.190]But that flexibility,
[00:09:15.240]being able to handle both of those different worlds,
[00:09:17.520]I think, is something
[00:09:19.260]that not only we need to stay sharp on,
[00:09:21.387]but future generations of journalists
[00:09:22.980]are gonna have to master as well.
[00:09:25.684]I think some of those changes, as you allude,
[00:09:28.260]had already sort of begun before the pandemic hit.
[00:09:30.990]We noticed here in our newsroom
[00:09:33.360]in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications,
[00:09:35.520]that there were fewer and fewer people
[00:09:37.770]working in the newsroom, because as we already knew,
[00:09:40.410]that's not where the news happens.
[00:09:41.910]Right. It's happening out there.
[00:09:43.560]And the plethora of tools that we had available now
[00:09:46.620]to go cover those stories out in the wild
[00:09:49.410]made it more sensible for those reporting students
[00:09:52.530]to get out there, and see what was going on,
[00:09:55.140]and cover it out there.
[00:09:56.850]But certainly, the experiences that you talked about
[00:09:59.400]mirrored almost exactly what happened to us,
[00:10:01.740]because we went home for spring break in 2020
[00:10:05.220]and didn't come back for 18 months.
[00:10:07.530]Yeah.
[00:10:08.363]And we extended spring break by a week
[00:10:10.590]to try to get ourselves up and running
[00:10:12.090]to convert all of our courses to fully online.
[00:10:15.420]I'd never taught an online course in its entirety before.
[00:10:19.465]Wow.
[00:10:20.298]And we were scrambling, as well, to learn new tools,
[00:10:22.050]as were all of our students,
[00:10:23.220]and to try to salvage as much as we could of that semester,
[00:10:26.610]and then do a better job with the next semester
[00:10:28.560]when we had more of a chance to attack it properly.
[00:10:31.980]But I think the common thread I seem
[00:10:35.550]to get from a lot of folks
[00:10:36.960]is that even though it was uncomfortable and it was scary,
[00:10:40.050]that there were some positives that we learned
[00:10:42.570]about how to do work better and more efficiently
[00:10:45.480]and do it online.
[00:10:46.800]Do you sense that there are some things
[00:10:48.270]that are actually better about the way you do your job now
[00:10:51.240]that might not have happened had we not been forced
[00:10:53.640]into the pandemic setting?
[00:10:55.410]Yeah, I think so.
[00:10:56.760]And bear with me for a moment here as my AirPods die.
[00:10:59.820]Here's one, you know, reality of the digital world
[00:11:02.580]I'm gonna make it worth transition here.
[00:11:14.846]Sorry about that. Can you hear me okay?
[00:11:16.501]Absolutely.
[00:11:18.595]Can you hear me now? Can you hear me?
[00:11:21.840]Well, I'm having trouble hearing you,
[00:11:24.627]but let's... Okay.
[00:11:26.182]see if we can solve that.
[00:11:29.142]Hoping you can edit some of this out, right?
[00:11:30.780]Oh, yes.
[00:11:36.090]Bear with me just a moment here.
[00:11:37.410]No worries.
[00:11:55.770]Okay, quick retest here. 1, 2, 3.
[00:11:58.047]Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you.
[00:12:00.187]Okay. Excellent.
[00:12:01.020]So to recap, give ourselves a good editing point.
[00:12:03.360]Are there some things that you feel
[00:12:05.100]coming out of the pandemic,
[00:12:06.390]that actually aided your reporting techniques
[00:12:09.720]and the way that you do your job now
[00:12:11.190]that you might not have adapted had you not been forced to?
[00:12:15.360]Absolutely.
[00:12:16.680]For one thing, I learned how to be in four places at once.
[00:12:21.120]You know, you can monitor a hearing in the Senate
[00:12:24.180]while keeping an eye on a digital briefing.
[00:12:28.137]You know, you learn to challenge your attention span
[00:12:31.980]in ways you never thought possible, that's for sure.
[00:12:34.620]And one of the big opportunities
[00:12:36.780]that I found that is still really useful
[00:12:39.270]is the fact that, you know, really, you can collaborate
[00:12:42.540]with a team that could be based anywhere in the country,
[00:12:46.260]folks in California, New York, and in D.C.,
[00:12:48.690]on a story project, while at the same time,
[00:12:50.670]you're paying at least as much attention as possible
[00:12:53.580]to a briefing or a hearing or something like that,
[00:12:56.580]that may be happening simultaneously in another space.
[00:12:59.430]This was one thing that I could never do
[00:13:02.220]if I was stuck in a conference room somewhere or, you know,
[00:13:05.520]in a meeting with a source or something like that.
[00:13:07.740]Now there's a balance to this kind of thing, right?
[00:13:10.740]But even just some of the digital tools
[00:13:13.170]that, you know, we use a lot more on a daily basis,
[00:13:16.410]whether it's Otter, Zoom, or anything like this,
[00:13:19.620]it's, in my opinion, allowed us
[00:13:22.500]to become just a lot more productive, a lot more plugged in,
[00:13:26.670]and just a lot more capable of keeping an eye on things
[00:13:30.480]that are happening in other communities
[00:13:32.691]outside of the Beltway, outside of the East Coast,
[00:13:35.533]and just do so in a much more flexible manner
[00:13:38.280]than we could have before.
[00:13:40.410]So what I think I hear you saying
[00:13:41.790]is even though we are largely back
[00:13:43.350]to teaching in real time and face-to-face here,
[00:13:46.500]that there are some things we should continue to teach
[00:13:48.720]as though we are now in this 24/7 Zoom society
[00:13:52.560]and to make sure our students are adept
[00:13:54.210]at doing all of that as well.
[00:13:55.740]Yep, absolutely.
[00:13:57.900]You cover education along with other things at "Politico".
[00:14:00.781]What's the sort of sphere of stories
[00:14:03.540]that you normally get assigned to cover
[00:14:05.400]within that broad umbrella?
[00:14:07.650]It's changed a lot over the course of the pandemic.
[00:14:10.920]I think at the outset, when everything changed,
[00:14:16.080]one of our first and top priorities was understanding
[00:14:22.050]how schools were gonna be affected by this.
[00:14:23.670]And we knew it was gonna be lengthy.
[00:14:25.560]We knew it was gonna be disruptive.
[00:14:27.300]We had no idea about how lengthy
[00:14:29.190]or how disruptive it was going to be.
[00:14:31.140]And so for two years, so much of the conversation
[00:14:34.800]was consumed about the very things
[00:14:37.050]you were just talking about a moment ago.
[00:14:40.183]The drawbacks of online learning, for example,
[00:14:43.680]the opportunities contained within there.
[00:14:46.860]But in the context of a K through 12 schooling environment,
[00:14:51.000]what every parent and every student learned very quickly
[00:14:54.420]was that there are just some things
[00:14:56.100]that you can't do through a computer screen.
[00:14:58.620]And there are needs that students have,
[00:15:00.720]especially young students who are learning to read,
[00:15:03.090]who are learning to interact with each other socially,
[00:15:05.100]that just cannot be replaced by the digital realm,
[00:15:09.240]or can't be replicated in the digital realm.
[00:15:11.580]So, so much of our early coverage
[00:15:13.410]was trying to figure out the consequences of that,
[00:15:16.860]how schools were adapting to that,
[00:15:18.450]how they weren't adapting to that,
[00:15:20.220]trying to kind of quantify the sorts of intangible costs
[00:15:24.000]that were associated with that.
[00:15:25.830]And at the same time, a lot of what we were doing
[00:15:28.080]was trying to provide critical, up to the day,
[00:15:32.370]up to the moment intelligence
[00:15:33.840]about this brand new novel pathogen
[00:15:36.640]that nobody had ever encountered before.
[00:15:39.060]Nobody really knew how it was transmitted at the outset.
[00:15:42.540]Nobody really knew what to do to stop it,
[00:15:44.700]other than, you know, obviously very draconian
[00:15:47.100]and restrictive lockdown measures.
[00:15:51.442]That was a huge priority.
[00:15:53.250]And I gotta say that I have to credit,
[00:15:57.360]you know, my past experience in the "Tribune"
[00:15:59.700]for some of this stuff, too.
[00:16:01.397]Because, you know, it was there
[00:16:02.340]that I first started learning about how to report
[00:16:04.770]about public health and how I first started
[00:16:07.080]to learn reporting about infectious diseases,
[00:16:09.420]especially novel coronaviruses
[00:16:12.390]that had cropped up a little bit
[00:16:14.040]in the international community and sort of made their way
[00:16:16.770]to the United States in the years prior to the pandemic.
[00:16:20.730]But having just even that little bit of a foundation
[00:16:23.850]was immensely valuable, at least for me,
[00:16:26.070]because it helped me to be able
[00:16:27.510]to convey what are often very complex and difficult terms
[00:16:31.680]in straightforward, and hopefully, legible ways
[00:16:35.670]to an audience that was desperate for information.
[00:16:39.300]And you know, it wasn't just the K-12 context
[00:16:41.820]that we were working through, either.
[00:16:43.080]I mean, the disruption in the higher education community,
[00:16:45.240]as you know, Rick, was enormous and profound.
[00:16:48.150]And I can't tell you how many conversations
[00:16:50.610]I had with college presidents, deans,
[00:16:53.460]and other officials at the higher education level,
[00:16:56.340]particularly at smaller schools,
[00:16:58.470]who were really concerned as to whether or not
[00:17:00.840]they would be able to survive this crisis.
[00:17:03.120]Even better resourced institutions
[00:17:04.950]that spent tens of millions of dollars
[00:17:07.020]in an effort to do everything right,
[00:17:08.700]whether it was from testing, contact tracing, you know,
[00:17:12.630]isolated living spaces for infected residents,
[00:17:15.630]all of this stuff,
[00:17:16.920]even the best resourced schools in the country,
[00:17:18.960]some of the top institutions you could possibly think of,
[00:17:23.100]had real extraordinary challenges
[00:17:25.620]kind of implementing this stuff.
[00:17:26.820]And those that did, obviously, were not necessarily,
[00:17:32.430]not every other school around the country could replicate
[00:17:36.109]that kind of effort, if only from a resource perspective.
[00:17:39.600]So watching the sort of disparate impact
[00:17:42.180]in communities across the country
[00:17:43.560]as they tried to deal with this
[00:17:44.910]is something that still sticks with me today.
[00:17:47.700]And of course, you've got a federal government
[00:17:49.980]spread across two presidential administrations at the time
[00:17:53.040]who were really still trying
[00:17:54.570]to do everything they could to figure this out
[00:17:58.380]with the whole political dimension thrown into it.
[00:18:00.780]I mean, we didn't even get into that.
[00:18:04.380]That consumed a lot of our time and attention.
[00:18:08.370]And since then,
[00:18:09.960]it's transitioned into more about the recovery,
[00:18:14.310]what that looks like, how that gets done,
[00:18:16.740]whether it's getting done.
[00:18:19.020]But of course, on top of all of this,
[00:18:20.460]you have a highly politicized and partisan environment
[00:18:24.060]surrounding not just K-12,
[00:18:25.650]but also higher education in this country,
[00:18:28.380]that is gonna be incredibly informative
[00:18:30.990]not only for aspirants,
[00:18:32.970]for Republican aspirants for the White House in 2024,
[00:18:36.240]but no shortage of state and local races.
[00:18:39.210]We've already seen this throughout the midterm cycle.
[00:18:41.610]I think we're gonna see it play out again in 2024.
[00:18:44.520]And these are hugely consequential decision makers
[00:18:48.570]and offices that folks might not necessarily think about,
[00:18:52.860]with the exception of the White House,
[00:18:55.080]or your senator, and stuff like that.
[00:18:57.780]But these are oftentimes state and local officials
[00:19:01.260]who carry out really consequential decisions for families.
[00:19:05.070]And so many of those decisions now
[00:19:06.600]are being colored by a partisan environment
[00:19:10.950]that is really kind of unlike anything
[00:19:12.720]that we've seen in the education space,
[00:19:14.190]I think, really in modern history here.
[00:19:16.920]So that's really the thrust of our coverage now.
[00:19:21.990]But of course, you know, still there's a lot to do
[00:19:24.630]as far as lessons learned from the pandemic.
[00:19:26.730]And much like what we're discussing here,
[00:19:28.980]What do we carry forward?
[00:19:30.480]And what do we learn from?
[00:19:33.050]So you mentioned your mention of the briefings
[00:19:37.230]that you had in epidemiology, and in healthcare,
[00:19:40.080]and life sciences came back to be of great help.
[00:19:44.310]Unexpectedly, perhaps, as it might have been...
[00:19:46.149]Absolutely.
[00:19:47.148]is again, sort of a nice reminder to our students
[00:19:50.520]of why those general education courses
[00:19:52.440]that we make them take are very helpful.
[00:19:54.360]You never really know
[00:19:55.193]when you're gonna pull that biology class back up
[00:19:57.750]because you have to cover a story that relates to that.
[00:19:59.550]I'm sure when you took the job at "Politico",
[00:20:01.770]the idea of covering a pandemic wasn't the first thing
[00:20:04.170]on your, (chuckles) on your mind that you'd be covering.
[00:20:06.810]No. Not at all.
[00:20:09.117]Had you anticipated the amount of animosity
[00:20:11.460]that the pandemic was going to bring,
[00:20:13.197]and the amount of conflict that it was going to bring
[00:20:16.950]in terms of the whole having to wear masks,
[00:20:20.130]and having to stay home,
[00:20:21.420]and how this led into the discussions of homeschooling,
[00:20:25.440]and all the sorts of things that came with it?
[00:20:29.400]Not at the immediate outset.
[00:20:31.714]You know, when everybody was banging pots and pans
[00:20:33.750]on street corners and there was this sense
[00:20:36.360]of almost civic duty associated with it,
[00:20:40.320]there was a brief time where you thought to yourself,
[00:20:42.277]"Okay, if this thing doesn't stretch out
[00:20:45.150]over an interminable period, maybe there's, you know,
[00:20:47.520]there's a way to get through this."
[00:20:49.080]But by month six, it became abundantly clear, to me anyway,
[00:20:54.900]that that was just not gonna be the case.
[00:20:57.480]And then, it wasn't just the pandemic though, was it?
[00:21:00.120]I mean, the countries reckoning with race
[00:21:02.874]that we encountered during 2020,
[00:21:04.860]all the social upheaval that was thrown.
[00:21:08.100]Everything happened kind of all at once.
[00:21:12.000]And to me, that helped illustrate right away
[00:21:15.180]that, you know, the partisan divisions
[00:21:17.880]were not going to be healed, and that, if anything,
[00:21:20.730]it just exposed the fact that there was so much tension
[00:21:25.440]and weakness in the system, and fear and concern,
[00:21:29.730]and just plain insecurity out there.
[00:21:32.970]And I'm speaking not just from a economic perspective,
[00:21:36.150]but health wise.
[00:21:39.510]All of this had been curdling prior to the pandemic.
[00:21:42.570]It just took a world changing event
[00:21:45.210]to bring it to the surface,
[00:21:46.440]combined with a couple of other world changing effects
[00:21:48.480]to turn it into overdrive.
[00:21:51.240]So, you know, it really became,
[00:21:55.350]in the education space, when the debate at the federal level
[00:21:58.740]really turned to reopening schools in, you know, the middle
[00:22:02.970]of some of the ugliest surges of the pandemic,
[00:22:06.420]that was one example of how, you know, we kind of realized
[00:22:11.130]that we weren't really gonna go back.
[00:22:13.830]State laws and proposals for state laws
[00:22:16.620]that started to bubble up in the immediate aftermath,
[00:22:20.010]you know, after the immediate onset of the pandemic
[00:22:23.430]when it came to critical race theory
[00:22:26.580]and curricular decisions,
[00:22:28.170]that was a clear signal that we weren't gonna turn back.
[00:22:31.080]Certain election outcomes that happened
[00:22:33.870]after the immediate onset of the pandemic,
[00:22:36.210]made it clear that there was just.
[00:22:41.400]I don't know how to put it here,
[00:22:43.830]because I'm still processing all of it
[00:22:45.720]while I kind of report on it in real time.
[00:22:47.892]Aren't we all?
[00:22:49.073]But there is a, you know, there is a clear partisan division
[00:22:53.730]in this country that still has room to grow,
[00:22:57.840]depending on how things go.
[00:23:00.030]And to me, the pandemic was just kind of a catalyst
[00:23:02.430]for a lot of that, if that makes sense.
[00:23:07.500]And I think there are new constituencies
[00:23:12.180]who find themselves at ground zero on some of these things
[00:23:15.000]that might not have before.
[00:23:16.200]I think heading into the pandemic,
[00:23:18.390]at least the impression I have from,
[00:23:19.830]and I grew up in a family of teachers
[00:23:21.750]and have lots of relatives who do teach or have taught.
[00:23:25.830]And I think they were surprised to find themselves,
[00:23:29.730]this day-to-day rank and file educators,
[00:23:33.300]as having such targets on their backs
[00:23:35.520]because of the pandemic
[00:23:36.510]in terms of how they were dealing with kids,
[00:23:38.370]and classroom composure and disruptions,
[00:23:42.817]and now, as you mentioned, the curricular issues
[00:23:45.240]that have been brought into the discussion as well.
[00:23:48.570]That many of them, sort of right along the line
[00:23:51.270]with librarians, finally sort of find themselves as saying,
[00:23:54.446]"What did we do? (chuckles)
[00:23:55.890]How did we get in this situation?"
[00:23:58.860]Yeah, schools have always been political, right?
[00:24:02.160]Your local school board has always been a source
[00:24:05.760]of controversy over the years.
[00:24:07.500]That hasn't changed.
[00:24:09.870]The level of politicization is something else entirely.
[00:24:13.500]And I agree with you.
[00:24:16.350]I hear a lot of surprise from folks, even now,
[00:24:20.931]that are kind of marveling at how far things have have come.
[00:24:26.400]I still think there are people out in the space
[00:24:28.200]who are still coming to grips with that, but it's here.
[00:24:32.610]Yeah, so what do you make of the,
[00:24:34.800]in your reporting, of the calls by some members
[00:24:37.260]of the Congress right now to just do away
[00:24:39.780]with the Federal Department of Education entirely?
[00:24:42.780]It's not a new idea.
[00:24:44.820]This is something that's been around for some time.
[00:24:49.560]And I think, while there are still organizations
[00:24:53.970]and actors out there who fully advocate for this idea
[00:24:57.690]and have set out some pretty detailed roadmaps
[00:25:00.660]for how such a thing could work.
[00:25:06.060]One of the things that,
[00:25:07.260]when we discuss it kind of internally here,
[00:25:09.180]one of the things we always come back to is like,
[00:25:11.310]that would require an enormous act of Congress, (chuckles)
[00:25:15.810]and not only an enormous act of Congress,
[00:25:17.610]but clearly presidential approval.
[00:25:19.560]The scale of legislative and regulatory rulemaking
[00:25:24.480]that would be required to make all of this happen
[00:25:30.630]is big enough that it makes it hard
[00:25:33.000]to imagine how such a thing could happen
[00:25:35.340]in an era of a divided Congress
[00:25:38.010]and divided government in this country.
[00:25:41.400]So as a practical matter,
[00:25:43.680]I don't see that as something that's happening anytime soon.
[00:25:46.740]But as a philosophical matter,
[00:25:48.120]it's still absolutely something that's out there
[00:25:50.160]and has a lot of supporters.
[00:25:52.260]Particularly in this new, I don't say new,
[00:25:55.020]but this revitalized era of states rights and...
[00:25:57.838]Sure.
[00:25:58.671]the United States of America rather than the, you know,
[00:26:01.107]the national organization overseeing everything.
[00:26:04.950]Have any of these sort of hotbed issues
[00:26:08.520]that have been heightened because of the pandemic
[00:26:11.160]and other political issues, as you mentioned,
[00:26:13.710]has it made your job any more difficult as a reporter?
[00:26:16.530]Do you find doors generally open to you?
[00:26:18.810]Or are the fact that you also wear the tag of the media,
[00:26:21.960]which adds another level of skepticism
[00:26:23.760]to folks who tend to be skeptical
[00:26:26.220]of a lot of the institutions in our country,
[00:26:29.250]are they still eager to talk to you about these stories?
[00:26:33.390]You know, I'm blessed to work for an organization
[00:26:37.350]where, you know, when you call from, you know, my shop,
[00:26:42.030]people do tend to pick up the phone
[00:26:44.010]and do tend to want to talk.
[00:26:46.050]That's not a universal sentiment, though.
[00:26:48.990]And it's still, you know,
[00:26:50.640]for the students out there who might be listening to this,
[00:26:52.830]you know, it's more than just,
[00:26:55.410]you need to be more than just your organization.
[00:26:57.750]You still have to be able to talk to people.
[00:27:00.840]And you still have to understand how to gain their trust,
[00:27:03.750]how to interact with them honestly,
[00:27:06.210]how to see them as human beings and more than just a voice
[00:27:11.100]who's gonna supply quotes for X and Y story.
[00:27:15.480]I think this is, one of the critical things
[00:27:19.110]to come out of the pandemic for me,
[00:27:20.910]was the importance of, you know,
[00:27:23.190]if you can't be face-to-face with someone in a room
[00:27:25.410]and you're cold calling them from across the country,
[00:27:28.800]you need to be able to talk to them.
[00:27:32.620]And not just like an insurance salesman would
[00:27:34.800]or something like that, but actually, really talk to them.
[00:27:37.530]And most importantly, to listen to them.
[00:27:42.690]I found that, you know, it's not a hundred percent,
[00:27:45.420]but I have found that when you make an honest,
[00:27:47.280]concerted effort to do those things,
[00:27:49.530]even those difficult doors can still open
[00:27:52.440]for you sometimes, and often do.
[00:27:54.150]Again, not always.
[00:27:55.110]There are a lot of people
[00:27:55.943]who would rather have nothing to do with you.
[00:27:57.480]And I can understand that, especially in this environment.
[00:28:01.860]But now more than ever, it is imperative
[00:28:04.020]that we redouble our efforts to challenge our own thinking,
[00:28:09.390]to challenge our own conventions,
[00:28:10.890]to find people who can teach us things
[00:28:15.000]that we never would've otherwise considered,
[00:28:16.740]who can offer us new perspectives.
[00:28:19.800]It's never been more important than it is now.
[00:28:22.560]And I hope, I hope that, you know, if nothing else,
[00:28:28.830]we've gotten better at doing that
[00:28:30.300]and we can improve at that.
[00:28:32.940]And we really have no choice but to do it.
[00:28:38.214]So pleased to hear you put such emphasis on listening,
[00:28:40.530]because that's a great skill and one
[00:28:42.090]that I think too many young reporters who are so focused on,
[00:28:45.367]"I've got my list of questions I have to ask,
[00:28:47.700]and I'm also recording this.
[00:28:48.870]I gotta keep an eye on recording levels,
[00:28:50.760]and I've only got 10 minutes.
[00:28:52.380]I gotta keep an eye on the clock,"
[00:28:53.700]and miss a golden opportunity for a follow-up
[00:28:56.940]because they're distracted, or they're nervous,
[00:28:58.710]or whatever else it might be.
[00:29:00.780]I'm sure this is true with you.
[00:29:01.770]A number of times I've had a whole series
[00:29:03.690]of questions lined up and didn't get to any of them,
[00:29:05.760]because where the answers to the first questions led
[00:29:08.520]were far more interesting than anything I had pre-planned.
[00:29:11.190]So, but had I not listened, I would not have gone there.
[00:29:13.890]So I'm glad to hear you strengthen that cause.
[00:29:17.820]Let's talk about where all of this has been going.
[00:29:20.250]And we've been on that theme already.
[00:29:22.080]But pandemic aside, had the pandemic not even come along,
[00:29:27.090]what changes in the reporting and journalistic field
[00:29:32.220]had you seen throughout your journey
[00:29:34.740]from the time you left here in 2009
[00:29:36.840]up until when you joined "Politico"?
[00:29:38.400]How is the process of covering stories changing?
[00:29:42.300]Hmm.
[00:29:44.583]Boy, I'm still wrestling with the answer to that question,
[00:29:46.830]and I think I will be for a long time.
[00:29:48.600]But, one thing that I think of a lot is speed.
[00:29:55.680]And by that, I mean a couple of things.
[00:29:59.730]For one, I mean the speed
[00:30:02.430]of actually turning around content, right?
[00:30:05.340]It's not, (sighs)
[00:30:07.380]you're unfortunately not in an environment
[00:30:10.410]where you get to spend days and weeks on a story sometimes
[00:30:14.310]and then just kind of put it out when you can.
[00:30:16.260]Some people can do that, but really, you know,
[00:30:19.650]especially in this day and age,
[00:30:22.560]you have to be something of a short order cook.
[00:30:24.870]You have to have multiple dailies in the can.
[00:30:26.550]You have to be able to manage newsletters.
[00:30:28.080]You have to manage the podcast appearance that you need,
[00:30:30.780]the event that you're moderating.
[00:30:33.510]And not to mention the fact, you know,
[00:30:37.848]the evergreen stories, the enterprise,
[00:30:40.560]the things that you really wanna work on.
[00:30:42.540]And so you have to be more of a project manager,
[00:30:45.720]a personal project manager now
[00:30:47.610]than I think you really used to be even 10 years ago.
[00:30:52.290]There's also the speed of,
[00:30:56.280]and I'm trying to think of the best way to put this here.
[00:30:59.010]There's a speed in which you need
[00:31:00.180]to actually deliver your content, right?
[00:31:02.040]Like the act of writing the first three or four paragraphs
[00:31:05.400]of a story cannot be some kind of meandering exercise.
[00:31:08.970]Attention spans have not gotten any better
[00:31:11.730]over the course of recent history.
[00:31:13.650]And, you know, we're competing
[00:31:15.990]for maybe 10 or 12 seconds of a reader's time.
[00:31:20.370]From the moment they click on that headline
[00:31:22.110]to the moment they scroll through the first two
[00:31:23.970]or three paragraphs of a story,
[00:31:26.310]you have almost no time, in a practical sense,
[00:31:30.600]to capture their attention, to convey information,
[00:31:33.240]and to keep them hooked and reading.
[00:31:35.700]So, you know, that has a whole bunch of implications,
[00:31:39.270]not only for the tone in which you write a story,
[00:31:41.880]but the length of your paragraphs,
[00:31:43.380]the length of your sentences, how you order the information,
[00:31:47.160]how you organize the information.
[00:31:49.387]"Axios", and "Politico", and other organizations
[00:31:52.590]have kind of utterly reinvented
[00:31:55.500]what the traditional story format looks like.
[00:31:57.780]Because oftentimes what you'll see,
[00:31:59.820]especially for breaking pieces of information,
[00:32:02.010]is almost like a list of bullet points
[00:32:04.530]that kind of break down the most fundamental information,
[00:32:07.170]why it matters, what it means, what's next,
[00:32:09.840]in a way that can be digested rapidly.
[00:32:12.360]And it might be surprising
[00:32:14.160]to a lot of young folks coming up now
[00:32:16.230]that, you know, you're not necessarily,
[00:32:18.330]you're not gonna be spending your time
[00:32:19.530]writing two or 3000 word narratives.
[00:32:22.980]In fact, you need to be delivering on multiple platforms.
[00:32:26.340]But when it comes to the printed word,
[00:32:28.350]in a way that may look utterly unlike what you were learning
[00:32:32.610]in high school or in college.
[00:32:35.730]Had you anticipated the,
[00:32:37.620]since you mentioned the various platforms,
[00:32:39.900]had you anticipated and were you ready
[00:32:41.640]for the number of different forms of media platforms
[00:32:45.060]that you would be asked to create content for?
[00:32:50.970]Social media, in particular.
[00:32:52.290]Yeah, I mean, and social,
[00:32:55.050]I have, personally, a little bit
[00:32:56.880]of an ambivalent relationship with social media. (chuckles)
[00:32:59.850]You know, I use it as a reporting tool on a daily basis,
[00:33:03.120]but it's not something that I'm regularly interacting with.
[00:33:06.856]You know, I mean, my Twitter feed
[00:33:08.010]is a pretty barren expanse right now, admittedly. (chuckles)
[00:33:12.120]You know, but I do feel
[00:33:14.760]that I emerged with an understanding that like,
[00:33:18.757]"Okay, we need to be able to do more than just write."
[00:33:21.030]We need to be able to shoot video.
[00:33:23.670]We need to be able to capture audio.
[00:33:25.590]We need to be able to be presentable
[00:33:27.630]on both video and audio, depending on the circumstances.
[00:33:31.890]And we need to be able to do more
[00:33:35.820]than just be kind of a person huddled
[00:33:37.440]behind a computer at a desk.
[00:33:39.360]We need to be in the field,
[00:33:40.650]like we were talking about earlier.
[00:33:41.730]We need to be prepared to encounter all sorts
[00:33:44.850]of different physical environments,
[00:33:47.190]and social situations, and what have you.
[00:33:50.190]And you need to be prepared to actually physically,
[00:33:52.380]face-to-face interact with people while you do so.
[00:33:57.090]The story's in the field,
[00:33:58.110]and I knew that coming out of school, thankfully.
[00:34:01.740]But it's something
[00:34:02.573]that I'm still learning about every single day.
[00:34:04.830]Whether it's, you know, how to,
[00:34:08.040]how best to marshal a piece of content
[00:34:12.000]into a short video clip,
[00:34:13.320]or how best to digest it for a podcast audience,
[00:34:18.630]how best to present it to a very small
[00:34:21.240]but influential group of policymakers
[00:34:23.610]and their staffs and their officials.
[00:34:25.320]You know, there's just.
[00:34:26.970]You need to be adaptable more than anything else.
[00:34:29.370]And that's not turning around any,
[00:34:33.120]that's never gonna turn around.
[00:34:34.560]You need to be able to do more and more and more.
[00:34:37.823]And that's just the reality
[00:34:39.240]of the everyday pressure of the job now.
[00:34:41.670]What has been the biggest challenge for you
[00:34:43.680]in learning all of this new stuff and in diversifying
[00:34:47.550]and picking up the speed, as you've noted here?
[00:34:49.440]What have you struggled to master?
[00:34:54.960]The balance of doing everything, all the time, at once.
[00:35:01.099](chuckles)
[00:35:03.720]Personally, you know, I want to get better at it.
[00:35:08.400]And I've worked on this,
[00:35:09.900]and I don't know that I'm ever gonna master it.
[00:35:12.600]I don't think I will.
[00:35:13.500]But how do you be the best short order cook,
[00:35:17.040]to, you know, pivot back to something I mentioned earlier,
[00:35:19.380]imaginable in journalism, right?
[00:35:21.270]How do you keep that steady stream
[00:35:23.160]of insightful daily stories going out to your audience
[00:35:26.550]while still managing the longer,
[00:35:28.830]the medium and longer term enterprise
[00:35:32.130]that can really get somebody to sit down
[00:35:33.840]and look at the page and be like,
[00:35:34.717]"Oh, I'm learning something
[00:35:36.870]that I never thought about before, and learning about it
[00:35:38.880]in a completely new and insightful way."
[00:35:41.880]That day-to-day challenge,
[00:35:44.490]sometimes it just boils down to scheduling,
[00:35:46.350]other times it just boils down to getting control
[00:35:48.660]of your attention span and your checklist at work.
[00:35:52.050]But being able to get all of that
[00:35:55.740]and kind of maintain that flow state while doing it,
[00:35:58.590]that's something I'm aspiring to do.
[00:36:01.800]What do you think are the biggest forces
[00:36:03.600]that are driving all of these changes
[00:36:05.310]that we've seen in our field?
[00:36:06.420]Again, the pandemic not withstanding,
[00:36:08.160]because the forces of change were certainly present
[00:36:11.220]and exhibiting themselves before the pandemic hit.
[00:36:13.530]But what do you think is behind a lot of this?
[00:36:21.419]There are so many demands on our attention nowadays.
[00:36:23.820]And anyone, when it comes to information, I think sometimes,
[00:36:29.250]we maybe overestimate the value that we offer to people.
[00:36:33.990]You know, folks can go to any channel they want,
[00:36:36.690]whether it's on social media, YouTube, you know, talk radio,
[00:36:41.460]and get essentially a customized feed of information
[00:36:46.350]that backs up their own presuppositions or anything else,
[00:36:50.070]on demand, whether it's, you know,
[00:36:51.720]through cable television or anywhere else,
[00:36:54.060]or some combination of all these things.
[00:36:56.310]And so it's harder and harder in a field like that
[00:37:00.090]to stick out, and to grab attention,
[00:37:04.260]and to establish yourself as a trusted voice.
[00:37:09.840]I think the, you know,
[00:37:11.967]the hyperpartisan nature of the media environment,
[00:37:15.090]and I mean this for everybody here.
[00:37:17.190]Just that it has really contributed
[00:37:19.620]to the overall erosion in public trust in journalism
[00:37:22.230]that we see in some of these really sobering surveys
[00:37:24.780]that continuously come out.
[00:37:26.880]But Pew just had another one here a couple weeks ago
[00:37:30.420]that really has me worried because of the continued decline.
[00:37:36.000]Again, I think there are a lot of factors
[00:37:40.500]behind that overall decline
[00:37:41.910]that, you know, would probably take us an hour to summarize.
[00:37:44.580]But the fundamental reality behind that,
[00:37:49.290]to me, is that, (sighs)
[00:37:52.110]you know, we've got to find a way,
[00:37:54.750]we've got to find a way to regain the public's trust.
[00:38:00.240]And I'm sure, I'm not quite sure about how to do that.
[00:38:05.970]Because I know that myself, my colleagues,
[00:38:08.970]everybody I've worked with throughout my career is devoted,
[00:38:12.990]has been and is still devoted,
[00:38:14.899]to the principles of good journalism, right?
[00:38:16.920]To truth telling, to being a stickler for the facts,
[00:38:20.610]for getting it right,
[00:38:22.170]making sure you're talking to a diverse array of voices,
[00:38:25.320]checking your own, you know, presuppositions at the door,
[00:38:27.600]and being open to learn and listen and all of those things.
[00:38:31.500]I can't even count how many people I know
[00:38:33.657]and encounter on a day-to-day basis
[00:38:36.240]who are still devoted to those principles,
[00:38:39.510]but something isn't quite catching yet.
[00:38:41.994]And I don't know that it's getting any better,
[00:38:45.300]whether it's post COVID or, you know, post whatever else.
[00:38:49.440]And so, (sighs)
[00:38:52.140]that's honestly what kind of keeps me up at night still
[00:38:55.740]is thinking about how we solve that.
[00:38:59.550]Because again, you know, if everybody is just, you know.
[00:39:03.180]I'm getting off point here. I do that sometimes.
[00:39:06.720]But if everybody is just retreating
[00:39:08.310]to their respective silos,
[00:39:09.540]and we can't, you know, come together
[00:39:10.920]on at least a basic set of agreed upon facts,
[00:39:13.860]then, you know, this country and the world at large
[00:39:16.560]has a whole lot of issues in front of it here, so.
[00:39:20.580]I was just going to go there, had you not,
[00:39:22.890]which was the concept that all of us in our education
[00:39:26.400]were taught to stick the facts,
[00:39:29.040]and try to keep things as factual as possible,
[00:39:31.260]and try to present all the order of things as best we could.
[00:39:37.440]And then, hopefully, let readers, viewers,
[00:39:39.630]listeners decide for themselves
[00:39:42.000]what they thought were the right ones.
[00:39:44.430]But when we can't even agree on that set of facts,
[00:39:48.030]it's not just, "Okay, here this is.
[00:39:50.490]Here's my perspective on it. Here's your perspective."
[00:39:52.830]No, there are two different things now,
[00:39:55.200]and it seems to be so hard
[00:39:56.640]to get people to acknowledge things on.
[00:40:00.930]I'm sure you've seen some of the interviews, too,
[00:40:02.790]where people are just in denial of things,
[00:40:05.174]even when the facts are presented to them
[00:40:07.650]in a way that seems hard to ignore.
[00:40:10.560]That then, so many people will just say,
[00:40:12.247]"Well, I choose just not to believe that."
[00:40:15.330]That makes a journalist's job exponentially harder,
[00:40:17.580]doesn't it? Yeah, it does.
[00:40:19.230]And I have students ask me about this a lot,
[00:40:22.470]about, you know, whether journalists are just supposed
[00:40:26.130]to be these sorts of impartial robots
[00:40:29.190]that kind of go into it, say.
[00:40:30.120]You know, this is a super, super hot debate right now,
[00:40:32.730]the objectivity question, and I'm not here
[00:40:35.190]to make a ruling one way or the other on that debate.
[00:40:38.820]But what I try to tell folks is that I'm not asking you
[00:40:43.140]to check your identity at the door.
[00:40:45.030]I'm not asking you to erase everything
[00:40:48.030]you've been brought up with and know
[00:40:50.010]and your own understandings about things,
[00:40:51.780]your own culture, your own history, whatever it is.
[00:40:53.430]I'm not asking you to put that away.
[00:40:55.290]In fact, that makes you a better journalist.
[00:40:56.910]That's why we need people from all walks of life
[00:40:59.130]and all parts of society to get involved in this business.
[00:41:02.070]Because it just makes us better,
[00:41:04.470]and it makes the country better if we do it.
[00:41:07.140]But what I am asking them to do is think about the world
[00:41:10.800]outside those own perspectives, right?
[00:41:13.560]Bring yourself to your job.
[00:41:15.390]Make that an important part of how you see the world,
[00:41:20.550]how you identify stories, how you think about things.
[00:41:24.180]But don't assume that you have all the answers, right?
[00:41:26.370]Hubris is one of the worst things that we can subscribe to
[00:41:30.870]or adopt as part of our daily lives here, right?
[00:41:33.690]The world just does not work that way.
[00:41:37.110]And we can't forget
[00:41:37.980]about, you know, the importance of compromise,
[00:41:40.920]and like we were talking about earlier, listening.
[00:41:44.441]That's critical for our society to function,
[00:41:47.337]and journalists need to keep that in mind, too.
[00:41:49.680]In my classes with my students,
[00:41:51.210]I'm constantly challenging them
[00:41:52.650]to intentionally read, or listen to, or watch things
[00:41:56.940]that they know they're going to disagree with,
[00:41:59.640]at least they think they're going to disagree with.
[00:42:01.320]Sure.
[00:42:02.153]Because they do need to have
[00:42:03.420]that diversity of opinion and background.
[00:42:06.120]If for no other reason, to say,
[00:42:07.417]"Well, why does this person
[00:42:08.760]with whom I disagree feel that way?
[00:42:10.560]Maybe I should try to understand it from their perspective."
[00:42:13.800]But to also be open to the fact that you may find out
[00:42:16.500]that there's maybe something that you can't justify
[00:42:18.440]in your own thought and belief system as well.
[00:42:20.910]That, "Wow, if I hadn't watched this other video,
[00:42:23.667]and well, maybe I would've just gone on
[00:42:26.010]believing things in my own little echo chamber
[00:42:28.800]because I didn't ever force myself to get outside that,"
[00:42:31.400]or in your parlance, "to get outside the Beltway."
[00:42:34.500]Which I know has been a lot of the criticism
[00:42:36.390]of the coverage of at least the 2020 election,
[00:42:38.640]was that folks that were out in the Midwest
[00:42:41.400]and following all the different campaigns
[00:42:43.170]were not nearly as surprised at the outcome
[00:42:45.720]as some of the folks who were only back in the Beltway area.
[00:42:48.780]So. Right.
[00:42:50.670]I'm glad you're saying that to students,
[00:42:52.350]'cause we're trying to do the same thing, as well.
[00:42:53.850]To say that first of all to your point about,
[00:42:56.647]"Don't check your identity at the door."
[00:42:58.290]That is what makes you you
[00:42:59.640]and what makes you a curious person,
[00:43:01.980]but it should not also preclude you from being willing
[00:43:04.800]to look at the viewpoints of other people,
[00:43:06.810]and at least give them a fair shake in your reporting.
[00:43:10.140]And I know that's tough and we deal with a lot of students
[00:43:13.860]who come in with presuppositions
[00:43:16.050]from where they went to school,
[00:43:17.880]to their family views, or whatever.
[00:43:19.560]And it's a little scary, and perhaps, a little intimidating
[00:43:23.220]for them to think critically
[00:43:25.980]about what they know and what they don't know,
[00:43:28.320]and be willing to at least listen to some other viewpoints.
[00:43:32.160]But that's partly what going to school is about,
[00:43:34.920]is to challenge yourself and look at other viewpoints.
[00:43:37.350]And hopefully, that's the best way to arrive at your own.
[00:43:41.190]What kinds of ethical challenges do you see in your career
[00:43:45.287]and in your field moving forward?
[00:43:47.130]Since I teach our ethics course every other semester,
[00:43:50.460]I'm always curious to ask this one of folks.
[00:43:52.410]What are some of the ethical conundrums or challenges
[00:43:55.350]that you've found yourself looking square in the eyes at?
[00:43:58.500]Hmm.
[00:43:59.940]I think a lot of the basic ones that you find
[00:44:02.220]in your Journalism 101 course are still out there
[00:44:05.370]and are still gonna be a factor.
[00:44:09.960]But one thing I'm thinking about now
[00:44:11.610]is this new sort of dawning age
[00:44:14.310]of artificial intelligence that we're facing right now,
[00:44:16.500]and just the sort of innumerable quandaries
[00:44:19.830]that that's going to bring up.
[00:44:22.290]Not only, you know, there's tremendous opportunity there.
[00:44:25.230]Don't get me wrong.
[00:44:26.063]And I think there's much, much work
[00:44:28.560]that we can do to equip young journalists,
[00:44:31.530]and mid-career and veteran journalists,
[00:44:33.420]with some of the tools that are out there.
[00:44:36.000]But at the same time, you know,
[00:44:39.060]we need to grapple with what all this means
[00:44:41.310]when we're using certain kinds of programs or software
[00:44:43.440]to actually generate content, edit content, shape content,
[00:44:47.820]when we're automating these sorts of decisions in a way.
[00:44:50.790]Again, these are, some of these decisions
[00:44:52.830]are a little bit further down the road,
[00:44:54.270]but not that far from where I'm sitting.
[00:44:57.750]So that's been a big point of concern for me.
[00:45:00.540]You know, how do we set standards that are workable,
[00:45:03.720]that allow us to take advantage
[00:45:05.070]of some of this new technology,
[00:45:06.180]but still allow us to adhere
[00:45:08.160]to, you know, the fundamental principles of journalism,
[00:45:11.699]fact checking, and everything else
[00:45:13.439]that help, you know, you know,
[00:45:15.420]drive and inspire us every day?
[00:45:17.550]So that's one category that I'm really concerned about.
[00:45:23.730]But I think, kinda and this sort of goes back to the point
[00:45:29.340]we were just talking about here.
[00:45:32.730]One thing that we need to keep in mind
[00:45:35.430]is whether we're incorporating a diverse array of voices
[00:45:39.320]into our reporting.
[00:45:41.580]And I don't just mean from an ethnic perspective,
[00:45:44.820]you know, obviously, or a gender perspective.
[00:45:47.010]Those two are, obviously, very important.
[00:45:48.660]You know, the more diverse our source base is,
[00:45:51.060]the more diverse our knowledge base is.
[00:45:54.120]But I'm talking from a perspective approach, right?
[00:45:57.990]And I'm talking about,
[00:46:03.023]finding ways to ensure that young reporters understand
[00:46:06.750]that that's part of the job, too.
[00:46:08.160]And that is, in a certain sense,
[00:46:09.840]kind of an ethical obligation.
[00:46:12.270]Not necessarily for the express purpose
[00:46:14.430]of platforming something or to, you know.
[00:46:17.790]We're not trying to go down that sort of a road here.
[00:46:20.700]But we do want to make sure
[00:46:22.080]that we instill this sort of belief
[00:46:24.270]that, you know, incorporating a broad range of views
[00:46:29.340]and talking to a whole range of people
[00:46:31.080]is, in a way, kind of an ethical obligation, right?
[00:46:35.190]Because if we're sort of sticking, again,
[00:46:37.049]to the same narrow pool, we're not doing our jobs properly,
[00:46:41.761]if nothing else.
[00:46:43.620]I hope that makes sense... Absolutely and...
[00:46:45.210]but it's something I'm still thinking about.
[00:46:47.160]Completely agree that the more voices the better
[00:46:50.910]from every ethnic
[00:46:53.100]and also ideological standpoint you can think of.
[00:46:57.240]That's part and parcel of doing your due diligence
[00:47:00.330]and being a good reporter.
[00:47:01.800]I trust you probably saw this story
[00:47:03.510]from earlier this week about the several AI gurus
[00:47:06.420]that issued their concern... You bet I did.
[00:47:08.100]about AI possibly bringing about the end
[00:47:10.170]of all mankind as we know it. Yeah, I did.
[00:47:12.065]That was a bit dramatic,
[00:47:13.200]but it made you kind of clear your sinuses a bit on that.
[00:47:16.800]Yeah, it did.
[00:47:17.633]And you know, I think it was last year.
[00:47:22.980]It was in 20, maybe middle of '21, early '22,
[00:47:28.470]I was talking to a group of students
[00:47:30.240]about this funny piece of software
[00:47:31.800]that could basically spit out Harry Potter fan fiction
[00:47:35.100]on command.
[00:47:35.933]And, "What was this interesting thing called GPT-3?
[00:47:39.090]And what would it mean for not only our jobs,
[00:47:42.150]but just the broader economy?"
[00:47:43.770]You know, this big kind of like bloviating speech
[00:47:46.140]that I gave to a group of students about this thing.
[00:47:48.720]And look at where we are now,
[00:47:49.920]you know, less than a year later.
[00:47:53.310]There's a lot of hype to this, you know.
[00:47:54.870]There's a lot of, you know, I have no doubt
[00:47:59.250]that these technologies will be transformative.
[00:48:02.040]The degree to which they are is kind of up to us
[00:48:06.510]and will be decided by regulators
[00:48:08.730]if they choose to take it up, no doubt.
[00:48:11.760]At the same time, you know, there are also limits,
[00:48:14.250]clear limits of this technology, right?
[00:48:17.460]But one of the things,
[00:48:18.660]I choose to take the perspective that like,
[00:48:24.607]"Is this potentially an existential threat
[00:48:27.420]for all sorts of industries and people and things?"
[00:48:29.640]Yeah, you bet it could be if it's not managed properly.
[00:48:32.910]At the same time though,
[00:48:33.990]I do think there is an opportunity here unlike any other
[00:48:36.900]to make us.
[00:48:37.980]You know, the secret sauce to growth is productivity.
[00:48:40.560]And these tools can potentially help us
[00:48:44.040]if they're managed properly,
[00:48:45.420]if they're developed responsibly.
[00:48:47.790]I have to emphasize that.
[00:48:50.603]And if they're used in a way,
[00:48:52.170]like I said earlier, that kind of comports
[00:48:53.910]to the same, you know, original values base
[00:48:56.580]that we have as journalists here.
[00:48:58.424]Not to weaponize these things, but to make them useful.
[00:49:04.140]And to make them more useful, not only for ourselves
[00:49:06.210]as we try to turn out more and more content every day,
[00:49:08.550]but also for the people who rely on us for information.
[00:49:11.190]We can find new ways to present it.
[00:49:13.050]And you know, new ways of being insightful and provocative
[00:49:17.550]and all the things that good journalists are.
[00:49:20.220]If the hallmark of all of the various codes of ethics
[00:49:23.010]to which we claim we adhere is to first of all try
[00:49:27.330]to find the truth and be honest in all things we do,
[00:49:32.070]how much of a challenge does this present to you
[00:49:34.620]in terms of sifting out what's factual
[00:49:36.930]from what looks awfully factual,
[00:49:39.330]but I just can't quite be sure.
[00:49:41.370]Right. This is another thing I'm thinking about.
[00:49:45.000]Like, we have to equip students
[00:49:47.100]to not only be able to wield these tools,
[00:49:49.230]but to be able to decipher them, right?
[00:49:52.230]This sort of era of deep fake video that's coming out
[00:49:56.010]and really starting to grow in prominence here,
[00:50:00.180]is gonna be much more difficult
[00:50:02.670]to kind of, you know, forensically unpack.
[00:50:06.600]And part of the truth seeking process
[00:50:08.640]is gonna be determining, you know, what's written by a bot.
[00:50:12.720]You know, what sort of, you know, pressure campaign
[00:50:15.150]has been, you know, is just some sort of astroturfing bid
[00:50:18.570]that's been aided by, you know, AI tools or whatever else.
[00:50:21.420]Is this video from a public official in some other country,
[00:50:24.930]where he or she says some really strange and wacky things?
[00:50:27.720]Is this real or not?
[00:50:29.430]We have to be able to be,
[00:50:32.340]we need to be more adept at finding out how to unpack
[00:50:36.090]that stuff, how to forensically investigate it,
[00:50:38.580]and in some cases, really operate with a level of restraint
[00:50:42.720]that we might not otherwise be accustomed to, right?
[00:50:44.880]That the moment that something slides into your inbox,
[00:50:48.510]you need to take, if nothing else,
[00:50:50.610]like two or three extra beats
[00:50:52.380]to really think about this information,
[00:50:55.110]whether it's legit or not.
[00:50:56.580]Go through a couple of extra steps
[00:50:58.170]to try to confirm its veracity before blasting it out
[00:51:00.589]in either a tweet or a hastily written breaking news article
[00:51:04.710]for a major news website.
[00:51:07.650]Again, the practical steps of what this look like,
[00:51:10.230]you know, we've gotta figure that out and soon.
[00:51:13.020]But I do think it's very important
[00:51:16.170]that we equip not only young journalists,
[00:51:18.780]but again, the mid-career folks and the veterans
[00:51:21.150]with ways to figure this kind of thing out.
[00:51:24.660]Yeah, asking a reporter to pump the brakes a little bit
[00:51:27.360]in a newsroom that's always saying,
[00:51:29.077]"Deadlines. Let's be first." Right.
[00:51:30.915]That's, well that's a tough one.
[00:51:33.210]It's not easy. It's not easy.
[00:51:34.920]A great quote about, "I'd rather be accurate than first,"
[00:51:37.080]comes to mind. (Juan chuckling)
[00:51:38.601]But that's not always the case,
[00:51:40.800]depending on who you work for.
[00:51:42.240]So given all the things we've talked about,
[00:51:43.770]what are some of the skills or traits
[00:51:46.230]that you feel are really beneficial to employees
[00:51:49.830]coming into your career field now,
[00:51:53.340]coming out of school and down the road?
[00:51:55.020]What do you tell young folks who aspire to do what you do?
[00:52:00.870]There's a whole lot of technical skills that you can have
[00:52:03.720]that would really make you useful to newsrooms anywhere.
[00:52:07.590]I don't want to minimize the importance of those at all.
[00:52:10.890]And they are going to continue to be important.
[00:52:13.020]You know, staying adept with technology is crucial here.
[00:52:16.080]However, at the same time, the fundamental practices
[00:52:20.610]of blocking and tackling and reporting,
[00:52:23.305]understanding the importance
[00:52:24.930]of how to get out on the street,
[00:52:27.150]how to go to your local government,
[00:52:29.550]whichever, you know, whatever entity it might be,
[00:52:31.410]whether it's a city council, a school board,
[00:52:33.540]a zoning board of appeals in a small town somewhere.
[00:52:36.600]And understanding the mechanics
[00:52:38.220]of how local government works,
[00:52:40.350]how bureaucratic process works,
[00:52:43.230]and, you know, understanding how to just,
[00:52:47.936]really, this sounds crazy, but just talk to people.
[00:52:51.570]Having those sorts of soft human skills are more important
[00:52:55.980]than they've ever been now, I think.
[00:52:57.540]Because, you know, you are the face of your organization
[00:53:00.750]no matter where you go on the street.
[00:53:02.070]And you need to be prepared to represent it as such
[00:53:04.384]at every single point of your day,
[00:53:07.080]you know, not just when you're on the clock,
[00:53:09.540]But, you know, going back
[00:53:10.980]to the sort of bureaucratic understanding thing, you know,
[00:53:14.190]I hear from a lot of young reporters
[00:53:15.540]who have justified aspirations
[00:53:17.130]of being foreign correspondents, opinion columnists,
[00:53:19.740]big time national political reporters.
[00:53:22.020]And the thing I always remind them of is that those folks
[00:53:25.470]who you look up to all came from somewhere.
[00:53:27.540]And more often than not,
[00:53:28.680]they started covering a local school board,
[00:53:30.750]started covering a city council.
[00:53:32.160]They started covering a police department in a city
[00:53:34.860]or a town that might not seem that important.
[00:53:37.899]But you better believe that the stories
[00:53:40.500]that come out of those environments,
[00:53:42.870]the stories that come out of being able to talk
[00:53:44.820]to a city council member on the sidebar of a meeting,
[00:53:48.840]the stories that come from being able to read
[00:53:51.960]and parse a technical document
[00:53:53.670]about, you know, a neighborhood development
[00:53:57.000]or, you know, a grant program or something like that,
[00:54:00.630]those are insanely important stories to local communities
[00:54:06.390]that matter more than, you know, some national headline
[00:54:09.240]about a presidential race, you know,
[00:54:10.874]as far as the person living in said city is concerned.
[00:54:14.910]So those fundamentals haven't changed, right?
[00:54:22.050]The importance, and I would add to that,
[00:54:24.300]it's critically important
[00:54:25.650]that you just get out of the journalism school.
[00:54:29.430]And let me explain that.
[00:54:30.870]You know, you're devoted to your studies
[00:54:33.450]because you're learning everything there.
[00:54:35.280]I'm not saying that you don't do that,
[00:54:37.500]but learning something like political science, economics,
[00:54:40.830]sociology, philosophy, history, statistics.
[00:54:47.070]These are skills that will make you not just a better human,
[00:54:51.360]but better journalist.
[00:54:52.830]And the more of a broader understanding
[00:54:56.130]that you can afford to give yourself
[00:54:58.350]when, you know, you're at that critical stage
[00:55:00.570]of your growth as a young person and as an adult,
[00:55:05.820]it's just gonna be better.
[00:55:07.080]Your work is gonna be better.
[00:55:10.170]I think the thing I'm probably proudest of
[00:55:12.570]of my not exactly sterling academic career
[00:55:15.300]was the fact that I did a double major and a double minor.
[00:55:18.210]Because that just gave me a broader perspective
[00:55:21.300]on so many things
[00:55:22.133]that I still bring to my work every single day.
[00:55:25.110]Between that, learning how to work the street,
[00:55:27.060]and being a stickler for the facts, getting it right,
[00:55:30.000]and, you know, the bread and butter basics
[00:55:32.700]of being a reporter, you know,
[00:55:35.160]that stuff still matters and you can't ignore that.
[00:55:38.730]You'll be pleased to know
[00:55:39.660]that your college still encourages double majoring
[00:55:43.020]and still requires at least one minor.
[00:55:44.970]You bet.
[00:55:45.855]So we're encouraging folks to get out there
[00:55:46.800]and do more of what you were just talking about.
[00:55:49.393]You bet.
[00:55:50.226]And our data faculty members will be thrilled
[00:55:53.640]to hear you talk about the number of intriguing stories
[00:55:56.460]you can parse out of a spreadsheet
[00:55:58.039]by looking at that and going,
[00:55:59.977]"Those numbers don't work," (chuckles) and coming up with...
[00:56:02.066]You just gotta know where to look.
[00:56:03.338]You just gotta know where to look.
[00:56:04.410]Absolutely. So what's in your future?
[00:56:06.450]What's next for you?
[00:56:07.830]You feel good about where you are right now?
[00:56:10.140]There's enough to keep you engaged in this
[00:56:12.330]for quite some time, or is there something
[00:56:14.520]that you're still shooting for down the road?
[00:56:18.030]Boy, that's a big question. (laughs)
[00:56:22.230]You know, I'm so fortunate to be where I am right now.
[00:56:29.520]It's a tough business out there.
[00:56:31.980]I'm not gonna lie to anybody listening to this.
[00:56:34.470]It's not easy, and to get here is a privilege.
[00:56:39.210]To get to the "Tribune" was a privilege.
[00:56:41.190]To get to the "Omaha World Herald" was a privilege.
[00:56:42.990]It really was.
[00:56:46.260]I really feel that each of those experiences have been like,
[00:56:49.920]you know, every step that I took was kind of along a path,
[00:56:53.250]I guess you could say, towards, you know,
[00:56:54.900]whether it's national reporting or something else.
[00:56:57.180]But it wasn't necessarily something
[00:56:58.740]that I had planned out, you know?
[00:57:00.960]I didn't, you know, when I,
[00:57:03.600]I wasn't expecting to leave the "World Herald" when I did.
[00:57:05.757]And I wasn't expecting
[00:57:06.810]to leave the "Tribune" when I did, either.
[00:57:09.120]So I, you know,
[00:57:10.980]when it comes to like what my future plans are,
[00:57:12.870]it's really hard to say,
[00:57:14.280]because there are a lot of other factors
[00:57:15.870]outside of my control that will influence
[00:57:18.180]where I am or where I'm not.
[00:57:20.310]But I'm lucky to say, and I'm blessed to say,
[00:57:22.800]that this is a good news organization
[00:57:25.620]with a lot of growth potential,
[00:57:26.700]with a lot of really, really smart people
[00:57:29.250]and really hardworking people operating inside of it.
[00:57:33.300]And so there's not much more I could ask for,
[00:57:36.420]to be honest with you.
[00:57:37.800]And your particular beat has a seemingly endless number
[00:57:40.410]of interesting stories to tease out as well.
[00:57:42.960]So I don't think you're gonna run dry
[00:57:44.490]on stuff to talk about anytime soon.
[00:57:46.380]Never a dull moment, never.
[00:57:48.450]Covering those local school board meetings
[00:57:50.250]is a lot more exciting than it might have been 10
[00:57:51.850]or 15 years ago, so. (Juan laughing)
[00:57:52.770]That's exactly right. Exactly right.
[00:57:54.810]Well, I think that the answer to the future,
[00:57:57.390]in many cases, goes back to that concept of listening.
[00:57:59.880]Because if you're listening along the line,
[00:58:02.580]you may come up with something
[00:58:03.810]that, perhaps even as a career,
[00:58:05.580]you hadn't even thought about before.
[00:58:07.020]I know I'm certainly not doing now
[00:58:08.220]what I thought I'd be doing when I was in college.
[00:58:10.230]But I listened along the way and thought,
[00:58:12.457]"Oh, that sounds intriguing."
[00:58:13.920]And so you never know where life may take you.
[00:58:15.750]So we'll look forward to following where it takes you,
[00:58:18.450]and I appreciate your time in being able to visit
[00:58:20.880]with us today about past, present, and future.
[00:58:23.885]Thanks for your patience with my rambling.
[00:58:25.504]Really appreciate it. (Rick chuckling)
[00:58:27.180]Far from it. It was fascinating.
[00:58:28.530]I appreciate it very much.
[00:58:30.240]Our guest today on "Campus Voices", Juan Perez, Jr.,
[00:58:32.760]the education reporter for "Politico",
[00:58:35.400]talking about the futures of all of our industries.
[00:58:38.250]I'm Rick Alloway. This has been "Campus Voices".
[00:58:40.530]And as always, I thank you for your time.

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Juan Perez, Jr.

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