Dionne Searcey

Rick Alloway Author

07/06/2023 Added

32 Plays

Description

Dionne Searcey won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting as part of a team for The New York Times. She is the author of the book "In Pursuit of Disobedient Women" and formerly worked as a U.S. politics reporter and the West Africa bureau chief covering stories in 25 countries in West and Central Africa. She is a 1993 graduate of the UNL College of Journalism & Mass Communications where she majored in News/Editorial Journalism. She spoke with Campus Voices as part of a series on the future of the media and communications industries.

Searchable Transcript

Search:

[00:00:02.280]Welcome to "Campus Voices" I'm Rick Alloway,
[00:00:04.830]and as always, I thank you for your time.
[00:00:06.900]Our guest today on "Campus Voices" as part of the series
[00:00:09.810]we are doing on futures of the mass media industry
[00:00:14.370]is Dionne Searcey, who was a 2020 Pulitzer Prize winner
[00:00:17.880]for international reporting as part of the team
[00:00:21.030]for The New York Times for which she writes.
[00:00:23.790]She's also the author of book called,
[00:00:25.357]"In Pursuit of Disobedient Women"
[00:00:28.320]and formerly worked as the US Politics Reporter
[00:00:30.960]and the West Africa Bureau Chief for The Times
[00:00:33.690]covering among other things, social, political,
[00:00:36.390]economic issues for a number of countries
[00:00:39.360]in West and Central Africa with the focus
[00:00:42.060]on Nigeria's war against Boko Haram.
[00:00:45.030]She joined The Times in 2014 as an economics writer,
[00:00:48.750]writing for a series of stories about
[00:00:50.370]the changing middle class in America.
[00:00:52.890]She also worked for The Wall Street Journal
[00:00:55.500]where she was an investigative reporter
[00:00:57.390]covering national legal affairs and the telecom industry.
[00:01:01.380]Also has worked for Newsday,
[00:01:03.120]the State House and education beats for The Seattle Times,
[00:01:07.080]covered crime and criminal courts for the Chicago Tribune
[00:01:10.470]and the News City Bureau of Chicago.
[00:01:12.870]She is a native of Wymore, Nebraska
[00:01:15.750]and a proud 1993 graduate of the
[00:01:18.450]College of Journalism and Mass Communications here at UNL
[00:01:21.900]where she majored in what we at that time called
[00:01:24.090]News editorial, which has now changed this name officially,
[00:01:27.600]I guess, to journalism.
[00:01:28.830]But you were a proud news ed and we're delighted to have you
[00:01:31.710]join us for this series, Dionne, thank you for your time.
[00:01:34.320]Thanks so much for having me.
[00:01:36.600]Describe if you would just to sort of set up
[00:01:38.880]before we get to the future part of things,
[00:01:40.440]what it was that attracted you to the journalism side
[00:01:44.130]of the educational ledger when you came
[00:01:46.470]to the university around 1990 or so?
[00:01:50.010]Well, I think when I came to the university
[00:01:54.510]I got advice from my brother who's a photojournalist
[00:01:57.330]and he said, whatever you do, work at the campus newspaper.
[00:02:00.090]And I thought it was pretty fun working
[00:02:03.690]at The Daily Nebraskan and I figured if I liked it
[00:02:06.510]I might as well just join the journalism program
[00:02:08.850]and major in journalism.
[00:02:10.020]So it was really based on the advice of my brother
[00:02:13.530]that I got into it.
[00:02:15.720]I think you owe him one for making that excellent
[00:02:19.020]suggestion that's led to a whole career
[00:02:20.850]following that advice.
[00:02:22.440]What do you remember about your time
[00:02:25.468]in the college of journalism?
[00:02:26.670]What still resonates with you about your years here?
[00:02:30.000]Well, I think I remember just how much fun it was
[00:02:33.210]really I mean, that's the best thing about journalism
[00:02:36.030]it's just a ton of fun.
[00:02:37.470]I mean, you can tackle serious issues
[00:02:39.630]and really world changing things,
[00:02:43.440]but it's also really fun to get to meet
[00:02:47.070]all sorts of different kinds of people
[00:02:51.420]and write and learn about new things.
[00:02:53.970]But at the college, the biggest part of fun
[00:02:56.700]were the professors that I had.
[00:02:58.020]I worked with Dick Streckfus and Bud Pegal
[00:03:01.320]who are now both gone.
[00:03:02.520]But they were really influential in I think
[00:03:05.310]showing all of us just how much fun the profession could be
[00:03:08.340]and not taking yourself too seriously
[00:03:11.400]but learning from your mistakes
[00:03:12.990]and taking those very seriously
[00:03:15.150]and showing us how to pick ourselves up
[00:03:16.860]and kind of dust off and move on.
[00:03:19.620]And I really love that, I loved learning from them.
[00:03:23.370]Did you have the class with Dick and Bud
[00:03:25.380]where they talked about the Paul Revere lead?
[00:03:28.349]Do you remember that from your class?
[00:03:29.652]I do remember that.
[00:03:30.803]I mean, they taught me how to write.
[00:03:32.970]Isn't that interesting how those memories stay with you
[00:03:34.860]even though decades later so I think it worked
[00:03:37.400]in your case clearly.
[00:03:38.880]But you added as you mentioned,
[00:03:39.793]a great experience with The Daily Nebraskan,
[00:03:41.550]what was that like?
[00:03:43.110]Well, I worked in all kinds of different positions there.
[00:03:46.560]I was never in the editor in chief
[00:03:48.600]but I was a copy editor,
[00:03:51.360]I edited one of the features sections.
[00:03:54.990]I was a night news editor,
[00:03:57.810]had the stress of like having to get the newspaper
[00:04:01.500]to the printer back in the day
[00:04:03.120]and driving it across over to I think
[00:04:05.460]we went somewhere near East Campus to get it printed
[00:04:07.680]and always we'd have these nightmares that you wake up
[00:04:10.800]the next morning and it's still in the back of your car.
[00:04:13.620]But fortunately that never happened but I loved it.
[00:04:16.980]I think my favorite job there was my last job
[00:04:19.050]which was senior reporter and that really showed me
[00:04:24.480]like a career path, I guess, really.
[00:04:26.310]And the journalism school was also very, very good
[00:04:29.220]about placing us in internships,
[00:04:31.290]and that was also really essential for me
[00:04:33.960]is getting to work in a real newsroom and helping us
[00:04:38.730]with that pathway.
[00:04:41.190]Now as you mentioned earlier have worked through
[00:04:43.560]a variety of stellar news organizations in your life,
[00:04:48.450]but I wanna focus a little bit on your time in West Africa.
[00:04:51.090]I too have had a chance to spend some time there teaching
[00:04:53.670]in Eastern Africa in the University of Addis Ababa
[00:04:56.490]several years ago.
[00:04:57.630]Taught our intro class there and I have told anybody
[00:05:00.960]that's ever been willing to listen to me
[00:05:02.520]that being in Africa as a life-changing event.
[00:05:04.980]You spent quite a bit of time in West and Central Africa.
[00:05:07.710]What was it that led to that posting there?
[00:05:10.890]Well, mostly it was just the idea of working overseas.
[00:05:15.090]And again, there was an editor here at The Times
[00:05:18.600]who I heard speak at Pulitzer Award ceremony
[00:05:22.740]who just was so enthusiastic.
[00:05:25.920]I had been at The Times about a year and just heard him
[00:05:28.440]and the way he talked about the coverage
[00:05:30.360]and how he viewed our role, I guess, The New York Times role
[00:05:37.380]in African coverage.
[00:05:39.000]And I was really swayed and I just thought to myself,
[00:05:41.730]I really wanna work for him.
[00:05:42.900]And so that was one thing that I pursued pretty directly
[00:05:47.370]as far as West Africa is concerned.
[00:05:50.520]I also was a double major in French
[00:05:52.620]at the University of Nebraska.
[00:05:54.150]So I had that background to help me out a little bit
[00:05:58.320]with that position because most of the countries
[00:06:01.650]I was covering were francophone.
[00:06:03.660]So there was even a professor in the French department
[00:06:07.170]who ended up being a real help to me on some stories
[00:06:10.650]that I was working on in the Democratic Republic of Congo
[00:06:13.410]of all things so just recently.
[00:06:16.170]So I think that being in the role of a foreign correspondent
[00:06:23.220]was just something I was really intrigued by.
[00:06:25.890]I'd done a lot of beats and really wanted to try it
[00:06:28.710]and it was great, I loved it.
[00:06:31.950]You spent a good amount of that time
[00:06:34.260]covering Nigeria's war against the Boko Haram movement.
[00:06:39.240]For those folks that may seem in the distant past to them,
[00:06:42.480]remind some of our listeners what the genesis was
[00:06:45.870]of that conflict.
[00:06:48.210]Sure, that started out like a lot of conflicts happened,
[00:06:51.480]it's just kind of a war on inequality
[00:06:54.253]and government corruption which we see time and again
[00:06:57.330]all over the world.
[00:06:58.170]And it involved a band of Islamist extremist who started out
[00:07:02.940]just being pretty unhappy about the money that they saw
[00:07:07.740]stolen by corrupt government officials
[00:07:10.650]and escalated into violence.
[00:07:12.810]But you might know a little bit about that conflict
[00:07:16.470]based on these set of school girls called the Chibok girls.
[00:07:21.540]Michelle Obama was pretty influential in I guess,
[00:07:26.640]one of the first big hashtag, kind of online campaigns
[00:07:29.910]bring back our girls.
[00:07:31.140]And so I spent a lot of time writing about other women
[00:07:34.470]and girls who were part of that conflict and victims
[00:07:38.190]and just how they kind of grew to be heroes of that conflict
[00:07:44.550]and had real urgency to change their situations.
[00:07:49.410]While the girls were the focus of a lot of the attention
[00:07:51.990]they were not the only victims of atrocities
[00:07:54.210]particularly against younger people at that time, correct?
[00:07:57.180]That's absolutely right.
[00:07:58.440]I mean, one thing that we forget is before those girls
[00:08:00.780]were kidnapped there was a group of school boys
[00:08:04.020]who were actually burned to death.
[00:08:06.510]So there were many, many atrocities in that war
[00:08:12.420]that's still playing out a little bit.
[00:08:14.520]And just in all kinds of ways, old people, young people,
[00:08:18.210]and a whole region just upended in that conflict.
[00:08:22.680]For people who were in this country
[00:08:24.540]and only heard about Boko Haram
[00:08:26.340]because of the reporting of folks like yourself.
[00:08:29.160]And we tend for those stories
[00:08:31.350]that we have trouble getting our arms around
[00:08:33.000]to sort of rely on bumper sticker kinds of thoughts
[00:08:35.430]about what happened in that case.
[00:08:37.350]But you made a point earlier that I wanted to stress
[00:08:39.150]which is that the genesis of that was sort of a time honored
[00:08:44.010]set of conflicts between haves and have nots
[00:08:47.040]that you say has played out several other places
[00:08:49.200]around the world forever.
[00:08:51.150]But we're seeing that certainly again
[00:08:53.640]in the current geopolitical situations, are we not?
[00:08:56.370]That the seeds of the same sort of conflict
[00:08:59.340]exist currently other places?
[00:09:01.650]Absolutely, it occurs all over and it occurs
[00:09:04.920]in our own country when you look at sort of the war
[00:09:07.890]on billionaires and those who don't have
[00:09:11.130]as much money and opportunities.
[00:09:14.100]I mean, we see that play out in,
[00:09:15.780]I used to think about the debate in Nebraska
[00:09:20.010]we talk a lot about outstate, right?
[00:09:22.590]And how Lincoln and Omaha gets all the funding
[00:09:26.040]and that plays out in a lot of states in America too.
[00:09:29.070]But when you just even think of that term outstate,
[00:09:32.490]it's so demeaning to people who don't live
[00:09:36.330]in one of the cities in Nebraska.
[00:09:38.430]And in the Boko Haram conflict I used to also think
[00:09:41.790]of the town that was kind of the hub of that.
[00:09:43.710]It was a university town,
[00:09:45.060]it was kind of the Lincoln of Nigeria.
[00:09:48.420]And it was a lot of similarities oddly in terms of
[00:09:53.130]a farming community and just different things that
[00:09:56.520]people were dealing with there.
[00:09:57.810]I think growing up in the middle of a country
[00:10:01.500]that doesn't often think about the middle of its country
[00:10:04.590]was pretty good training for working in a continent
[00:10:07.830]where not very many Americans think about
[00:10:11.100]things that go on there.
[00:10:12.390]Well, and you found some parallels there
[00:10:14.160]between your home state and the place where you were posted
[00:10:18.030]and looking through some of your articles here recently
[00:10:20.130]I've noticed that you've done some work
[00:10:22.020]on the precious metal stories in Africa
[00:10:24.240]but also on how that affects our home state.
[00:10:27.060]Yeah, for sure.
[00:10:27.893]I was fortunate enough to go to Elk Creek recently,
[00:10:32.040]the end of last year and write a bit about
[00:10:35.040]hunt for precious metals in the renewables industry
[00:10:39.480]that are going to be kind of transforming how we live.
[00:10:42.630]And it was great because everything played out
[00:10:45.630]for that story in a town that was just a few miles away
[00:10:49.620]from where I grew up,
[00:10:50.580]just a handful of miles away from where I got married even
[00:10:54.270]in the southeast part of the state.
[00:10:56.280]And even some distant cousins were milling around.
[00:11:00.750]And so it was pretty fun to go back and see
[00:11:04.710]my home community, my home area I guess,
[00:11:07.800]through a different lens.
[00:11:09.720]Well, you've helped us all learn about the stories
[00:11:13.107]and the situations going on in Africa,
[00:11:15.630]but what did that experience covering that bureau
[00:11:19.830]in the the 25 different countries that you were part of,
[00:11:22.260]what did you learn about yourself in that process?
[00:11:25.560]I think what I learned mostly about, I guess myself
[00:11:29.010]through my career wise really was how to as journalists,
[00:11:34.050]I think sometimes we're taught we have to be
[00:11:36.300]very objective, of course.
[00:11:37.860]And that sometimes plays out in these cold ways
[00:11:43.170]but you don't need to be so cold in your coverage.
[00:11:45.330]You can really learn to channel your empathy,
[00:11:47.850]to help guide your reporting and add nuance
[00:11:51.450]to your reporting and to really dig into the gray areas
[00:11:54.960]of a story so things aren't so black and white.
[00:11:58.410]Even writing about extremists,
[00:12:02.250]here's just this knowledge that they're doing this
[00:12:05.430]because it started out because of a war on inequality
[00:12:08.550]and corruption.
[00:12:09.990]That to me I think was very helpful to keep in mind.
[00:12:12.630]So I really think it helped me dig through the layers
[00:12:15.540]I guess, a little bit more going overseas
[00:12:18.270]and doing that kind of work.
[00:12:19.740]Context is always so important.
[00:12:21.420]We hear about an individual or a situation and think,
[00:12:23.790]well, that's terrible, but there are reasons behind
[00:12:26.100]why those people have taken they are sometimes
[00:12:28.650]terrible actions.
[00:12:30.000]You also met and became inspired I know by a lot of
[00:12:33.000]the women that you met during that journey there
[00:12:35.820]and that's what led to the publication of your book in 2020
[00:12:38.580]called "In Pursuit of Disobedient Women."
[00:12:40.950]I love that title.
[00:12:42.720]Tell us about how that came about.
[00:12:45.330]Well, that came about from
[00:12:47.850]a publishing perspective, I guess.
[00:12:49.470]I had written a story about moving my family,
[00:12:51.570]my three young kids and my husband to Dakar
[00:12:54.690]and to take on, that's the capital of Senegal in West Africa
[00:12:59.310]and where we lived about four years.
[00:13:01.710]And I wrote kind of personal story about
[00:13:06.030]what it's like to suddenly become the breadwinner
[00:13:08.670]in your family and to move your kids
[00:13:11.400]and to leave your cushy, I guess, I live in Brooklyn,
[00:13:15.810]and leave your cushy American life
[00:13:17.550]and move somewhere totally new.
[00:13:19.650]And so I had also been covering women in the economy
[00:13:25.680]and how in the American economy,
[00:13:27.780]how a lot of women were dropping out of the workforce
[00:13:31.290]to take care of their kids or their parents.
[00:13:34.530]And so it struck me, when I wrote that story I started
[00:13:37.650]getting a lot of calls from agents like,
[00:13:39.240]you should write a book about these kinds of things.
[00:13:41.280]So I thought that maybe using myself, it's a memoir.
[00:13:45.450]I'm using myself as a vehicle through which to tell
[00:13:48.090]other women's stories in dramatically
[00:13:50.040]different circumstances but how they have also
[00:13:53.760]faced sort of this outside pressure just looking at them
[00:13:58.050]and giving people a more accessible, I guess,
[00:14:01.740]entree to a part of the world that they don't
[00:14:04.350]think about very much.
[00:14:06.360]With that background let's shift gears a little bit
[00:14:09.480]and talk about the future of our respective industries
[00:14:12.240]and yours particularly with an organization like The Times.
[00:14:15.840]How have you seen the journalism field
[00:14:19.500]and the industry change since you've started in it
[00:14:21.990]after graduating from the university in '93?
[00:14:25.080]Well, it's changed pretty dramatically really.
[00:14:27.150]I mean, some of the newspapers and news organizations
[00:14:30.540]where I've worked don't exist anymore.
[00:14:32.220]I mean, I think that is the biggest change that we've seen
[00:14:35.220]is this dramatic shrinkage in just newspapers,
[00:14:39.540]American newspapers in general.
[00:14:41.610]And for me when I was in West Africa in particular
[00:14:47.160]but even in New York,
[00:14:47.993]like younger journalists will come through
[00:14:49.620]and wanna get coffee and talk to me about,
[00:14:52.560]how can I get to The New York Times
[00:14:55.200]or what was your pathway?
[00:14:57.300]What was your career roadmap for me?
[00:14:59.820]And really, I don't know what to tell them sometimes
[00:15:02.670]because there are so few opportunities that they have.
[00:15:07.620]I worked my way up through a raft of local newspapers
[00:15:12.240]from bigger and bigger and bigger
[00:15:13.830]and those and did internships.
[00:15:15.930]And local newspapers don't exist as much anymore
[00:15:20.010]and if they do they might be on a shoestring budget.
[00:15:23.010]I'm not sure even how many internship opportunities
[00:15:25.650]there are anymore, let alone paid internships.
[00:15:28.740]I was lucky enough to always have a paid internship.
[00:15:31.980]So I think there's a huge shrinkage just in opportunities
[00:15:36.330]generally but I am heartened by new publications like
[00:15:42.030]the Flatwater Free Press and the Nebraska Examiner
[00:15:45.300]and other places in Nebraska in particular.
[00:15:49.110]But ProPublica which is a online investigative news site,
[00:15:54.450]they're opening up regional bureaus.
[00:15:56.100]So I mean, opportunities are coming but in general
[00:15:58.980]I think the biggest change that I've seen
[00:16:01.260]is just this torpedoing of journalism really
[00:16:07.020]that's come from a reduction in advertising
[00:16:09.720]and all the other financial forces.
[00:16:13.380]So how do you see these two different groups
[00:16:16.110]melding together a little bit,
[00:16:17.430]the kind of traditional mainstream story place
[00:16:21.750]like the one you work for with The New York Times
[00:16:23.577]and these sort of upstart publicly, or not publicly but-
[00:16:29.470]Nonprofit.
[00:16:30.303]Nonprofit, thank you, that was the word I was looking for,
[00:16:32.100]like Flatwater and the Examiner.
[00:16:34.290]How do these two coexist in co-mingle in the future
[00:16:37.650]as you see it?
[00:16:39.000]Well, I'm not quite sure how it's gonna play out
[00:16:41.220]but I know that one thing The New York Times
[00:16:43.170]has really invested in is our former editor, Dean Baquet,
[00:16:46.740]has started a local news operation,
[00:16:49.500]an investigative operation where he is going
[00:16:51.090]to be partnering with more local newspapers
[00:16:53.610]to give them resources, editing resources,
[00:16:57.330]and otherwise for producing big investigations
[00:17:00.720]that can be really meaningful
[00:17:02.190]and have huge impact in the community.
[00:17:04.530]And as far as, I think there's room for,
[00:17:08.250]I mean, The New York Times is in a really good place
[00:17:11.130]financially in the American journalism landscape right now,
[00:17:14.820]but there's definitely room for other newspapers.
[00:17:18.090]And the fact is we can have a huge national staff
[00:17:21.840]of reporters but we just don't have someone
[00:17:25.590]in every community.
[00:17:26.820]Obviously, there's still such a huge and important role
[00:17:29.910]for local journalism.
[00:17:32.190]And so my hope is that more sites like these pop up
[00:17:36.720]and that they get enough traction and funding
[00:17:40.590]in smaller communities and across the country
[00:17:45.030]so that people can be held accountable
[00:17:47.550]because that's a huge part of journalism.
[00:17:49.740]Of course, and I think one mistake that we make
[00:17:51.660]sometimes is in saying, well, there are fewer
[00:17:54.420]daily newspapers than there used to be.
[00:17:56.190]There are smaller radio and television news staffs
[00:17:58.770]than there used to be.
[00:17:59.850]That must mean nobody's interested in news.
[00:18:02.040]And that's a fallacy, that's not true at all.
[00:18:05.040]People are spending so much time researching or looking,
[00:18:08.400]I don't say they're researching,
[00:18:09.300]but they're looking at news but just from perhaps
[00:18:11.580]in different ways and on different platforms.
[00:18:13.680]So there's clearly still an interest in it.
[00:18:16.020]So I think the challenge is how do we
[00:18:18.030]reach these people where they are?
[00:18:20.610]That's exactly right.
[00:18:21.450]And I think it's something that if you've seen
[00:18:23.520]the Washington Post has a TikTok feed now,
[00:18:26.100]I think we do or we're about to, I'm not on TikTok
[00:18:29.700]because I spent most of my days telling my kids
[00:18:31.590]to get off TikTok.
[00:18:32.760]But I think that we are trying to figure that out
[00:18:37.530]at the big newspapers too of how to better integrate
[00:18:41.130]social media.
[00:18:41.963]We have a Instagram stories, we have our Twitter freed,
[00:18:46.410]we have all kinds of, our news operation in general
[00:18:50.460]has been transformed to be, think about online first.
[00:18:54.900]And my guess is we won't have a print newspaper
[00:18:57.630]in 10, 15 years.
[00:18:59.790]I mean, I don't know but I wouldn't be surprised.
[00:19:02.370]I mean, you think about the cost it takes to operate
[00:19:06.030]one of those giant facilities where the newspaper
[00:19:08.910]gets spit out.
[00:19:10.410]Just what a savings once the advertising revenue
[00:19:15.810]dries up from that and subscribership goes down enough
[00:19:18.930]I think that will be gone too.
[00:19:22.020]Well, and you have an absolutely world-class podcast,
[00:19:24.690]one of the best in the world.
[00:19:25.860]Whenever we talk about podcasts,
[00:19:27.847]"The Daily" always is one of the first ones
[00:19:30.240]out of our mouth.
[00:19:31.073]So the organization is to be lauded
[00:19:35.910]for having seen the value in that early
[00:19:38.220]and in investing the number of folks and resources
[00:19:41.970]that are being used to put it together.
[00:19:43.980]It's really an outstanding audio example
[00:19:46.590]of how to move into that sphere.
[00:19:49.860]Yeah, absolutely.
[00:19:50.700]And I think it's such a treat, I guess,
[00:19:54.503]to work at a newspaper that has so many options
[00:19:58.860]for your work, so many platforms for your work.
[00:20:02.220]I've been on "The Daily" a few times,
[00:20:04.050]I have created Instagram stories.
[00:20:08.419]I mean, there are stories of mine that have
[00:20:11.400]just had massive, massive resources.
[00:20:13.230]We still are one of the only newspapers left
[00:20:15.450]to really invest in photojournalism
[00:20:17.430]which I think has also historically been a huge important
[00:20:20.880]part of the School of Journalism at UNL.
[00:20:25.470]And I think that the resources that we can devote
[00:20:28.560]to a single topic sliced and diced
[00:20:32.040]in a million different ways and put out to the public
[00:20:34.491]is just incredible and that helps us reach our audience.
[00:20:37.650]And I hope that sometimes other news organizations
[00:20:41.520]learn from us and sometimes we fail with these new efforts
[00:20:45.030]but I think that management has typically been here like
[00:20:48.330]let's kind of throw it all out there and see what works
[00:20:50.610]and really willing to experiment and fail
[00:20:52.650]and that's important.
[00:20:53.940]At least you're trying to meet the audience
[00:20:57.060]where they are.
[00:20:57.893]And you'll be happy to hear that the photojournalism program
[00:21:00.510]is very much alive and well, thank you very much.
[00:21:02.940]We're just getting ready at the end of this week
[00:21:04.410]to send a group of students with two of our best
[00:21:07.080]journalism faculty members to Vietnam
[00:21:09.570]as part of the Global Eyewitness program that we've done
[00:21:12.060]for over a couple of decades here now at the program.
[00:21:14.970]So yeah, it's up and running.
[00:21:17.160]What do you think are some of the biggest forces driving
[00:21:19.290]all this change in your field,
[00:21:20.577]and and how do you think the field is prepared
[00:21:23.280]to deal with them?
[00:21:25.830]Well, I think maybe attention span of young people
[00:21:29.633]I think is one issue that we're gonna have to grapple with.
[00:21:33.840]When I worked at the Wall Street Journal
[00:21:35.490]and probably is even true for The Times,
[00:21:38.700]the readership average age of readers was something like,
[00:21:43.620]60, not really, but it's a pretty pretty old age
[00:21:47.683]for a lot of readers of mainstream newspapers
[00:21:51.240]and news organizations.
[00:21:52.800]And I think we are really gonna have to adapt
[00:21:55.740]to how young people consume news as you said earlier,
[00:22:00.600]I mean, stories here we're focusing on getting
[00:22:04.380]our story links down on a lot of different parts
[00:22:08.850]of the paper because people just don't have
[00:22:11.670]that kind of attention span.
[00:22:13.800]There's all kinds of pressure from Facebook
[00:22:17.400]and other kinds of sites like that where we've tried
[00:22:20.550]partnerships with but maybe we're competing with.
[00:22:23.850]And everyone's really trying to figure it all out.
[00:22:27.839]And for TV news I think there are huge issues there too
[00:22:32.700]that I'm less familiar with but I know everyone
[00:22:35.910]is just trying to figure things out
[00:22:38.430]and radio on every format, even photojournalists,
[00:22:42.810]the pressures are different now
[00:22:44.610]in how they produce and how they have to be ready
[00:22:48.450]to send their stories and find a connection
[00:22:50.670]when you're out in the boonies to send your photos
[00:22:54.180]right away so they can appear on the homepage
[00:22:57.030]of a newspaper.
[00:22:57.863]So everybody is sorting it out and there are pressures
[00:23:00.540]from all over, especially when you look at fake news
[00:23:04.380]and disinformation and trying to remain credible.
[00:23:07.140]I mean, that's a huge, huge threat
[00:23:08.790]and a huge challenge and a huge opportunity too.
[00:23:12.090]Now with AI and ChatGPT who knows if what you're seeing
[00:23:16.380]was really generated by a human or by a bot.
[00:23:19.560]Yeah, terrifying, right?
[00:23:21.600]Well, it's interesting as you mentioned where the news is
[00:23:25.560]has forced us to change how we do things too.
[00:23:27.660]I mean, and we've gotten to the point where from the time
[00:23:29.400]we moved into this building in 2001 and we had a newsroom
[00:23:33.120]that was filled with people every day
[00:23:34.800]until we realize the news doesn't happen in the newsroom,
[00:23:37.440]the news happens out in the field,
[00:23:39.240]and now we have the tools and the technologies
[00:23:41.280]to be able to go where the news is
[00:23:43.290]and send it back from there.
[00:23:44.490]And suddenly the newsroom itself became a lot quieter.
[00:23:47.190]I don't know if that's your experience with The Times.
[00:23:49.799]Yeah, for sure.
[00:23:51.690]I think that's true and also COVID has something to do
[00:23:55.080]with that too I think.
[00:23:56.207]And so people are really comfortable with working
[00:23:59.700]from home too.
[00:24:00.533]I was just walking around the newsroom today
[00:24:02.430]and today is a big day where a lot of people come in
[00:24:06.900]and it's still pretty empty.
[00:24:08.160]So I think that will change a little bit too,
[00:24:11.370]but the whole dynamic has changed really.
[00:24:16.470]Because I'm one of the faculty members in our college
[00:24:18.480]that teaches our required ethics course
[00:24:20.610]which you also would have taken when you were here.
[00:24:22.230]It was called Mass Media and Society when you were here,
[00:24:24.510]we now call it Media Ethics and Society.
[00:24:27.390]I'm always curious to get the take on what kinds of
[00:24:29.790]ethical challenges you see facing the folks
[00:24:33.090]in your industries moving forward?
[00:24:35.220]I think the ethical challenges are still kind of the same.
[00:24:39.960]I don't know, I mean, I see,
[00:24:48.510]I guess, this is a hard question, I'm trying to think.
[00:24:51.390]I mean, it's the same old stuff, right?
[00:24:53.160]You don't take gifts from people.
[00:24:58.500]I don't really see that changing.
[00:24:59.880]What do you see?
[00:25:00.713]What do you teach?
[00:25:01.546]I'm curious now.
[00:25:02.379]Well, I think you're right that things like
[00:25:04.107]the SPJ code of ethics which we teach in the class.
[00:25:06.990]I think I've got either nine or 10 different codes of ethics
[00:25:09.870]on my online site for the class.
[00:25:14.070]But yes, and we just had a session in the class
[00:25:16.710]earlier this week, a student produce session about
[00:25:20.880]the kind of separation that you have to have as a journalist
[00:25:23.970]from your sources or if you're working in the advertising PR
[00:25:28.650]side with your client,
[00:25:29.970]that there's a certain amount of rapport you have to build
[00:25:33.150]in order to get good leads and get good contacts
[00:25:36.780]and inside information.
[00:25:37.920]But you can't get too cozy with these folks otherwise
[00:25:41.250]that affects your reporting as well,
[00:25:42.840]or it affects the relationship with your client
[00:25:44.610]when you're no longer comfortable speaking truth to power
[00:25:47.340]to a client, that sort of thing.
[00:25:49.020]So, yeah, I don't think that-
[00:25:53.020]Yeah, I will say that one thing I think that
[00:25:56.100]a lot of newspapers right now including us
[00:25:57.990]are grappling with is a younger generation
[00:26:00.330]that sees themselves as activists,
[00:26:02.820]activist journalists sort of.
[00:26:07.427]And a lot of European newspapers are kind of that way
[00:26:11.280]and that's not really how American journalism has been.
[00:26:14.100]And so that's become probably one of the trickier things
[00:26:21.240]to sort out for older journalists like myself
[00:26:26.070]and a lot of the managers seeing this new class
[00:26:29.340]of kind of Gen Z I guess and millennial journalists
[00:26:33.330]who really think of themselves more than journalists,
[00:26:38.490]a little more, they bend a little more toward activism.
[00:26:41.280]And that's been hard to deal with.
[00:26:46.020]I'm very old school in my thinking about it.
[00:26:50.269]Me too.
[00:26:51.767]Well, as you say, a lot of the European countries
[00:26:53.310]have been very happy historically having left-leaning
[00:26:56.610]news organizations and right-leaning news organizations.
[00:26:59.400]We've come to that more recently with cable news channels
[00:27:02.160]in particular but social media and websites
[00:27:05.280]have certainly ratcheted that opportunity
[00:27:07.800]to live in that bubble or that echo chamber
[00:27:10.800]and never get any information from opposing forces.
[00:27:14.400]I know folks who this week have been saying, wait a minute,
[00:27:17.580]there's some charges against the Biden family.
[00:27:19.500]And some people earlier this week who were saying,
[00:27:21.120]wait a minute, Trump has been on trial.
[00:27:22.740]It's because the sources that they're reading
[00:27:25.440]and listening to aren't talking about the things
[00:27:27.630]that perhaps are less flattering toward
[00:27:31.230]the candidates or the sources or the causes
[00:27:34.200]that they find value in.
[00:27:35.640]That's exactly right.
[00:27:36.570]I mean, how polarization will shape journalism is I guess,
[00:27:41.850]yet to be seen but hopefully not too much.
[00:27:44.550]Hopefully we can still kind of stay the course.
[00:27:47.940]Well, so based on that since we've been kind of
[00:27:49.650]on some of the negatives here,
[00:27:50.700]where do you think are the growth areas in your field
[00:27:53.670]when people talk to you about the future?
[00:27:55.560]Where do you think the positive side
[00:27:58.100]or the ledger sides are?
[00:28:00.750]Well, I just still think that people wanna read
[00:28:03.240]long stories, maybe not all the time but some of the time.
[00:28:08.250]And I think that there's so much opportunity
[00:28:11.580]to do great investigative work.
[00:28:13.890]I mean, there's so many changes going on around us
[00:28:17.550]in politics and I right now write a lot about climate change
[00:28:22.440]and those environmental issues.
[00:28:24.300]I think our world is really changing
[00:28:26.820]and there's so, so much journalism to be done
[00:28:31.050]and good work to explore.
[00:28:33.630]And I think that investigative journalism is still going to
[00:28:40.530]be valued by Americans in whatever form it comes in.
[00:28:44.910]And I think we just have to figure out how to present it
[00:28:48.570]and that's important and we'll get it at some point,
[00:28:53.040]we'll get it right.
[00:28:54.450]I think we tend to say in our classes that not only
[00:28:56.820]is journalism still important in what seems to be
[00:29:00.810]a time of diminishing mainstream sources,
[00:29:03.840]but that perhaps it is the most important it's ever been
[00:29:06.360]in preserving our democracy and in preserving
[00:29:09.810]the things that we all hold dear.
[00:29:12.330]So given that, what kinds of skills do you think
[00:29:16.410]the potential employees of the future need
[00:29:18.990]in both the students in our college,
[00:29:20.610]but just folks that are thinking about
[00:29:22.050]getting into the business?
[00:29:24.480]Man, I still think the basics.
[00:29:27.240]I think everything I ever needed to know about
[00:29:30.900]covering a story I learned by covering the regents,
[00:29:34.770]the Board of Regents, that that was my beat for a while
[00:29:37.290]with the Daily Nebraskan.
[00:29:38.610]There was corruption and officials who had no idea
[00:29:42.150]what they were talking about,
[00:29:43.440]and officials who were brilliant and long meetings
[00:29:46.560]and activists who would come and protestors,
[00:29:51.240]that kind of thing.
[00:29:52.073]And just covering those, having a real as far as newspaper
[00:29:56.370]or news reporting goes,
[00:29:57.510]just having a beat covering an institution
[00:30:01.140]and everything around it, writing profiles about that
[00:30:04.020]institution and features and breaking news.
[00:30:07.620]And you really get whether it's city hall
[00:30:10.560]that you're covering or the Board of Regents
[00:30:13.050]or university as a whole or the state legislature.
[00:30:17.280]I mean, that to me I just think is so crucial
[00:30:19.800]to get those kind of real building blocks before you move on
[00:30:23.730]to bigger and better things.
[00:30:27.450]Aside from just those basic repertorial skills,
[00:30:30.360]are there traits that you feel are beneficial to anybody
[00:30:34.890]in the new economy and in the future that just everybody
[00:30:37.500]regardless of whether it's journalism or not,
[00:30:39.120]that they should try to improve?
[00:30:41.003]I mean, I think like growing up in Nebraska
[00:30:44.340]I wasn't really taught to be very curious
[00:30:46.650]I think in my small town.
[00:30:47.630]And I think that that's one thing that reporters
[00:30:50.490]just have to really tap their curiosity about the world.
[00:30:54.600]No matter what format you're reporting in
[00:30:57.780]or what the future holds, you just have to ask the questions
[00:31:02.679]and be curious about the world around you
[00:31:06.000]and how things work and what is your role in the world.
[00:31:11.460]I really like being from Nebraska
[00:31:14.160]and you're almost a curiosity once you get on the coast
[00:31:18.360]if you're from here.
[00:31:19.860]And I like sort of really using my experience growing up
[00:31:25.470]in a small town as a translator between those worlds.
[00:31:29.250]And I think that that's still a really valuable skill
[00:31:32.370]for everybody who is coming through the university
[00:31:36.300]to whether you leave or stay in Nebraska,
[00:31:41.100]that's just being curious and really understanding
[00:31:44.880]where you're from and where you're at
[00:31:46.523]I think is really valuable.
[00:31:48.690]Just expressed curiosity in an individual conference
[00:31:51.540]I had with a student about two hours ago.
[00:31:53.460]So yes, I absolutely concur with you on that one.
[00:31:56.940]Since you mentioned the pandemic a little bit earlier
[00:31:59.700]and that sort of collision with the Gen Z population
[00:32:02.760]that's coming through the universities now
[00:32:04.410]who are more purpose driven, you used the term activist,
[00:32:08.610]I would agree with that as well.
[00:32:10.110]One of the things that they seem to be more concerned about
[00:32:12.210]and the pandemic ratcheted that up was the work life balance
[00:32:16.470]and not necessarily as we saw in the great resignation
[00:32:20.250]that followed the pandemic,
[00:32:21.450]maybe not being automatically willing to work forever
[00:32:25.230]and ever and ever for something that doesn't
[00:32:27.090]resonate with them.
[00:32:28.500]How are you seeing that play out with the people
[00:32:30.480]that you're seeing come into your newsroom
[00:32:32.280]and into your interest areas at this point?
[00:32:34.980]Well, I don't have direct experience really with that
[00:32:39.620]in the newsroom but I do know just generally,
[00:32:43.470]the expectations are very different I think for a reporter
[00:32:47.190]starting out versus me who I was willing to work at any hour
[00:32:51.240]and do anything and have bully bosses and be yelled at.
[00:32:56.250]And I thought that was great training
[00:32:57.720]and I think the younger generation isn't willing
[00:33:01.050]to put up with that.
[00:33:02.100]And I think it really helped make me
[00:33:05.130]into the reporter that I was,
[00:33:06.570]but I have a lot of respect for not putting up with that
[00:33:10.410]because we didn't need to put up with that.
[00:33:12.690]And especially, just how that plays out with gender roles
[00:33:18.810]and with other things that happen right now too I think
[00:33:22.080]it's just a whole different set of expectations
[00:33:25.140]that when you stop and think about it,
[00:33:27.390]it's pretty reasonable.
[00:33:28.410]But I do think also as a journalist, if you're a reporter,
[00:33:32.400]you're kinda on the clock 24/7 if something arises,
[00:33:36.750]especially at a news organization like The New York Times
[00:33:39.750]where we cover the world.
[00:33:41.940]So every time zone, it's always morning somewhere.
[00:33:45.750]But we have dealt with that by having operations in place
[00:33:49.920]in London and in Hong Kong.
[00:33:51.600]So we kind of have all the big sections of the day covered
[00:33:56.490]so that people are not expected to work 24/7.
[00:34:01.920]And I think just a part of that is an outcropping
[00:34:06.240]of covering the world but it's also just a generation
[00:34:10.350]of people who work isn't everything.
[00:34:13.710]I honestly can't imagine thinking that
[00:34:16.170]because work is everything to me.
[00:34:18.280]But I think that it's a really healthy outlook
[00:34:21.990]and the pandemic has changed how we all think about work.
[00:34:26.100]And I for one I'm happy to work at home more than I used to.
[00:34:30.420]It's pretty fun to be there when my teenagers
[00:34:33.270]come home at night and that sort of thing.
[00:34:35.460]It's also not fun sometimes if they're in a bad mood,
[00:34:38.280]but I think that overall it's been a good thing
[00:34:43.590]not just in journalism,
[00:34:44.760]but for everywhere really kind of taken a breather
[00:34:49.140]with how we are just so demanding on ourselves work-wise.
[00:34:53.970]From that standpoint do you see a shift at all
[00:34:56.700]either because of the pandemic
[00:34:58.440]or one that might have started before the pandemic
[00:35:00.330]in relying more on freelancers and the gig economy
[00:35:03.360]kind of folks as opposed to newsroom full of full-timers?
[00:35:07.980]I mean, I think that's tough for us
[00:35:09.600]because just in terms of our standards really
[00:35:14.040]and making sure, I mean, it's really for one thing,
[00:35:16.860]I mean, a lot of newsrooms like us have grappled
[00:35:19.800]with social media standards.
[00:35:22.350]Is a reporter allowed to tweet their opinion
[00:35:29.430]about the president or something like that?
[00:35:31.800]I mean, as a reporter, no, absolutely not.
[00:35:34.170]As a freelancer, we tell our freelancers
[00:35:37.170]they're not supposed to do that
[00:35:38.670]but it's very hard to reign in somebody
[00:35:41.580]who is not on the payroll.
[00:35:43.080]So for us that's not a problem because we have the revenue,
[00:35:48.540]we have the financial strength where we can employ
[00:35:52.590]a lot of people.
[00:35:53.520]We do use some freelancers,
[00:35:55.470]but most of our copy is written by staff.
[00:35:59.070]For other newspapers, yeah, I mean,
[00:36:02.010]I would think that would definitely start to happen
[00:36:04.410]more and more, and maybe is a very reasonable
[00:36:08.100]financial way to proceed.
[00:36:11.280]So when you were at a cocktail party
[00:36:13.770]in just matter of at a family gathering and somebody says,
[00:36:17.557]"Oh, you're a reporter, wow, I've always wanted to do that."
[00:36:20.498]What's your response when somebody says,
[00:36:22.770]I'd like to do what you do?
[00:36:23.790]What do you tell them and what possible misconceptions
[00:36:28.740]might people have about what you do or why?
[00:36:31.800]Well, I think a lot of people think when you say reporter
[00:36:34.500]that you're like knocking on people's doors relentlessly
[00:36:39.030]or hounding people and that kind of thing.
[00:36:44.580]That's not really how it works.
[00:36:46.290]I just was calling, I was texting some people,
[00:36:51.060]a guy in Minnesota yesterday about a story and I said,
[00:36:55.080]would you talk to me about this and that?
[00:36:57.360]And he just texted back, nope.
[00:36:58.860]And I'm like, okay, thanks for your time.
[00:37:01.005]That's all it takes.
[00:37:02.460]So if that's hounding I don't think so,
[00:37:05.760]but I think that what I tell young people
[00:37:08.490]is you get out there and do it, start freelancing,
[00:37:13.350]work at your campus newspaper,
[00:37:17.070]go to someplace like the University of Nebraska
[00:37:19.350]where you can get amazing training from amazing professors
[00:37:22.560]and learn from your peers.
[00:37:25.230]Just really get out there and do it
[00:37:26.700]I think is the biggest advice that I have from anybody
[00:37:30.000]because you only learn by doing.
[00:37:32.010]I mean, you can sit in a classroom all day
[00:37:33.990]but that means nothing until you get out there
[00:37:36.150]and you pick up the phone to make your first phone call
[00:37:39.780]which I still have to kind of steal myself 20 years on
[00:37:43.410]to make a phone call or to walk up to somebody I don't know
[00:37:46.740]and introduce myself and start talking with them.
[00:37:49.410]I mean, I learned a lot from my grandpa who was a farmer
[00:37:52.020]who would sit in the mall and talk to everybody
[00:37:53.910]who went past him at the Indian Creek Mall in Nebraska
[00:37:56.700]or in Beatrice.
[00:37:57.690]But that's still tough for me.
[00:38:01.530]So I think that's a skill that you only
[00:38:04.470]get more comfortable with by doing it.
[00:38:06.780]Your grandfather had a great skill.
[00:38:09.720]I really admire him for being willing to do that.
[00:38:13.293]So to tie all this together, what's in your future?
[00:38:15.420]You've had an amazing career.
[00:38:16.770]You've gotten to work in a variety of different settings
[00:38:19.980]for a variety of different world-class news organizations.
[00:38:23.430]Are you comfortable or what's the future you think
[00:38:25.650]in your case?
[00:38:27.763]I love working at The New York Times.
[00:38:29.790]I think there's still, The New York Times is the kind of
[00:38:32.340]place where you can do so many different beats.
[00:38:36.360]I would love, anything would be really fun here.
[00:38:39.780]Writing for the art section, writing for cooking,
[00:38:42.210]writing for anybody.
[00:38:44.190]I'd love to go back overseas.
[00:38:45.840]I don't think I'm done here at all.
[00:38:47.310]I think there are a lot of opportunities
[00:38:50.190]even in different, coming in editor or working
[00:38:53.430]at any number of our podcasts, there's just so many.
[00:38:57.690]You can have a whole lifetime, several different lifetimes
[00:39:00.960]worth of careers at this place.
[00:39:02.820]So I think that's one thing I feel very,
[00:39:05.370]very fortunate about.
[00:39:07.590]Well, we look forward to the future
[00:39:09.060]for what you have left to write about
[00:39:11.226]'cause I know there's a lot of great stories left
[00:39:12.840]to be told and then we look forward to seeing which ones
[00:39:14.790]you get assigned to.
[00:39:15.660]So thanks for taking your time today to talk about
[00:39:18.630]the media business, past, present and future,
[00:39:21.210]and we look forward to following you down the trail.
[00:39:24.570]Thank you so much for having me.
[00:39:26.280]Our guest on "Campus Voices" today,
[00:39:28.140]the 2020 Pulitzer Prize winner for international reporting
[00:39:31.380]from The New York Times and a proud University of Nebraska
[00:39:34.650]Journalism College graduate, Dionne Searcey.
[00:39:37.350]I'm Rick Alloway, and as always,
[00:39:39.060]I thank you for your time on "Campus Voices."

The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!

You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.

Comments

0 Comments

Dionne Searcey

Description

Searchable Transcript

Comments icon comment

Related Channels

Comments