Why are NPR and WaPo struggling compared to peer news organizations?

[00:00:00] . Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Seattle Nice. I'm David Hyde here with Erica C. Barnett of Publicola. Erica, how are you doing today? It is Thursday, June 13th in the afternoon.

[00:00:22] Well, we're not going to discuss any of this until next week, I'm sure, but I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off because there's so much going on at City Hall. Yes, lots happening. Sandeep Kaushik, how about you? How are you doing?

[00:00:34] I'm super excited since you told me, David, that Seattle Nice is rocketing up the political podcast charts and was it Norway? Norway now? Yeah, yes. We conquered Mexico and now Norway. We've actually dropped. I think we dropped in Mexico, but now we're up in Norway. All right.

[00:00:55] Today, we're talking about two media stories. We're going to get into the recent ish flap over NPR and we're starting with a story related to NPR media reporter David Folkenflick who was offered an exclusive interview about the future of The Washington Post.

[00:01:12] Erica's got a blog post up about this. This exclusive interview, though, it sounds like Erica came with some disturbing strings attached. Yeah. So I wrote about this this weekend. I do a little column about the stuff that I'm sort of watching and reading and

[00:01:28] obsessing over. And this week, last week actually, but still this week, just really obsessing over this story. And I don't know why everybody else isn't because it's got it all. It's got the British invasion people coming in from the UK and taking over

[00:01:44] actually quite a few of our U.S. newspapers. And I would say media corruption. This is the new publisher of The Washington Post basically offered to give an exclusive interview about the future of The Washington Post to NPR's David

[00:01:56] Folkenflick. But in exchange, Folkenflick would agree to kill a story about this guy and his name is Will Lewis. His alleged involvement when he was back in England and covering up a hacking scandal involving the Murdox. This was about 10, 12 years ago, the famous hacking scandal where they

[00:02:14] hacked into not just celebrities phones, but also a young girl's phone. You know, terrible scandal. And Lewis was allegedly involved in covering it up. David Folkenflick said, that's not how we do things here. We don't we don't do that kind of quid pro quo.

[00:02:29] And he gave the story this exclusive to this publication called Puck and a writer who actually has a local connection, I think. But but not to go too far down that rabbit hole. That writer sort of did a rah rah story about you know, how great things are

[00:02:46] going to be at The Washington Post. The executive editor resigned amid this whole scandal. There's so much more to it. But you know, basically my big takeaway was this is somebody coming in from the UK trying to sort of impose UK journalistic values in the US.

[00:03:01] And I think UK journalistic values are a lot different. I mean, they pay for stories. There's this quid pro quo shit. So I don't know. I just found it fascinating and it makes me really glad that NPR still has media coverage.

[00:03:12] I just want to before you jump in, Sandeep, follow up on something you said the Seattle Connection. Dylan Byers is the person who got this story went to Lakeside from Seattle, Washington. So that's a little bit embarrassing for Seattle born journalists, I guess.

[00:03:28] Sandeep Kashuk, what do you think? First of all, I don't know that Dylan Byers did anything wrong per se, you know, other than, you know, got an interview writing a shitty puff piece. Well, was it a shitty puff? It was pretty puffy. I didn't read it.

[00:03:40] Well, well, OK, I'll say and Josh Marshall pointed this out. So this is not original to me. But like, but he he kept talking about how Sally Busby, who was the executive editor who got ousted, how she didn't have swagger and she kept saying

[00:03:52] swagger in this way that was just like, you know, I mean, you could just read between the lines like these two guys sitting around talking about the swagger they have. And it was it was very clear that she lacked a particular very important to these guys appendage.

[00:04:06] And, you know, I mean, she's she came from the AP. Yeah, she believes in sort of basic journalism. I assume and, you know, seem very disgruntled and understandably so about, you know, the swagger, the new the new bosses wanted to bring into The Washington Post.

[00:04:24] Well, the reports were too that she Sally Busby, who has been the editor of The Washington Post, clashed with this new publisher, right? Also over the fact that The Washington Post had written or was writing a

[00:04:34] story about the revival of this phone hacking scandal in the UK, which was going to mention the fact that The Washington Post new publisher had been accused or at least implicated in it. And he tried to get her to cut any reference, apparently to himself from

[00:04:51] The Washington Post story. She refused to do that. And that led to a very kind of tense exchange. And a couple of weeks later, she resigned from the editorship of The Washington Post and he has this whole big reordered plan where she was

[00:05:04] going to what looks like kind of get demoted rather than being the editor of the whole entity. He was going to kind of split it up into three divisions and she would only run one of them, and so there were other issues involved.

[00:05:16] But Eric, out of your point that this is about a kind of journalistic culture clash between journalistic values in the UK and the United States. I think it's exactly right. Right? I mean, I think that's right on the money.

[00:05:26] I was talking with a friend who's kind of a senior person at the Associated Press where she had also been the leader of who was saying the exact same thing. Like, you know, the culture in British newsrooms is very hierarchical, right?

[00:05:42] That that that the editors have a sort of dictatorial power and the reporters are just supposed to fall in line to editorial dicks. Tops, whereas newsrooms in the United States, there's much more kind of give and take and reporters bitch and moan a lot more about

[00:05:57] editorial decisions or back and forth with their editors. There's a lot of arguing. Yeah, a lot of arguing, a lot of, you know, a lot of fighting, a lot of whatever, a lot of debate that happens in American newsrooms.

[00:06:10] So I think this new publisher of the Washington Post was sort of taken aback by the backlash he was getting from the newsroom over Busby's departure and over some of these these revelations that came out. There was a newsroom meeting where where he got kind of,

[00:06:25] you know, a lot of very pointed and somewhat angry questioning from folks in the newsroom, to which his response, by the way, and this is worth noting, is he said, the way things are going right now with the Washington Post are not great. Right.

[00:06:38] He said that they had lost 77 million dollars in the last year and half of their half of their audience. He said to the reporters in the newsroom, people aren't reading your shit anymore, and so we got to make some changes.

[00:06:52] Yeah. And I would say, I mean, you know, one of the reasons that newspaper readership, you know, in general, in terms of the national newspapers, of which, you know, there are really only a couple. One reason that's gone down and one reason particularly the Washington

[00:07:04] Post has gone down is that there's not as much of a sort of firestorm of shit to cover during the Biden administration. I mean, I think readership did go up during Trump, and I think that, you know, maybe artificially boosted the Washington Post fortunes.

[00:07:17] But, you know, there just isn't as much, you know, audience for a newspaper, a physical newspaper that covers the sort of machinations in DC. And meanwhile, there's a lot of stuff, you know, online. I mean, Politico has largely taken over that role, you know, at one point

[00:07:31] BuzzFeed, I mean, there are just lots of alternatives now for that kind of dishy inside news that, you know, ultimately has a pretty limited market. And so I think that, you know, while it may be totally true that the

[00:07:45] Washington Post needs to turn its financials around, you know, I'm not sure this is the guy to do it. I'm not sure that like we want the culture of the telegraph, you know, which is where Will Lewis came from in the UK, you know, or just the style

[00:07:57] of the telegraph, and I will say too, I mean, not only did Will Lewis try to get Sally Busby to essentially not cover his involvement in this hacking scandal, I've noticed since then, and, you know, I don't know how much

[00:08:09] this has always been the case or how long this has been the case, but all of their coverage of this stuff is in the style section, which, you know, frankly, I mean, is relegating it to literally be next to fashion

[00:08:20] stories. And so I think there, you know, the New York Times rather is taking the story, you know, seriously, other publications and PR has taken the story seriously. And not to say I don't love a good style story, but I

[00:08:32] don't think that, you know, the leadership of, you know, one of the two national papers needs to be debated in the style section of the Washington Post. I think it belongs on if not the front page in the news section.

[00:08:44] So, Erica, the other point you're raising here seems to be about Jeff Bezos. A billionaire may seem like a savior when he buys a newspaper and pledges feel to to its journalism, but there are obvious downsides,

[00:08:54] starting with the fact that basically he doesn't know what the hell he's doing. And that's why he hired this British editor. Is that what you're saying? I mean, I don't know if that's why he hired this British editor, but I

[00:09:04] think it is clear he doesn't know what he's doing. He's not a newspaper guy. I mean, he's a guy who wanted, you know, a feather in his cap by buying the Washington Post, had no idea what news is, believes that,

[00:09:13] you know, hard hitting news is fine as long as it doesn't disturb certain powerful friends of his. I mean, I think he just he's a he's a billionaire like you don't want a guy who's a billionaire and no history in news sort of dictating the

[00:09:27] future of a newspaper. You want people you want news people making those decisions. To some extent, I understand publishers are often business guys. But yeah, I mean, I think I think anybody who put hope in Jeff Bezos

[00:09:39] is like the savior of journalism was as naive as the publications that thought Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg were going to save them. So a couple of things here, which are just important factual points. We were talking about here that the guy at the Washington Post is the

[00:09:54] publisher, right? He's not the editor. He's brought in another British guy who's going to be sounds like the actual editor of the paper. And, you know, we'll see whether he's he survived. Also, we should note that in terms of his involvement in the phone

[00:10:07] hacking scandal, those are allegations. Right. That he denies that he was involved and kind of vehemently so. So it remains to be said, he was brought in to like to clean things up. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, we'll see whether it's true or not.

[00:10:20] It sounds like there's more stuff going on in Britain about that. That's coming out about this stuff. So we'll we'll see what gets unearthed there. But he does. I think we should note that he denies this stuff.

[00:10:29] But it's going to be interesting to see whether he survives this. Right. Some of the people in journalism that I've talked to about this think he's probably toast, right, because he maybe has lost the newsroom over what's happened so far and all of these revelations of him

[00:10:45] trying to kill stories about himself and blotty, blotty, blah. But, Erica, as you say, what really matters here is this is a relationship with Jeff Bezos. Right. If Jeff Bezos still thinks he's the right man to be the publisher of The Washington Post, then

[00:11:02] he's going to remain the publisher of The Washington Post, because, you know, that's Jeff Bezos' decision. I will say this about Bezos. Like he came in and bought The Washington Post at a time when it was looking like it was really struggling.

[00:11:16] And so he has thrown a lifeline there. He spent a lot of money to to support it. So I do think he deserves some credit for that. And I will say this, I was reading another account of of this

[00:11:27] where it says higher ups in The Washington Post newsroom have said for years that Bezos has been really hands off in terms of their editorial decision making. Like he told them at the beginning, if they have a story about Amazon, he's not going to intervene.

[00:11:40] They're allowed to write about Amazon. They have written about Amazon. They've written negative things. Right. I mean, that's kind of a bare minimum. Right. I mean, but but but, you know, we should give him some some credit for that. Look at the L.A. Times.

[00:11:52] The L.A. Times had a billionaire owner who basically destroyed the paper, installed his crazy daughter and like, you know, in an editorial position and seemed to have weighed in on editorial decision. So at least it's not that. Well, I'll just say I think that's a low bar.

[00:12:06] Well, OK. So NPR is David Folk and Flick rejecting the quid pro quo being offered to basically kill the story that Sandeep says is an alleged story. So, OK, moving on from that. But sticking sticking with NPR in April of this year,

[00:12:22] NPR editor Yuri Berliner wrote a controversial piece for the free press. He's claiming that NPR, like big newspapers, it sounds like, is losing listeners in this case, losing audience. In this case, Berliner claims by sounding too woke, too progressive and too partisan.

[00:12:38] And here the audience has definitely declined by around 30 percent since 2020. So the serious conversation, you know, is what is going on here? Why might NPR be losing audience? And does Berliner have a point? What do you think? As somebody who, I mean, is a former NPR listener,

[00:13:01] I still listen to certain shows. But honestly, this is just true across the board. It's not even about NPR. I can't listen to too much national news anymore because it makes me crazy. But, you know, I mean, I think that NPR has been replaced by podcasts.

[00:13:14] NPR, you know, in part has been replaced by NPR podcasts. I think the problem, you know, that when I listen to NPR is that they won't, you know, not only will they not take a fucking side on anything, they won't take the side of like, you know, democracy.

[00:13:28] And so I do not get the sense that they are like overly woke. I think they keep to modern style guidelines like the AP does. But, you know, I just I thought this letter was, you know, a guy, a dinosaur throwing a temper tantrum

[00:13:43] about a problem that isn't really a problem and doing so. I mean, you mentioned he did it in the free press. This is the substack newsletter operated by sort of arch conservative Barry Weiss. And he did not apparently have any kind of permission to do this.

[00:13:58] He didn't run it by any of his bosses at NPR. He just, you know, ran an opinion piece in this newsletter that for a different company. And I don't know, David, I've never worked at NPR or a radio station,

[00:14:10] but I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to do that. And I think that was part of why he got suspended. Yeah, I mean, of all the things, you know, that he that he did. I mean, I agree with you. There are also some factual errors in the piece.

[00:14:24] And I think that for me, at least, there's sort of an overemphasis on woke and the word woke and what the hell the word woke even really means generally. But I do think actually like there have been changes in newsrooms like KOW and at NPR.

[00:14:42] For my perspective as a listener, from when I started to now, in the sense that, you know, you're right. They sort of have stuck with the AP style version of, you know, how you do the news, you know, in terms of being balanced

[00:14:58] and in terms of including multiple voices. And I've heard, I guess, less of that and more of what I would call one sided advocacy style journalism, which is fine. But it really wasn't what NPR or KOW were doing as much when I started.

[00:15:15] So, I mean, I think I think there's a serious conversation to have about it and whether or not this is the reason why NPR or KOW might be losing audience. Well, to be clear, I think it's the both sides ism when it means like,

[00:15:29] you know, this organization is doing outreach to black youth in this community. And, you know, this guy over here thinks it's bad and dumb and wrong. You know, I mean, I don't think you have to have both sides of every single story. Yeah.

[00:15:42] But that's a bit of a I mean, let's get signed up here in a minute. But like, yes, when you know, when you're talking about climate change, when you're talking about was the election stolen, when you're talking about all kinds of topics, both sides ism is absolutely stupid.

[00:15:56] But when you're talking about relevant points of view and not including all relevant points of view. Well, relevant is a judgment call, isn't it? Right. Yes, of course, it's a judgment call. But but relevant points of view in Seattle politics would be the two of you,

[00:16:10] you know, who disagree as opposed to only hearing just for America, which some outlets would do like The Stranger, for example. There's nothing wrong with that. But that's not what NPR aspires to do or what KUW aspired to do when I started there.

[00:16:23] It's fine to do nation style, you know, one sided coverage. We have tons of that. The question is, is there space in the media landscape for that other style? You know, or not. And you raise a provocative question,

[00:16:36] which is maybe NPR could gain audience by being more one sided, by sounding more like commercial radio, which is sort of the opposite, you know, of what Berliner was arguing. But Sandeep, what do you think? And so there's a number of points to be made here.

[00:16:50] First of all, I think the reason we're talking about both of these at the same time is I don't think the Washington Post situation and the NPR situation are unrelated. Both of them have seen large scale audience declines. It's not just NPR, but local radio,

[00:17:03] public radio stations like KUW have seen significant audience declines. And the question is, why is that happening? I mean, some of the reasons are structural, right? With NPR, there's a lot of fewer people are commuting to work.

[00:17:17] Right. Radio is a thing you would listen to in the car. Typically, I would listen to typically in the car on my way to and from work. So that's probably part of the story here. But it's also very, very clear that NPR has lost

[00:17:31] more of their audience than other radio has. Right. It's also true that the Washington Post, while they've got a big bump during the Trump era, they've lost more of their audience than, say, The New York Times that had a similar bump during during the during the Trump era.

[00:17:47] So the question is, why are some of these news outlets seeing disproportionate losses? And I will say in the NPR case, I don't think Uri Berliner played up the woke part in his thing. He said that that that NPR

[00:18:02] had become too one sided and partisan and progressive in its politics. And if anything, he kind of underplayed the woke part. I would say that the change at NPR in places like KUW is that they they became super fucking woke to like in the twenty twenty one.

[00:18:19] Sorry, I meant Sundeep was about I meant Sundeep is about to say that. And and I don't totally agree with that. Well, there was a period on fucking on KUW. You couldn't turn on the fucking radio with out. You and your colleagues jamming Robin DiAngelo down our throat.

[00:18:36] And any time race came up, it had to be fucking raw platforming Robin DiAngelo and a particular view about race. That's actually to your point earlier is quite contested. Right. Well, to calm down, to calm down a little bit.

[00:18:50] I mean, I would say so you you said, why? Why are people not listening to NPR anymore? It used to be the thing you listen to on the radio on your commute. I will tell you, like, I'm not young. I don't know anybody who listens to the radio.

[00:19:02] I mean, except for people who, you know, maybe right in to tell me that they've listened to me on KUW when I go on, by the way, with the likes of John Carlson, a very right wing commentator from KVI and people from right wing think tanks.

[00:19:16] So there is I mean, at least on the show that I go on, there is quite a bit of ideological diversity. Completely agree. Yeah. But, you know, in addition, I just you know, I don't really know anyone under the age of 50, 60.

[00:19:27] I mean, truly that like that listens to the radio on a regular basis, because when people are commuting in their cars or listening to podcasts or Spotify, I will say this, though, I know at KUW and I know at NPR.

[00:19:38] The podcasts have a fraction of their terrestrial audience. So despite the fact that you don't despite the fact that you know, I mean, NPR's overall national audience was something like 10 times as big as The New York Times. And even though it's declined, it's still a massive, terrestrial audience.

[00:19:57] And their podcasts aren't making up the difference at all. And I'm not saying I'm not saying people listen to NPR podcasts, to be clear. I'm not saying they switched over to another NPR product. I'm saying they've switched off NPR altogether and they're listening to other stuff.

[00:20:12] But the other thing to something said about The New York Times, I mean, The New York Times, you know, has has succeeded, you know, in part by having, you know, very good digital content. They put out a very good digital product, which I don't think

[00:20:24] The Washington Post does. Second, though, I mean, The New York Times makes most of it, maybe not most of its revenue. I'll get the numbers wrong if I try to cite them, but they make a huge amount of revenue off games, not content.

[00:20:35] And so their revenue game is mostly about people who are going to pay two dollars a week like I do to play the crossword every day, you know, or wordle or whatever. So the revenue situation for them is just very different.

[00:20:47] They have figured out ways to monetize other parts of, you know, their product lineup in order to continue subsidizing news. So I think that, you know, it's a really complicated question. So of which, you know, sort of people thinking that Robin D'Angelo

[00:21:03] was annoying in 2020 is like such a small fraction that I can't believe we're even talking about it when, you know, if you're concerned about the future of radio, I mean, I think the concern is that radio really needs to expand into things that are not radio,

[00:21:19] like a really good digital product. And I don't really see them doing that. I mean, NPR has definitely crapped out on the podcasting sort of sort of that transitional stuff. You're right. New York Times has done it better than Daily.

[00:21:31] Like, it's a super successful podcast, right, that The New York Times does. There's no reason NPR couldn't have been doing that. Right. But instead they ceded that audio space to The New York Times, which is a pretty big fuck up on their part. That's not quite right.

[00:21:44] So like NPR's flagship podcast up first is one of the top three podcasts in the United States or something like that. Top five. It's bigger than Pod Save America. I'm looking right now. So isn't it entirely right to say that they haven't done well?

[00:21:58] You know, they have some other podcasts have done well. I agree with you overall. There's there's the universe of podcasts is complicated and NPR hasn't done as good a job as it should nor has KW, frankly.

[00:22:07] But the question is, why are they declining more than their commercial radio counterparts? So there's plenty of reasons why people aren't listening to terrestrial radio. Erica, you've outlined some of them. I think there are many more, actually. But even beyond that, the question is, why is commercial radio

[00:22:24] holding its own relative to national public radio? And I think we know internally at KW where I used to work up until recently that they do hear from a lot of audience members who talk about being frustrated

[00:22:38] that their views aren't being represented in ways that they felt like they were before. So this is actually, you know, something that is being talked about internally. Can you be more specific? Like, what do you mean? Well, I'll take the take the example of homelessness, for example.

[00:22:53] If you look at some of the recent coverage over the last five years, 10 years, I'd say it honestly seemed a lot more like public cola than, say, the old Seattle Times, where you would hear from both,

[00:23:06] you know, advocates for homeless folks and people that are concerned about sweeps. But you'd also hear from small business owners or neighbors who were worried about public safety, the stuff that was the basis for this last campaign.

[00:23:18] There was a period where, you know, there were a number of stories where you would only hear one perspective on that issue, you know, an issue that's near and dear to your heart. And again, I think public cola does great work.

[00:23:28] Obviously, I have a ton of respect for you and the work that you do. But you're not as interested in hearing from those multiple voices, whereas KW traditionally has been. I disagree with you. Maybe people feel that way. I think people feel a lot of ways about homelessness.

[00:23:44] But I think, you know, just looking, I just did a very quick search for Erin Goodman, the director of the Soto Business Association, who is often a business voice brought in to provide a sort of countervailing point of view on behalf of small businesses on homelessness.

[00:23:57] And she's quoted all over KUOW. That's just one person. You've done it recently? You've done it recently? I am. Oh, I was going to say, I actually think recently there's been a real concern about this and a real concerted effort

[00:24:07] to make sure that there's balance on these issues. I'm talking about 2019, 2022. I mean, I think that... I don't want to go story by story because I'm not going to throw any of my former colleagues under the bus. I'm not trying to do that.

[00:24:19] I'm saying that I'm giving you examples where the balance, you're saying, has been lacking, has been there. No, no, no, no. I'm not making the argument that there's no balance. What I'm saying is that there was a slippage and sort of an individual

[00:24:34] story by story inattention to balance in ways that I hadn't seen previously. Because remember, like as you said, as you started with, like NPR and KUOW have sort of had this, you know, fairness and balance piece of their journalism ethics built in. And that's never changed.

[00:24:51] What's more happened is individual stories on a case by case basis among some reporters, you know, kind of deciding to to move in a more one sided direction without a lot of kind of strong management. You were referencing that earlier in the context of how American journalism works.

[00:25:09] I think that's exactly how KUOW works. And so if an individual reporter or an individual editor wants to push an agenda, a personal political agenda on the air, they can kind of do it because there's just not that much oversight.

[00:25:20] And, you know, again, I'm not going to throw people under the bus, but I think there's there's a lot of examples of of stories that, you know, have been pretty one sided over, say, the last 10 years, which I attribute honestly to the rise of social media.

[00:25:32] We started listening to Twitter as if it was our audience, I think in ways that we hadn't previously. We you know, we were relying on letters to the editor and that sort of thing. And that represented a pretty big change.

[00:25:44] So first of all, we should say, David, you should say here, you just wrote a piece about this a couple of weeks ago, right? That was published in Post Alley, which talked about sort of your take on something.

[00:25:55] Look, I don't think there's any real Erika, you can argue with this all you want. I just don't think it's realistic to claim that there hasn't been a shift in American newsrooms and American journalism, whether it was social media or whether it was Trump.

[00:26:10] I mean, I think Trump broke a lot of things in America, including parts of the mainstream media during his tenure. And there had been a shift away from whatever you want to call it, balance and fairness towards a kind of moral, quote unquote, moral clarity argument, right?

[00:26:26] That, you know, journalists should just assert this or that is true. Right. Even when they're sometimes. Well, I think that what caused that, quote unquote, I mean, I don't know if it was a moral clarity, but a factual clarity argument was the era of Trump.

[00:26:40] And I think that there was a real reckoning among some outlets much more than others. But there was a discussion at least of like, when should we call a liar a liar? You know, and when should we stop saying like, here's the global warming is real.

[00:26:54] But let's give the liar a mic for, you know, for five minutes just to have equal air time. And obviously, my perspective and I think NPR perspective in general, I mean, NPR has always leaned slightly to the left compared to, you know, of the center in America.

[00:27:09] But I think if it's, you know, like we don't have to give the mic to people who support non-evidence based harmful, you know, solutions to homelessness, like let's lock everybody up or non-evidence based solutions to addiction, like let's force everybody to go cold turkey in jail.

[00:27:28] Like, I think that's a good thing. I think that's actually making a judgment about facts and maybe the facts, you know, sort of lean a little bit to the left ear solutions. But we don't have to give equal air time to every single point of view.

[00:27:41] I hear what you're saying there. And and I do think that was the internal argument, right, that Trump helped provoke, although it started before Trump, which was literally we should be taking sides. We shouldn't be, you know, sitting back on our heels.

[00:27:54] I don't even think that's taking sides. Well, it is compared to what the standards were previously. I mean, you're making an argument that, you know, the debate over homelessness in Seattle, that there is no debate, you know, that it's comparable to climate change.

[00:28:06] I'm not making that argument at all. No. OK, OK. I'm saying that you don't. I'm saying that there is a very loud faction in Seattle. And I know because I hear from them. There is a very loud faction of people who believe that the solution

[00:28:18] is to put everybody on an island or put them all in jail or do something along the lines of put them all in blank. And I don't think that we need to give voice to that. There are other people who say all kinds of other different things

[00:28:32] that are within the realm of reasonable solutions. But no, I don't think that like we need to give five minutes to the, you know, put him on McNeil Island person. Of course not. But but I think the AP style of approach does.

[00:28:42] But if you're going to be KUW and you're going to claim to be a kind of, you know, more more traditional kind of balanced news source, right, as opposed to openly kind of admitting you're an advocacy journalist.

[00:28:55] Then I think you may not have to talk to the to the fringes who says we should move all the homeless to an island. But to David's point, I think you do fucking have to talk to people who say, you know what?

[00:29:07] I don't agree with this. Stop the sweep shit. You know, because I think that that's leading to bad outcomes. And I don't get any sense that KUW is not talking to people who are on the other side of stop the sweep.

[00:29:20] I think they I think they moved in that direction for a while. I think David's right that they've sort of they're recalibrating now. I mean, I would have to see like any evidence of this except for vibes. Like I'm hearing vibes, but I'm not hearing any evidence.

[00:29:33] Well, you're hearing deep. You're hearing deep experience over a 20 year career. So and I'm not going to throw people under the bus. But I mean, I have plenty of specifics that I could point to, and I'm not going to. So that's not vibes.

[00:29:46] And that's insulting to call that vibes. Well, I was responding to Sunday, David, but I'm sorry that you feel insulted. Yeah, no, I do, because you keep telling me you keep telling me I'm full of shit. I have not said you're full of shit.

[00:29:57] If you think I'm attacking you, let me attack you just a little bit more, David, and say like, yeah, you mentioned having a 20 year career. I have a you know, somehow, you know, I've been writing and working in journalism, lefty journalism,

[00:30:09] to be to be clear since, you know, the 90s. And I think that sometimes as, you know, more experienced journalists, you know, just like anybody in any field, we can get calcified and say that the way we did it 20 years ago was better.

[00:30:22] And that is not always true. The old ways are not always better. I mean, newsrooms have barely gotten more diverse in the time that I've been, you know, working in the media. They've gotten a little more diverse. And I think that's a good thing.

[00:30:33] Standards have changed so that we use. I totally do too. I'm not saying you don't say these things, think these things, but I'm saying. Why are we changing the subject now to something else, which I which I think is worth talking about. But I'm talking about changing this.

[00:30:45] No, I'm not. I'm talking I'm talking about the way in which newsrooms have changed and newsroom standards have changed. And that happens over time. And like, you know, there was a time when people wouldn't use, you know, when newspapers wouldn't use people's preferred pronouns.

[00:30:59] And we do, you know, and everybody does that now. And that's a good thing. First of all, like 100 percent. One of the important things that's happened over the last 10 years is that KW has become much more committed to diversifying its newsroom, diversifying its sources.

[00:31:16] And this is what I meant by some of the stuff that Yuri Berliner said that I kind of disagree with. I don't really think this is connected to the question about whether or not the coverage has to be one sided.

[00:31:28] And again, what I'm suggesting is, is that there was never a total or complete shift where NPR stories or KW stories all became one sided. It's just that more of them became one sided. And you are kind of contradicting yourself because on the one hand,

[00:31:44] you're arguing that that's a good thing insofar as KUOW. I've never said being quote unquote one sided is a good thing. That's your word. Well, you don't like you don't like that characterization, but that's what I'm calling it. I mean, Publicola doesn't do one sided stories.

[00:31:59] So I think that's just I think that I think I think I think the stranger does one sided stories. Let's put it that way. I mean, look, Publicola has a point of view, but it's not like I'm writing about homelessness and not contacting the city.

[00:32:11] It's not like, you know, I'm covering addiction and not talking to, you know, Reagan. I mean, I was just at Reagan Dunn's, you know, addiction conference. You know, I mean, I understand that there are different perspectives. I guess what I would say is, Erica, I would say that,

[00:32:22] you know, from Ann Davison's perspective, you don't always give her a fair shake. That's not your role in Seattle. But I always contact her and ask her a list of questions. And if somebody does not call a journalist back,

[00:32:38] the journalist says, Ann Davison did not respond to our detailed list of questions. I reach out to those people. Let's not personalize it about Publicola. No, no, no. But I'm just saying, like, I think NPR does that too. I think NPR is different from Publicola.

[00:32:51] I think the standards are different. Do you disagree with that? I think the standards of, quote unquote, objectivity to the extent that NPR does objectivity are different. You do point of view journalism. Totally, totally. Absolutely. Yeah, I have a perspective.

[00:33:04] And NPR is not supposed to be doing point of view journalism. I think they have always had, like you say, a liberal bias in terms of the stories that they choose to cover. But, you know, if they're covering the Iraq War, like when I first started,

[00:33:18] they would talk to generals advocating for the Iraq War. And it's true, like times have changed and times could change. And, you know, when Donald Trump launches the next war or whatever, it'll be a real challenge to figure out, like, you know, how to how to cover that.

[00:33:33] I think, you know, not only have times changed, but the nature of news in the Trump, you know, post-truth era, whatever we're living in has changed. These things are real challenges. But again, like the standard of, you know, say in the Biden administration,

[00:33:49] talking to people who are advocates for the military is something that, you know, NPR used to do. And we would get all kinds of shit from listeners writing in, basically accusing us of being cheerleaders for the Iraq War.

[00:34:02] But this was the same network, as I wrote in the piece, that was also talking to, say, Noam Chomsky all the time. So, you know, this sort of general... Maybe that's why listenership is down. This sort of general hand waving about how things used to be different

[00:34:17] and you just want them to stay exactly the same. That's not my argument at all. But my question to you is, like, was that such a bad mix, you know, for NPR in the back of the day to be talking to

[00:34:28] views about the war in Iraq, ranging from Noam Chomsky to advocates for the war in Iraq? I would argue that that, you know, is a type of balance. And that type of balance, a sort of principle of balance,

[00:34:43] is something that, you know, NPR is still aspiring to today. And, you know, they could abandon that and sound more like democracy now or the nation and kind of not quote those generals. But that would be a different thing than what NPR does.

[00:34:58] I will say this, like, it seems to be clear agreement. Some kind of shift happened, whatever you want to term it, whether you want us to call it a shift towards quote unquote moral clarity or journalistic clarity or whatever. But there was a shift that happened away from,

[00:35:13] you know, what disparagement I guess called both sidesism, right? And, Erica, to your point about, well, times change and journalistic mores and journalistic culture has changed along with them. That's fine, except it's not fucking working, right? I mean, we started this conversation talking about

[00:35:30] why has the Washington Post lost half its audience? Why has NPR gone from 60 million weekly listeners to 42 million weekly listeners in the last four years, right? Why does every survey of Americans show that their trust in journalism is at all time lows, right?

[00:35:47] And when the New York Times wrote about the NPR issue, right after the Uri Berliner piece, they wrote a story that's well worth reading called Inside the Crisis at NPR. You go and read what New York Times readers' comments were on that story.

[00:36:05] Every single reader's pick comment, every person in the top 10 of them were all saying, NPR has changed and I don't like the way it's changed. And it's become too focused. Almost all of them actually said it's become too focused

[00:36:21] on this kind of shoehorning every issue through a prism of social justice to the point that one of the top... But Sonny, this is as bad as basing something on replies to your Twitter. I mean, we've given lots of reasons that every...

[00:36:35] Thousands of them are liking these comments. New York Times readers tilt more educated and more liberal, right? Than your typical American. And they're the ones who are waved... That's not evidence that this is the reason that every single newspaper in the entire country...

[00:36:52] I think there are a lot of reasons and we've talked about a number of them. I think it's hard to deny that there's been, at some of these journalistic institutions, that have gone in a more kind of left advocacy direction in the last few years

[00:37:08] and have seen significant declines in their listenership or their readership. Maybe it's correlation and not causation. But it's not like the move to moral clarity or whatever has paid some really tangible dividends. It's not like Trump might fucking win this November and get his sorry ass re-elected

[00:37:30] because significant numbers of Americans are dismissing what the media is trying to tell them about it. Well, that is a completely... I mean, you're tying mistrust in the media, long-term trends that go back 20 years and that continue to NPR being too woke. I mean, are you kidding me?

[00:37:46] Of course they're too fucking woke. I mean, they went super fucking woke. But to tie these things together is so disingenuous. Of course it is. You're ignoring what I'm saying, Sandee. You're just completely ignoring what I'm saying. I'm saying there are a lot of different reasons.

[00:38:03] I don't know that we have some obvious proof point. I grant you maybe it's not... The Wall Street Journal has lower leadership. A lot of other traditional liberals who have normie lib values as opposed to

[00:38:19] more modern left progressive values, some of the shit you hear on NPR has become a turnoff. It's just like why are they imposing... I mean, you're just repeating yourself. You don't like people talking about racial justice on NPR to the extent that you feel like they do.

[00:38:37] I'm fine with them talking about racial justice and the controversies around it. What I don't like is them dictating to me what my fucking worldview about racial justice should be. I mean, you're just talking at your ass. Fuck off! You can't give a single example.

[00:38:54] You want an example? So Mike Pasca, who now has a quite successful national podcast called The Gist, but was previously a sports commentator at NPR. Funny guy and I actually really like his podcast. After the Uri Berlinter piece came out a few weeks ago,

[00:39:11] he talked about this particular NPR show, right? Where this young NPR reporter is interviewing a TV producer and a guy who is pitching a TV show. And the entire TV show is that they put a camera on the outside of a slow moving train.

[00:39:31] So the entire show is just watching the slow moving train, the landscape roll by, you know, kind of in slow motion. And the reporter is talking to the producer and saying to him, well, you know that this show is really about white privilege, right?

[00:39:53] And the guy's like, no, it's not. No, it's not. It's about a camera on a fucking slow moving train. He doesn't say fucking, but he says it's a camera on a slow moving train.

[00:39:59] If you want to talk about those sorts of things, go to CNN and Fox News and book. And she just won't let it go over and over like, no, no, no, different races experience a landscape differently. And therefore your show is about privilege and you can't.

[00:40:14] And this is where Pesca weighs in. He's like, this is where he says NPR went fucking insane, right? Like when it started to take everything and try to kind of shoehorn it through this very particular view about sort of racial politics in America,

[00:40:31] that turns off a lot of people. Okay. So you're talking about something, an internal discussion that didn't become public until Mike Pesca wrote about it. I don't know if it's a show on NPR, but he, he, he cites it as a kind of exemplar

[00:40:44] of like, here's what the fuck went wrong. Right? Well, it's a very convoluted example. I don't entirely understand it, but I just, I don't think you have successfully tied the supposed wokeness of NPR to declining listenership because this is a national issue that has many, many causes.

[00:41:04] Again, their listenership has declined more than other radio, right? As they made this turn, as they made this cultural turn. Commercial radio is a shit show of people yelling at each other. So I guess they could do that. But, you know, I think-

[00:41:18] That sounds kind of like Seattle Dice. This is the answer. This is the answer right here. That's what they should be. They put us on fucking NPR, you know? Look at what's going on in Norway. We're ruling Norway, man. So come on. Anyway. All right.

[00:41:38] Well, you can read about it on Publicola and Post Alley, which is a publication here in Seattle, if you haven't heard of it. The readership is a lot bigger than you think, A. And your piece got a fair amount of readership. It's about diversity of voices.

[00:41:55] So any one of these examples, fine. But I think folks who have been listening for the last 20 years will have heard a bit of a change. But Eric is perfectly right. You'll also hear a lot of diversity of voices on the current KUOW. Thank you.

[00:42:12] You know, so it's just a question of whether or not this may have played a role at some point in the some of the declines that they heard. I want to make it really, really clear. Of course, a diversity of voices, right? And a diversity within the newsroom.

[00:42:27] Those things are really valuable and should be pursued. And to the extent that that's what these changes are about, that's great, right? I'm all for that, right? What I'm not for is taking controversial issues that are highly contested

[00:42:44] and for an allegedly kind of balanced sort of mainstream news outlet to sort of unilaterally decide what the right answer is on those and try to dictate that to their readers or listeners. Because I think people react badly to that.

[00:43:01] And I think that it's really important when we say controversial or things that are in contention. There are a lot of things that were in contention 20 years ago that were no longer in contention. And there are things that I think are very much still in contention.

[00:43:15] In my ideal little leftist world, there are certain things that would not be as debatable as they currently are. I think gay rights, I think on NPR, maybe not so much trans rights, but the LB and G part of the rainbow is not something where you would put

[00:43:32] a hateful person on the air to say that the LGBT or LGB people don't deserve rights. But I think there's trans rights are still contentious, women's rights are still contentious, and racial minorities' rights are still contentious. And I would like to get to a point where they're not.

[00:43:46] All right, that's it for another scintillating edition of Seattle Nice. She's Erika C. Barnett, he's Sandeep Kaushik. I'm David Hyde, our editor is Quinn Waller, and thanks everybody so much for listening. We love you, Norway! you