Good morning, I guess I have to stand up because of the thing Good morning everyone. Thank you so much for being here. My name is John Bracken. I run the technology innovation program at Knight Foundation First I just want to take a moment and thank New York Public Library for having us today I think you know for for at Knight Foundation for an institution that really values community engagement community involvement Access to and the skills needed to process and share quality information libraries are An even more important resource and civic treasure today than they were before so we I think the fact that we are able to be here It's really really appropriate So many of you were with us 18 months ago actually just first show of hands How many of you were at in Austin a year and a half ago or were news challenge judges on that news challenge? So about a year and a half ago Knight Foundation awarded 22 winners of the night news challenge Congratulations this you know after that conversation that we hosted at UT Austin We decided that was so valuable and it was such a lean into the national elections of 2016 We wanted to have a bookmark to close it and that's where we are today The question we asked during that news challenge was how might we better inform voters in increased civic participation? Before during and after elections so now we're in the after phase I think like many of you at Knight Foundation. We're in sort of the information gathering Consuming information active listening which Jennifer will talk about in a second part of the process and I think you know so much we're aware that so much of the attention and Energy focuses on the national elections at Knight Foundation being grounded in eight communities across the u.s. And The the needs and the opportunities that elections present for in community involvement are even more important at the local level So that's one thing that we'll definitely will be listening for and paying attention to today I want to thank our partners in that news challenge who have been with us through this chapter And now we're kind of closing this together Democracy fund Hewlett Foundation and the Reed Allen Foundation. I see representatives from two of those three here Thank you all you guys for being part of this and for providing funds for a lot of these winners I want to thank the Civic Hall team so much Danielle Andrew Mika and the whole team. Thank you I particularly want to thank from Knight Foundation Eva Pereira who's this we wouldn't be here today If it wasn't for Eva conceiving this driving this forward I Don't see her but she's might be off doing something there. She is I Also want to Point out at Knight Foundation org today. We're releasing a report Focusing on chat apps and their role in the election So you can find that there you can also find the author Aetan Oren is here. I think or will be here Aetan will be here So look for him This afternoon and lastly before I pass it to my colleague Jennifer and maybe I'll sit down as I pass it to Jennifer I want to share a quote that inspired us on this elections news challenge from Jack Knight Who's the reason we're all here? You're elected representatives at all levels are no better or worse than you deserve Well, well Good morning, everyone It's great to be back in New York City And at the New York Public Library and with our dear friends Andrew Rochet and Mika Sifri from Civic Hall. I first met Mika and Andrew at Personal Democracy Forum conference several years back and that's actually where I first met many people here in this Room so we're just thrilled to work with Andrew and Mika on this gathering here in New York today Thrilled that the first panel today will focus on listening that's one aspect of the of This election Coverage that has been much discussed since since November and we think that's a great place For us as journalists to begin and as a foundation that is committed to serving local information Needs, so one of the things that we're Inviting all of you to do today is to bring Your ideas about how Knight Foundation might better serve local information needs in the coming months and And years we have a lot to learn from this Election and we're gonna hear About much of that today We also are going to have lots of Discussions about trust and the importance of rebuilding trust in our communities for for journalism and I'm in the camp that the best way to Fight a lack of trust in journalism is to deliver stronger Journalism more relevant journalism more local investigative reporting that's going to have an impact on people's on people's lives I'm also really excited today that you're gonna get a chance to hear from Jameel Jaffer Who is the director of the Knight Institute for the First Amendment at Columbia University? Because of course one of the concerns that many people have and they had these very same concerns throughout the Obama administration About press freedom and public access to government records So we're going to have a lively discussion about that today But before I hand the mic over to Andrew again I just would love to invite you all to share with us your ideas on how to restore trust in journalism meet local information needs and Get people the information they need so that they will elect the officials they deserve Thank You Jennifer. Thank you John. Good morning everybody. I'm here to just give you some logistical information for the day first of all We're in the Salomon room into near public library to the third floor So if you've got anybody who's coming who's a friend or whatever, please give them that information so that they know There are bathrooms men's on the right women's in the back. Co-check is in the back the coach. I can also hold on to your Luggage if you're if you're carrying something heavy So please avail yourself of that. There'll be lots of time for breaks For everybody to get to know each other so we didn't just pack it filled with content We also filled it with time for you guys to get to know each other The reason why we do this is not just to share really great ideas But also for people to get to meet each other and to build community couple small notes about the program that I just wanted We made a slight mistake on a symposium on tech politics and media We forgot to put in the subtitle which the subtitle is now what? And then the other thing to tell you is that a free ticket to anyone who either gets retweeted or Gets attacked by Donald Trump from today's Twitter stream In any case we're here to actually have this as formal as this room is we really want to make this as informal as possible We've been trying to build a community around civic hall around people who believe that technology can be used with a good purpose and journalism and the Critical view of how technology can affect journalism and affect people's lives is something that we spend a lot of time on The brains behind today's program though and all the content in today's program is really my partner Mika Sifri who writes first post every day if you don't get it you should sign up for it and It's also the editor of Civicist which is our sort of our blog news blog that we publish with with Invited guests from time to time writing posts And so without further ado my partner in crime Mika Sifri will tell you about today's program Great. Thank you Andrew Thank you everybody So I just want to give everyone a little bit of background about The day and how it came together and and also why you're here This is a little bit of an experiment for us. We're really excited And thankful for the support from from our friends at night to be able to try this It's sort of like a mini personal democracy forum I assume a lot of you have been to one or more PDFs in the past maybe raise your hand if So okay fair number of you great Our next one is June 8th and 9th This year my god, it's 2017 But we doing something like this with really only about a hundred fifty invited guests and just one set of Panels one right after another is a different approach for us And we are hoping that this will actually allow for a higher level of meaningful conversation With the audience for each panel And also in the all the free time that happens around this we scheduled a really long lunch And as you can see there's plenty of place to sit and the whole purpose here is to help you find the others find the Other people who you need to talk to And you're gonna discover fairly quickly Lots of new connections that is the real work that we do here as we help people make meaningful connections Inspired by the the types of ideas and speakers you're about to hear from so that you can actually improve the work That you do or even decide to do something new with other people that you discover That's the secret sauce Now as far as the the program and I hope our first panel is getting ready to come up on stage behind me the Initial idea back when we started talking with John and Jen at night about doing this The our initial idea was to do a campaign post-mortem To literally try and get all the people who worked on Tech in the campaigns and around the election to come and talk about what they did and Luckily for us. We didn't lock that in until After after the election was over and we realized that We we needed to pivot a little bit and open up the program to cover more subjects Right so what we have here. We still do have a really excellent panel this afternoon on the role of tech in the campaigns It's an awesome group Representing people from both sides Which will be really interesting to hear from but with with the help of our friends from night We realized that it was important to look also at how people were trying to engage the public in other ways There are a lot of really interesting projects the people who won in the night news Challenger to come up and talk about in the panel on civic engagement in the 2016 election and Then working backwards from there to the first two panels this morning the first two panels really are about the situation that we're in now in terms of how the media affects Public perceptions of what's going on The first panel will probably be the most close to a postmortem on What happened with polling in the election and how can we improve how can journalism improve how it listens to the electorate? And then the second panel will go deep into this issue of fake news How does social media affect what kinds of information people get and what they trust and why and whether they're Fixes to that and then finally late in the in the whole process of programming this we thought we really can't Leave out the whole question of the future of the First Amendment the future of freedom of speech and freedom of the press There are threats there have been threats already To freedom of the press under the previous administration one might argue there were some serious challenges to access to information to Prosecution of journalists and whistleblowers and so on and this new administration certainly Raises some some very serious concerns So we have a great panel to end with that will help us think about how we protect those core freedoms As we head into the next four years. So with that I am so excited to hand the baton over to my friend Niko Melly Niko who I've known ever since Even before he was the webmaster for the Howard Dean campaign when he worked on Ariana Huffington's shadow conventions in 2000 When he was with Common Cause but Niko is now the new director of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard's Kennedy School Just coming off a stint as deputy publisher of The Los Angeles Times and so I'm gonna let him introduce the panel and we'll get going Yes, Mika knew me when I was a teenager. That is true I want to invite our panelists to the stage starting with Emily Nash who is the new executive editor of USA Today for the West Western region She currently lives in Des Moines. Is there anyone else in this room who lives in Des Moines? Is there anyone else in this room who lives in Iowa? Is there anyone else in this room who lives in a state that is adjacent to Iowa? Well, Emily, I think you have, yes Thank you for representing the Midwest Then I'm gonna invite Nate Silver from 538 to the stage and Finally Sally Busby the new executive editor of AP arguably the most influential person in American journalism Even maybe global journalism. How's that for an introduction? So we have an exciting panel this morning Listening deeply. How can journalists do a better job of reporting the whole picture and As I ascend to the stage here, I'm gonna ask my panelists for this opening question I think that the format here is I'm gonna ask them a few questions Hopefully we'll get into a deep and meaningful discussion We've decided for the first panel of the morning to excuse slides so that there will be no PowerPoint How will you ever pay attention? I do not know But but for the purpose of trying to get the panel into some some significant discussion And then about halfway through I will throw it open to some questions from the audience Assuming that all of you are of a sharp mind this morning and well caffeinated So to our esteemed panel I want to start by asking you How well do you think? Journalism as a as a profession or even your own media organizations listened to the public Listened to what was happening in the country over the last two years. We're almost exactly as Emily pointed out to me almost exactly one year ago today was the Iowa caucus Sally you want to take us away? That's a very great question. And obviously there's been a ton of I'm soul-searching by a lot of people since election There's two things that I have been sort of obsessively thinking about Since the election and they seem to fit this Theme very well, so I'll just kind of lay them out one of them is diversity in newsrooms the other is Polling quite quite a surprise. So on diversity in newsrooms what I would say is that As important and critical as racial and gender diversity are in newsrooms and as much work as we still have to do on These things there are other types of diversity that I also think are important and that this election and Campaign highlighted for us one of those is differences in outlook Differences in socio-economic status differences in the level of trust people have in institutions and one that I think is critically important in geographic diversity So let's just stipulate that there are too many reporters who live in Washington, DC and not enough reporters who live across America that is a fact for many many reasons It's it's hard to fight against my news organization does actually have a still a very robust state footprint And even we struggle with getting Geographic diversity into our mainline political coverage So if we struggle with it and we have a state footprint Then news organizations that are essentially based with most of their intellectual firepower in New York City, Washington And maybe LA or San Francisco are really going to struggle to understand what's really going on in the country We all know this it obviously is a huge issue many of the forces in the news industry are are pushing Against this and so you know, they're economic and and profit reasons why this is happening But the fact is that if we care about journalism that is that's a big problem. There's a lot of journalists in Washington There's not so many journalists anymore in every state. So my news organization did a very In-depth series of stories the main editor on that series. It was a cross-format video multimedia is here Brian Carvalano in the audience Feel free to talk to him called divided America that really went out and tried to capture what people were actually thinking Not just political insiders. We thought it was a very good nuanced Set of journalism. We thought that it didn't speak down to people. It tried to actually Capture what people felt especially disaffected people in the United States and why they felt it the real valid reasons They felt disaffection, but to be completely honest It did not get nearly the consumption that our horse race reporting from Washington got okay So part of that's probably our fault. Maybe we didn't promote it enough Maybe we didn't push it out there as aggressively as we pushed out our horse race reporting part of that is also because horse race reporting is very Clear and full of clarity the way that it is expressed in the United States and that is more appealing to consumers So that to me is issue number one the diversity of newsrooms the things that they focus on are an incredibly Important challenge in this country The second thing is polling and I know that Nate's gonna talk a lot about polling But I have a couple things that I want to say about it. I am neither a lover nor a hater of polls I am actually just a practical user of polls. Okay, so I think I come from this from a like a Somewhat common sense perspective polling is enormously valuable and it is obviously enormously attractive Okay We look at metrics every poll got way more attention than anything else that was going on in this campaign Whether you like it or not, that's what people pay attention to so what I'm interested in is making it as good as possible I'm interested in not overusing it So that it is only one tool in the journalistic toolbox, but an important tool But not 90% of the journalistic toolbox I want it to be a balance in the toolbox talk to real people have some accurate polling The other interest that I have is making it as good and accurate as possible So I see two weaknesses in polling right now One is the lack of state good state polling in the United States of America This would not matter if we had national elections But we have an electoral college state-based system whether we like it or not And so therefore if there's not good polling in Michigan if there's not good polling in Wisconsin If there's not good polling in Ohio, you don't know who's gonna win that election Journalism has obviously not done an adequate job of communicating that to folks. Okay, but let's be realistic for a minute The national polls at the end were fairly accurate Clinton won the national vote Okay, Trump won the election so the lack of good state polling which is almost entirely an economic issue Because local newspapers do not have as much money to pay for polling as they used to that is relevant for their state The lack of good state polling if I had research money, that's where I would put it. Okay The other thing that's really difficult is Capturing the intensity of voters. This is another way to express the absolutely long-term problem of the likely voter screen Who is actually going to go vote? Okay, and how when do they make up their mind? Do they make up their mind? Two weeks before the election or do they make up their mind? The day before the election or do they make up their mind while they're driving to the polls? Okay, that's a huge issue And there was a ton of polling in this campaign But if the election broke late and if some people who normally don't vote Decided to vote essentially either at the last minute or they never talked to pollers because it pollsters because they're disaffected people how do you capture that if you want accurate polling you have to address these two questions state-based polling and Capturing intensity capturing who is actually going to vote and that is you know and and the thing is we've done a lot of research We have a night grant That was actually looking at sort of exit poll alternatives The only reason we care about exit poll alternatives because what you really need to figure out in polling is people's sentiments Like right before they're going to vote. That's the key issue, especially when it's a confused and Chaotic electorate I would say so listening to people listening to people through polling is a critical challenge. I think also from my vantage point the polls have been unfairly maligned and in a way that I think At times a little bit dishonest by some Sorry By some news organizations to cover for other types of flaws in their coverage And I maybe agree actually on what some of those flaws are potentially The national polls in the end wound up being Pretty good the final polling average is a Clinton of three or four points nationally She wouldn't buy two points and change In the states a little bit more hit and miss Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania more of a problem the other states actually pretty decent on the whole So you're talking about an average performance for the polls that I think people were taking as a catastrophic failure So to me the question is not so much why the polls go so wrong I mean, you know you're talking about very precise numbers where Clinton wound up getting 48% of the vote and Trump If she had gotten 45 then we have a different president-elect And different story of the election, but to me the question is Reporters, modelers, analysts, anchors, pundits Why were people so convinced that Clinton would win when at least after the Comey letter other points the campaign Thank you. The polls showed a very close race and that's a complicated answer And I think part of it does have to do with With media groupthink and the fact that you have really a relatively small number of people That I mean, you know a couple dozen people that have a huge amount of influence on the way other newsrooms around the country behave We have a critique coming out beginning tomorrow. I think that looks mostly at At the times a little bit at the post and the journal, but as you've had media consolidation You've had fewer state polls. That's true You've also had fewer newsrooms that have the resources to to really do Groundbreaking stories that aren't in New York or Washington because there are some things now when you look back on them I mean, it was a widely held belief that the electoral college would help Clinton If you had read the average in your time story during the campaign to the average network broadcast Might be different if you've read in a p-store. I don't know But you know, you would have thought that if the popular vote was closed that was An advantageous situation for Clinton and of course the reverse was true. We had the biggest split since 1876 I do wonder how much of that is because If you're in a newsroom in New York or or Washington, then you tend to think of cosmopolitan America as being kind of your normal anchor. You don't realize when you actually do the math There are a lot of white voters without college degrees in the Midwest. I'm from the Midwest I'm from Michigan originally and Michigan is not seen as a forward-looking state But Michigan's off and on the vanguard when there's change in the country, believe it or not, right from from Reagan To in the primaries Trump and Sanders both won Michigan And then of course mission was a pivotal state in November And you can read articles where people would send the New York Times would send a reporter to Ohio And they'll say oh, this is interesting that Ohio there's so many Trump supporters here But Ohio is part of a vanishing America, right? which is kind of a Gross attitude to have to begin with but also kind of wrong analytically where in some ways because whites without college degrees are a little bit over represented in Hispanics and Asians are underrepresented in the electoral college In some ways Ohio still is kind of a bellwether for for the problems that Clinton would have elsewhere And Iowa too, Iowa is a state where you do have a very good state poll You have the Des Moines Register poll which showed Trump up by seven points a couple of days before the election One of the best polls in the country people kind of compartmentalized that and said oh, it's no big deal, right? Well, usually it is a big deal when a candidate is losing by seven points in in Iowa And the polling evidence didn't certainly unanimously suggest that Clinton was in great shape and the Midwest kind of is what did her in ultimately But you know, yeah, look, I do think Diversity of skill sets geographic diversity is a part of this in some ways Analysis of polling can be an end around to this because polling is a way to talk to regular people But again from my viewpoint if you go back and look at how the campaign was covered people were We're taking very ambiguous interpretations of the polling and taking it to me and then Clinton was was a sure thing or almost a Sure thing You know, you mentioned to how there's not as much ambiguity in horse race reporting That's one reason why news organizations like it. There actually needs to be more Ambiguity in a sense right people need to find more ways to express Uncertainty we do it with probabilities, right? So to some people we say well Trump has a 30% chance and they'll say wow, that's pretty high We get that some people say well that means Clinton has a 70% chance and 70 30, you know That's a landslide. So that's our bugaboo is probability But you know if you look at the verbiage that that reporters use to There's not a premium on Precision with wordcraft right and there's not a premium on on figuring out how to explain Nuances of the Electoral College. It's kind of you know an emphasis on storytelling and narrative Which can be helpful in some contexts, but sometimes people get wrapped up in the narrative and they lose the subtlety and they start to have different facts come in and confirm their biases So I think there are real challenges obviously that the horse race Brings up You know, but I think part of it is kind of thinking about elite bubbles and how can polling help or or hinder that? so Emily from From Iowa from Des Moines. What was your assessment of how well? Your institution did and the institution the other kind of in the other organizations and journalism did in terms of covering This race and the American people the last 24 months Well, I think both of them make some really good points in terms of group think in the media and sort of the over reliance on polling and I think one of our challenges also is to Find audience to care about more than the horse race So I think that a lot of our organizations did do a pretty good job of talking to voters Understanding what they were interested in understanding sort of the phenomenon We did a project where we deeply looked at eight different counties across the country in terms of where they were leaning the Demographics various things and those stories did well They certainly did well, but they didn't do as well as the stories out of polls on the horse race They didn't do well as the stories on whatever Trump was tweeting that day And so, you know, it's a real challenge for us moving forward as well because obviously there's again a lot around Just sort of the activities of the day in making it relevant to people's lives and helping them understand why that's important Why they should care about that information. I think you've probably seen a lot in terms of How much money the New York Times is investing now in coverage of the administration as well as the bulking up of the Washington press corps at the post and various other places and so then our challenge becomes how are we in these Communities and reporting on what's going on on the ground across America and what these policies are having and What effect they're having on people's lives around this country the people who are interested in this and don't feel like the Media reflects them because too much is based in Washington And how do we do that in a way that readers are really going to care and respond to that because we can do a good Variety of both but we can't make people read things if they're more interested in sort of the horse race And so I think that's gonna be one of our challenges that we're gonna have to overcome as figuring out a way to make a lot of this Coverage more relevant and feel more relatable and representative of people from across the country So I want to take us back for one minute to 1988 the 1988 presidential race This was before the internet really existed in any meaningful way It's really in the early days of cable television where cable television is pretty small audience share You know and it's really at the heyday of newspapers when they were among the most profitable companies you could own in the United States and the Shorenstein Center was in its infancy and Marvin Kalb the director commissioned a big study on Mainstream media coverage of the 1988 presidential race and I want to read to you the second to last paragraph of this study From 28 years ago The press has generally adopted too much of an insiders approach to campaign coverage The insiders perspective is rooted in an overemphasis on the most obvious and enticing part of the campaign The horse race drama of which candidate ahead is ahead and who is likely to win Horse race coverage leads to more stories about campaign strategy than about substance or the state of the of the public The spread of a multitude of new polls including those commissioned by news organizations themselves have Substantially contributed to this trend So when I looked back over like I'd say the academic literature of the last 30 years of political campaign coverage you see this this insane march and pressure towards more polls towards more horse race coverage towards just a overwhelming focus and That some that that doesn't seem to me to be likely to abate and I wonder I wonder what each of you how you think about that how you think about your roles as leaders in organizations and shaping the news and What what we can do about it and just as an asterisk I wonder How many of the journalists covering this election will still be on the electoral beat in 36 months when the next election really starts to get going again and How much is transferred or simply is lost in that twice a decade we have a presidential election? So I mean these are exactly the questions that we have been somewhat obsessively asking ourselves since that I mean it's So first of all I want to say that I do think that some Political insider coverage is actually critical because you have to have some reporters and this might be a little too nitty gritty But I'm just gonna lay out my thinking you got to have some reporters who can talk to campaign strategies You have to have people who are good source reporters who can get in there and figure out what the campaigns are doing To me it is a question of balance Do we have too many of those people and not enough of people who are out Trying to talk to people about issues, especially issues that are subterranean and may not be obvious Okay, do you have people who are out there in? geographically diverse communities and talking about you know, what is the country divided? What does that mean? Are we really capturing what so it's not that you don't need Really strong political reporters you do but you need that is one part of the thing to me I really this whole thing we talked about this obsessively in our newsroom We constantly talked about throughout the whole campaign. Are we doing too much horse race? Are we too reliant on polls? Do we have enough issues coverage out there? We did a massive issues package, which we sent out to every Literally almost every news organization in the United States of America. It got very little play I have had a lot of self questioning about whether we presented it Attractively enough. I think Emily is making a really good point. I mean how am I is my issues coverage boring is my You know coverage of the country boring and is my horse race reporting Presented more attractively and then do I need to work on that? That's a critical critical issue for me going forward I do think that the I just can't the the the financial pressures in the industry are Intensifying this drumbeat technology is also adding to it technology can be an empowering force It can also intensify this trend. Okay, so I think the economics of the industry and I think technology are both Radically accelerating what has been a trend for many years. That's a problem. That's something we all need to dig in and figure out How to help with I think Nate raised a fabulous point I see it slightly differently than he did but this attractiveness of our presentation issue is also relevant in polling To me the problem in polling everybody well not everybody but most highly skilled reporters who deal with polling know enough about it to know That there is a lot of uncertainty in it and that precision is important But for some reason we are not communicating that adequately to our readers and viewers However, we're talking about it the little Methodological box we use the little the little, you know boilerplate language that we use margin of error Margin of error is one source of polling error one source There are numerous others if you're not capturing likely voters correctly That's another massive source of polling error one of the things we are trying to do and I would love for there to be Research and help on this issue is how can we actually communicate to normal people who are not? statistics experts the the validity and the Uncertainties in polling in a much more visceral and accurate way okay part of it is the precision of the language But if I'm not a numbers person that the precision of the language doesn't necessarily help me I need to somehow get out of this box and explain to people that this is one tool in the toolbox with Drawbacks, and I don't think the language we use right now is effectively doing that so Um So a couple points one is I think it is interesting if you talk about How quickly reporters are transitioned into and off of the campaign beat? Where look if you have a model based on history in some ways you're using history as a guide And so you need having a longer reference point is helpful You have a lot of reporters who are reporting the campaign that covered 2012 if it wasn't their first campaign Maybe 2008 right and those are both years where the polling was pretty accurate both years where the Democrats surged at the end of the Democrat one obviously But go back to 2000 not that long ago 2000 is a campaign that has a lot of parallels to 2016 where you had a Fairly popular two-term Democratic incumbent exiting an improving economy a sort of wooden Successor that didn't have the kind of affection that the incumbent generated very much a Opponent who ran and there are a lot of differences between Bush and Trump obviously But who ran more on culture than anything else in a deepening kind of red-blue divide right and then look what happened You actually had a Republican who won the popular or lost popular vote won the electoral college that very clear analogy to 2000 was lost I think because people were so steeped in the last in the last two elections really But you know broadly I mean we at 538 come out in a slightly weird place Whereas on the one hand, you know, we embrace horse race reporting. We think there's an appetite for it we think there's a lot of room to improve how it's done on the other hand we kind of disdain in Insiderism and sure if nobody at all talked to the Clinton campaign and the Trump campaign And then that would be a really useful beat for someone to do But I think the balance there at least in campaign reporting is way off And you know you talk about group think I think part of the thing that happened is that you had a Clinton campaign Of course telling reporters Sure, we feel good about our position a lot of their traditional Republican sources were kind of never Trump Republicans And so that led to an imbalance I think And the Trump campaign had number one frostier relationships with the press and number two talk to them They were smart enough to know that we didn't necessarily want people saying that we're gonna win the election, right? Our voters might be more likely to turn out if they feel like we are the underdogs And we're being maligned and counted out by the press and so I think the kind of insider method of reporting Failed a little bit in this election a little bit well, I'm trying to be I'm trying to be somewhat polite I mean I'll play devil's advocate on the point of turning over sort of members of the media On the campaign trail I think that it is really important to have people that understand that historical context But I also think it's important that you have fresh eyes to look at this as well And that it is a good thing in some cases because I think the Insidery thing happens pretty quickly when you start covering the politics beat and you get sort of dragged into that So a lot of the people that I heard that were absolutely Convinced the Clinton was gonna win the campaign were longtime Political journalists who had in their ears, you know people from from Washington, you know insider saying there's absolutely no way That Trump is gonna win this election And so I think pretty quickly you start to report on that inside baseball And you start to really listen to what your sources are saying and you're reporting more for them Than you are for the average public And so I think it is important to have some turnover in terms of the people that are covering it So that they're working harder to cultivate the sources so that they're still connected to the communities that they covered Previously and so that they're asking the questions that are on people's minds instead of having too much Washington You know permeating their thinking so I want to get into what seems like some ways at the heart of the challenge here that That there is You know part of what you're saying is there's a lot of polling, but the polling is pretty accurate and the real problem in some sense is the culture of reporting around those polls and I'm I'm I'm Sally. I'm hearing you say yeah, but there's actually a lot of demand from the audience to have a lot of Horse race coverage. It's it's clear. It's easy to follow Maybe even it lends itself to the kind of clickbait headlines that perform well digitally and I'm just wondering how What what ways what are some things that you might do in your own newsrooms or that that we might do as an industry That would incentivize us away from Kind of reporting that I think there's some consensus is damaging that the balance is wildly out of whack And yet people want more of it I think those are those are all very good questions. I think there's a couple things Again, I care about two things I am a bit of a pessimist and I don't actually ever think we're gonna wean the country totally from polling Okay, so that's why I actually care and I don't even think that's a good thing I think it's an important tool in the toolbox. Okay, I just think the balance is badly out of whack and much of that is I mean Nate says, you know It's not Precise but for the casual viewer It is a much clearer thing to latch on to you to figure out what's going on then a nuanced story about issues Okay, so it is it is enormously the appetite is big and real It's like it's in hardwired in the brain You want to know just tell me what's going on and that's what horse race polling does okay even if that's not true And accurate so I'm a little bit of a pessimist that people are never gonna want to see polls It is out there. So that's why I care about making them as good and accurate as possible and communicating them well and Making sure that if we stick with an electoral college system that we actually then have good polling in Michigan and Wisconsin and Because you know, I mean if that's the way elections are decided then you got to have accurate information about the states that Time after time matter. Okay, so that's issue number one to your question Which is how do we do this in newsrooms? And I do think that this is I feel like this lesson is probably learned every you know 16 years, I think there's a really good thing I want to keep the institutional knowledge in my newsroom that polling is Can just you know it can whip you right? It's a powerful tool But it can whip you and you need to treat it with absolute Caution and care and you need to be as smart as you can and you need to deeply understand it And you need to figure out how to communicate it accurately to people Even if they're even if they're only reading four or three paragraphs of your story or paying attention to 30 seconds Right, because if all they're doing is clicking on the headlines then my little methodological graph at the bottom of the story is not doing anybody any good so Teaching and talking about this transparently in our newsrooms is critical. And so do you think kind of How do you think about the numeracy and I'd say you could say the statistical literacy of your newsroom your report? That's a great question. I mean that has traditionally been a problem in in You know some media. I actually think that we have very good. We have very good People they are a very thin top level. I would say or a very thin. I don't mean top level But you know a very thin slice people who have good Whatever you call it methodological or or data like really understand the weaknesses and the strengths of data are a very Small slice. I think of the US media industry Most people understand that that is something they want to build It has been as you all probably know relatively difficult to integrate people with those skills Effectively into newsrooms so they're I mean effectively so that they're not just in a corner by themselves But they're actually helping make the decisions. I feel like we actually had The numeracy Skills in our newsroom. I don't feel that we lack that I feel that we don't get them down to Does every political reporter understand what a dangerous weapon and I mean that in all its strength and all its weaknesses Polling is no obviously they don't so I think that's a huge thing I mean when I go out and talk to journalism schools I say please please please please please we need people who understand numbers and understand statistics I don't care if you teach them You know trigonometry, but can you please teach them statistics? Please please please please please please teach them statistics Like serious grounded academic statistics The news industry needs people who understand statistics you know Nate I was Or I'm surprised on this panel actually that cable television hasn't come up yet And so I wondered if you had any comments or thoughts about the world cable television plays in You could say the presidential campaign coverage industrial complex. I Mean, you know, we've talked most about the general election I think in the in the primary cable television was a huge asset to Trump and he kind of figured out that Hey, you have 17 candidates being in the news Is a really good thing because attention is a scarce resource and so, you know I thought the cable coverage was very important during the primary in the general election I'm a little bit less sure and I think maybe cable can be a little bit of a scapegoat And in the sense, I thought the problems were fairly pervasive with coverage So you mean beyond just cable the problems of the coverage were you know, yeah I'm a little bit absorbed in this kind of report We're doing that focuses mostly on on the times frankly And so, you know, I do think sometimes people are pointing fingers at the kind of style of cable television Which I don't love but the substance of the horse race reporting Was pretty bad at a lot of very prestigious papers that were happy to point fingers at cable news after the fact But you know one thing I don't like about cable or kind of the media in general these days is the kind of quick hit mentality where You know, we have found that to convey uncertainty to readers to convey a probability Then to have a continuing dialogue with them really helps What happens in October November of an election year is you get some huge spike in audience with whom you haven't had that dialogue They're encountering your coverage in a fairly superficial way and I don't know, you know It's almost like I want to tell readers that hey You have to pass some like stats test to see the numbers unless you've read 538 dating back to June or something But you know, I do worry about Social media channels that decontextualize stories It's a little different with the AP because they're used to having their copy appear in many papers And so it's kind of designed around that But for 538 it's very kind of graphics Intensive it's intensive and not using jargon But in assuming the reader knows certain things that may be an average reader wouldn't and that they've read our coverage before And if you take a 538 article or any article and put it on Facebook or on Google where there's not the context around it and Links are de-emphasized and everything else then then you lose that and that's a little bit of a challenge I think Emily what do you how do you think about? You know the title of this panel is listening deeply How do you think about listening deeply in in reporting beyond polling or in addition to polling? What other what other kind of tools do you have your reporters have and what other kinds of tools do you think we need? Well, I think beyond polling that panels are important So we put together a panel of you know Various people that have different backgrounds and different political leanings and everything else to be able to regularly ask them questions And get their feedback on things so it's not simply you know having a researcher ask somebody some poll questions But to be able to actually interview people and find out what's going on to help inform some of the news coverage So in some cases these are sources and in other cases They're simply people that we have an opportunity to talk to and so I think a lot of our reporting needs to try to Focus on more of the individual level so get down to how these Policies and everything are having an effect on people's lives So I think those are important tools really listening and spending time and being in those communities embedding deeply We have a lot of newsrooms in a lot of communities And so we have the opportunity to talk to a lot of people and to do that But to Nate's point I think that it is really sort of important to think about when I think about cable TV and other aspects That's how do we sort of? You know in in this day and age you have the ability to really segregate what you want to read And so the experience is a lot different than it previously was when you picked up the newspaper And of course you could decide what you wanted to read or you could tune things out on TV But at this point you can set up an entire Experience around your news consumption that only feeds into what you already believe to be true And I'm not even talking about fake news which is a whole different subject But just you know we were talking about people's Facebook experiences being so different in the election if all of my friends are Trump supporters If all of the coverage that I'm reading is pro-trump then I'm sitting there thinking of course he's gonna win this election Everything I'm seeing is indicating that you know he is you know Getting a ton of momentum here and everything else whereas if I have a completely different experience and I'm reading editorials that are Blasting Trump and I'm you know my friends are all Clinton supporters and everything then I do that So we have these echo chambers that we have to overcome and so that's gonna be a big piece when we talk about listening deeply and You know being part of communities. How do we help bridge that divide? And what does that look like from a technological standpoint from a news coverage standpoint everything else when we have such a divided sort of ability to consume our news in different ways now So speaking of 1988 I'm now going to do my best Phil Donahue impression and Take questions from the audience and if there aren't none I will ask questions of our panel from the audience Here we go I'm Roger McDonald from the Internet Archive and first thing I got to say 538 did some cool reporting was sending for I today out into the field Didn't just hang out with polls, which was really exceptional I'd like to go back to something you mentioned about clickbait and clickbait journalism. It's clear that The TV got hooked like crazy. I'd love to have you both comment on AP Des Moines Register now USA today about that temptation to go for that crazy statement and not contextualize Deeper than that Yeah, you want to see this? Okay? Yeah, it's a huge challenge. I mean, I feel like we're pretty conservative in the sense that we Aren't as clickbait driven as many news organizations are but I feel that in general that is I mean Nate answered half of the cable television Question, I mean the ratings of local broadcasters and cable television go up dramatically around elections It's actually a very lucrative Cycle for them, which is perfectly fine, but it does mean, you know that there's Commercial pressures on the kind of coverage that you do that's obviously happening online and in social media also What we are trying to do and I can only give you you know, I'm sorry the answer for my news organization is use metrics intelligently and not have them replace journalistic instincts but guide them, you know I mean we use them on if there's headlines that are dull and we think the underlying Stuff is good then jazz up the headline a little bit while keeping it accurate To try to pull more people in it they give us they give us information about how long people are interested in things like You know an earthquake in Haiti. When does the interest tail off that doesn't mean we stop covering it But it does help us inform, you know, like this crisis has come I mean, I think Trump's morning tweets are a perfect example of this The flag, you know, the flag burning should be outlawed or whatever There's no indication that he has any intention of trying to change the policy on flag burning in America And yet he is going to talk about it Okay, so what is our responsibility as journalists to both pay attention to that because he's gonna be the president in the United States in two years and I mean two days and what he says is important Okay, but also to also contextualize that and say there's no indication that anybody in the Justice Department is planning to refight the flag burning thing before the Supreme Court and so what is said versus what is actually being done is going to be a challenge in covering the Trump administration and Not being slaves to clickbait is a huge huge challenge for the whole industry. I think that You know, it's the it's the ongoing struggle and we're trying to be as mindful about it as we can but every news Organization faces those challenges. So, you know, give them feedback Give them feedback and I think balance is really important, too So when we talk about what we're doing, yes We want to represent the things that are getting attention like morning tweets and things But that we want to exert more energy and resources on the things that we're doing that are unique because in some respects A lot of clickbait is simply stories that all of us have and people are finding them through Searches and things like that. So what do we offer that's different? And then how do we sort of marshal our resources around trying to promote those and get those other Stories that have more context have more deep reporting in them to sort of go viral in different ways by putting our own Social media channels and promotion behind those while also offering some of the other stuff that we know readers are also interested in A lot of Brightman with New America and thank you so much for such an interesting panel I wanted to ask the question based on Amelie's last comment before questions, which was around really curating your own stories, opinions, news that you're getting and therefore not getting anything else and I'm wondering whether with the technology changes that are coming and that are here and potential different business models if large alphids, whether it's USA Today or AP, you know or others can address that sort of I guess fight against it and in order to broaden the readership or Also, perhaps use it in some way to leverage all those Local stories that you're not getting kind of back to what Sally was saying before because those are coming whether fake or not Are coming from so many different parts of the country Yeah, I think you the on the people on this panel both USA Today and more largely, you know It's network and AP are pretty focused on trying to do that There are I would say that I would I would answer that a couple ways, you know, we are interested in Talking with any new distribution or folks who are getting into, you know new ways of delivering news because I think that That is the old models are sort of dying and the new ones are sort of informed So it's a very chaotic. They're not informed there's many of them, but they're very diverse and diffuse and Which ones are going to live the most robustly is still pretty unclear, right? So we're trying to attack as many of those as we can and be in as many of those places But there's a little bit of a shaking out period that that could last for a very long time Who knows and so that's one of the challenges But I do think that most I think we're very focused on that I think the other thing we try to say that we're not giving up on any audience I mean my my theory is we're not giving up on any audience We are we are going to keep our news reports so that is is accessible for anybody of any opinion of any background and that is Very counter to what a lot of news organizations are doing whether that's right or wrong is not for me to say But there are more partisan news organizations in the United States And so I do think that there is some there's going to be some value to the globe not just the United States But to the globe to have people who give up on no audience who say we're not just trying to track this audience we're actually trying to provide information all audiences and I Think you put your finger on a really smart thing But I think there's a lot of chaos and shaking out around it that that is still going on and may go on for ten years I'm just not sure I Think this sort of gets at the question, but goes down a little bit of a different road to as you sort of talk about Delivery and sort of the models we've been having a lot of conversations about sort of the role of opinion content when it comes to What we're producing on a daily basis, so what is the role of the editorial in this day and age? It used to be very easy to sort of differentiate that you'd open the newspaper There'd be the opinion page you understood that that was different from news coverage and because everything is sort of bled together in the way that we You know now consume news we've had a lot of discussions on is this harming or helping us when it comes to the public and when It comes to trust and so you know for instance in Des Moines We wrote an editorial back in July of 2015 So this was only a month or two after Trump got in the race Urging him to drop out of the race It was very strongly worded it said it was time to end to his bloviating side show and it was after his comments on McCain and it got a lot of attention nationally Trump responded back called us a failing newspaper It turned into this back-and-forth We were the first new news organization to get cut off from his campaign in terms of covering events and everything and so There was a lot of attention around this but it also gave a lot of attention to our coverage in general so the idea of How can you be unbiased and cover this campaign accurately when you've already come out and said get out of this race We don't think you're a serious candidate and of course that was the editorial board that's separate But in a lot of ways it really sort of influenced people's thinking around what we were doing and the news coverage We were providing and that sort of feeds into what we've talked about in terms of distrust of media And so what does that look like going forward and how do we handle opinion content? We always have thought as journalists that we're thought leaders in the community We have an opportunities to have access to people and so we can form opinions and then give those to the readers But I think in this day and age It's an interesting conversation to figure out how you do that and what that looks like as we talk about distrust and sort of different ways of consuming news and all of that I'm Tina Rosenberg. I am co-writer of a column in the New York Times called fixes and also co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network I think that this has been a very interesting discussion about Polling and how to cover the presidential campaign But I think we would all agree that listening deeply is is a larger question than that And the existential crisis that journalism is going through now on top of our economic crisis Is more than just did what why did why were we so wrong about who was going to win the election? And I wanted to ask you to talk about not just new distribution methods and and and platforms For news, but what are you thinking of in terms of? What the news is what is the content of what we're doing? How can we make it relevant to people so that they? They want to buy our product I mean to me the biggest failure in the in the campaign was not that we got We missed that Trump was gonna become president of the United States But there was a story in the Times about a woman whose son Had leukemia and was covered because of the Affordable Care Act, but she Didn't like the Affordable Care Act because she said it's gonna kick him off when he's 26 And she didn't get that in fact the reason he has coverage up till then was the Affordable Care Act So many people right now are saying gee we had no idea what it was and now we don't want it to go away That's a failure How do we change the content of what we're covering? What is news and how do we make it more relevant to our audience? I Think that's a really good question And I think so I the way that I have been thinking about that But it may be somewhat narrow and probably needs to be more expansive But I think there are a lot of journalists now one of my worries about journalism is that a lot of people? And this is especially in Washington, but I think it is it is relevant across to do do Do more I don't even know I'm gonna say blogging, but I don't mean anything against blogging as a technological platform I just mean that they are they're taking information and they are Discussing it okay, which is good which is good But I feel like there's a little bit of a vacancy of people who actually know how to go out and talk to people and report I want to make sure that we're still infusing our organizations with people who know how to go out and get primary information and know how to You know tell stories and just not and not just comment on things that are out there, okay So that's one that's a little off of what you're saying But I think it's relevant to some of the examples if if journalism in the US becomes just a Commenting mechanism rather than a coming up with primary infamy this goes to what Jennifer said about investigative reporting But it's not just investigative reporting. It's explanatory reporting. It's all that kind of stuff It's it's actually surfacing that you know The people in this country were really obsessed about job growth even though the economy was improving Okay, and so that you can't really there's no I see no replacement for that except having People who know how to go out and talk and listen to people. I call those people reporters You can call them whatever you want But people who are able to talk to people illicit information from them illicit information from documents and explain it in accessible ways regardless of whether that's visually or You know tech space is really to me the challenge And if we could if we could make sure that we were paying attention to that as much as we should be We're not going to solve all the problem you're talking about but we would be making good progress toward it I do think I do think there's a challenge inherent there that while on the one hand in some sense the purpose of reporting is listening and and really understanding what's happening and providing context and reporting out On the other hand, there's real economic pressure and frankly audience pressure To cover things differently. Yes, right You know at the Sournessy Center we did a two-year study of major media coverage in the election cycle and the overwhelming majority of Coverage in the general election the stories were negative. It didn't matter what the topic Negative and and that's part of that is I think reporting values taking a critical eye towards things And that's appropriate part of that is that that the audience wants more of that But it's it's it's a real challenge to listen and report in an honest way in the context of Audience demands and economic imperatives. Yeah, and I also think I mean there is still We all know this and it's I mean one of the benefits of journalism Journalism is that it presents things sharply as you said One of the downsides of journalism is that it can it can it can present everything as a confrontation or as a combative approach I mean, you know explanatory journalism, which is I think something that everybody here is basically talking about But explanatory journalism presented very Accessibly and attractively, okay, and I'm using attractive is you know not clickbait, but like I gotta be in people's that Let me use a completely non-election example. Okay, we did this unbelievably fabulous Series a couple years ago about People in Southeast Asia who? You know harvest shrimp and are basically held in essentially slavery conditions And I it was presented actually very excessively very attractively and got a ton of attention. There is a Little aggregator online very clever visually who took it and turned it into a like about a 32 second Kind of vid graphic kind of thing And got a ton of play out of it right and stole our content But hey who cares, you know, but but really presented it in a way that would actually like I know nothing about this story I hit on that right that caused me a lot of soul-searching. Maybe we should have done that Maybe that should have been another entry point into our content I want people to consume the rich deep nuanced reporting But maybe I need to present it to them in a 32 second vid graphic that is going to pull in a you know 19 year old nothing against 19 year olds, okay? I like them a lot But I mean, you know these guys did that and they got more more play more more consumption of our richly reported thing And that has caused me a lot of soul-searching. What does my organization need to do to really be where people actually consume information? We know people want information. Are we presenting it in the right ways? Is it too combative? Is it too dry? Those are relevant questions Anyone else on the panel? No back here Hey My name is Lucas Welch. I run a project called the pluribus project and my question I think is in the same vein as Tina's. Did I get the name right? I'm curious to what extent there are discussions or whether you on the panel see your role as Journalism shifting not at the expense of but to beyond just disseminating content and to facilitating conversation so that the It's not as it's both a product, but it's also an experience I think this is one of the the potentials we have with the new tools and Admittedly, I would suspect that Many of the early experiments in this have not led to very constructive discourse I think the comment section or what happens on social media is not The type of public discourse we'd like to see more of but we're still in the infancy in this and I'm just curious How much you see your role as really the broader discourse that your information fuels and not just the content itself I? Think that there's a huge huge role for that as well And I think that that's really important We're doing a series at USA today called healing America and it's really designed to figure out what the divisions are how to bring people together and how to Sort of facilitate Conversation around that and so I think you've seen a lot of journalism become more interactive with the audience whether it's online or in Person so you know we did a lot of different engagement things around the caucuses where we tried to bring people together To have conversations and talk about issues you see a lot more ability to sort of do interactive things like a Candidate match game even where you're saying I agree with this issue or here's my feeling on this issue And then it tells you here's the candidate that you align with the most to get people sort of thinking in different ways about the issues as Opposed to the person and so I think that you know the analysis the sort of Different ways that we can report things that get down to the individual level as well as you know sparking some of those Discussions is going to be a really important component of what we do moving forward I mean we also are enormously interested in that there are because we provide content to publishers who then Republished it we have some Particular challenges around that but I mean I would think I would say first of all there has been a mindset change in our newsroom Where we don't really think of it as the audience that we're lecturing I mean we try I'm sure there are people in my newsroom who still feel that way I'm not saying that but I mean I feel like the interaction capability and the learning from You know, I don't even like to call it our audience I know that's that you know learning from people and Reenriching the journalism to me is one of the most fascinating things going forward I do think that some journalists feel burned by the Negativity or the you know, whatever the nastiness quotient which is real and is is is very Hard to deal with you know, I mean honestly emotionally. It's very difficult to deal with that doesn't mean we have to get past that And still try to aim those things. I know we've been doing some conversations with APME about a way to have You know conversations with APME members, which is just just a group in the US that is a bunch of local news organizations And provide content that will allow local conversations and stuff like that. So I think it's a really rich area to explore She occurred on docu nexus. So I I completely agree that polls are enormously attractive to the average audience and That it's hard to represent The uncertainty and ambiguity through a disclaimer box people don't read that Might it make more sense to represent? this kind of uncertainty and ambiguity in a graphical form and Integrate that with the results the graphical form of the results of the poll so for instance just a suggestion if you Represent the result of the poll through bar charts You might make the bar charts jagged for instance to represent the degree of uncertainty If you think the poll is unreliable Historically you might put holes in the bar chart or some such thing my idea is my point is would it Make more sense to represent this graphically rather than just through what is seen as a disclaimer and more or less ignored I think it's an excellent point. I you've talked mostly about this I think that we are engaged in exactly that kind of conversation to figure out how can we do this going forward that is more I'm using the word visceral. I just mean it that way that I just need this to be like front and center for people yeah, I mean, you know Visual design is crucial here, and I think for complex types of statistical information You have a better chance you can certainly screw it up You have a better chance of communicating correctly through visualization than through words and numbers alone By the way, this is a problem I think if you look at television where we will have some we think beautifully designed very subtle chart and it goes on TV and All the subtlety gets taken out of it, right? So that can be a problem a little bit too and we think kind of you know video is a medium that and you know Talking head news clips. That's a very hard medium in which to convey Uncertainty by the way, I do think some of where the kind of audience engagement sort of use that term has gone But I think that partly accounts for the success of podcasts and to some extent for some news organizations live events too Because common sections are a cesspool, you know that once you cover certain topics race gender religion, right? Once you get to a certain size of audience the common section just is not going to be very useful Social media, I mean I'm still kind of a Twitter addict and for very specific topics It's useful, but it's you know, it's journalists talking to journalists mostly That can be useful for certain types of things, right? But in terms of audience engagement you're getting a very biased and kind of filtered view and and you know People get negative feedback if you're a journalist, but it can also be the case that you can have you know a 100,000 meters on a story and 90,000 of them Like or sympathize with the story and you'll still get two to one negative feedback because people are more motivated to comment negatively And that can be hard to deal with and I think Podcasting or it's just a friendly or warm or medium is one kind of bright spot in the constellation Okay, our last audience question My name is Meryl Brown My question sort of paraphrases what Jennifer Preston had to say at the beginning about the need for more good journalism And I just want to focus on the question of more From where you all sit in a world where many things are shrinking and there's a need for more How do you suggest or what is your point of view about how to get more more new? institutions more Pro-publica's more startups more Marshall projects more vox's etc. Especially in a world where the general vibe around news and journalism is so negative. I Think that's an important question And I think part of it becomes sort of the public understanding what we're doing and being willing to fund that and I think we're seeing more of that Discussion around journalism right now in terms of you know, if you want really good reporting then you should pay for it You know foundations are obviously an important aspect of that But from being in a media organization for us to be able to do more I think our challenge is really to cut out the things that people aren't responding to cut out the commodity coverage Cut out the things that aren't important to sort of our overall mission Which should be on serving audience with strong watchdog reporting and strong enterprise reporting that's connecting with people And so we've really put a lot of focus using audience analytics using understanding of you know Reader habits and a variety of things on just stopping doing the stuff at the bottom so that we can focus on the things that are more Important and do more of the things that we recognize to be really important such as strong Investigative reporting around politics and a variety of other topics So I do think that there's a challenge there And I think that part of it is us being smarter with resources and part of it is the public and others Recognizing that they need to really care about what we're doing.  I think that creates a highly imperfect But still a better correlation between the quality of the journalistic product and the revenue model potentially In the short to medium term You know, I think journalists need to be more comfortable Understanding that they don't have to speak to every customer. It's maybe different if you're the AP, right? But you know finding what you do really well as a newsroom and focusing on that at 538 We found there's actually a pretty big audience for kind of our brand of journalism and very little what we do is duplicative And so, you know, I do think there are a lot of Consultants telling journalists to chase down trends and no one's gonna make money being the third best BuzzFeed, right? We can debate whether BuzzFeed itself will make money. Probably. Yeah, right but you know, I think we need more actual innovation and Experimentation in forms of journalism and not just in the business model the business model everything is losing money right now Right so you can experiment and get some investor to say, okay I'll try to lose money a different way, right? But you know, I think we need more talents for actual Experimentation in the journalistic method and I think there's a lot of conservatism in when someone tries to do Something new whether it is BuzzFeed or Gawker or 538, right? I mean people will kind of roll their eyes at all those Organizations because they do things differently and I think it's not just the business model But the news model too that we should experiment with so I have a final question for our panelists What is one thing you would love to see? In the way the media covers the 2020 presidential election What's one change or what's something you'd like to see? Well, I mean I think part of it is that over reliance on polling So I would like to see sort of what the future that looks like and how we can more smartly sort of Respond to what we're hearing from our audiences and to do that deeper reporting and I'd like to see us find a way to Do issues-based content that really resonates with readers in ways that they care about and that they'll respond to I Would like to see less reliance on anonymous sourcing You know anonymous sourcing is meant for the Pentagon Papers and very serious journalism where there are Security risks for people putting their jobs on the line, right? There's no reason to have anonymous campaign Consultants quoted up and down the stories, right? You know, and I think you know one thing I worry about a little bit too is that You know, I think more transparency of methodology more transparency and kind of the journalist thinking I think that's Important too. There's this kind of BuzzFeed claim and it's like oh, maybe transparency is not such a good thing after all That's a kind of odd example that Unconfirmed dossier that they leaked But still it feels to me like sometimes transparency has taken a hit And people say well, maybe the audience doesn't know how to digest all this information Maybe they know too much. Maybe it's a race to the bottom, you know I still think transparency is a good value and I think when newsrooms are more transparent in Disclosing why they come to certain conclusions say about the horse race or anything else They tend to make fewer mistakes in part because you have readers able to kind of check their work Yeah, I agree with all that anonymous source transparency Not too much over alliance and polls. I guess, you know, I would like to see the So remember David Roder used to say you just go knock on the door, right? You just go knock on the door That's what you do. You just go knock on the door. So there's a technological You know equivalent of go knock on the door I know it was Emily I think raised a good point about panels like what if the polls are just missing what people actually care about What if they get formulated and the questions get asked? We need more input at the front end from folks and maybe it's not go knock on the door But a lot of the technological fixes and this is not a criticism because I think this this audience has done some fabulous work And I love this stuff But are the are the technological tools to give unempowered people voice are they actually Things that disaffected people will use that you know, I know there's been a lot of focus on poor people and and that's really good That's really important But there's also an issue of you know Some of these new technologies are not for whatever reason maybe because they're being pushed by institutions like us that aren't Trusted are not actually getting to the disaffected people and if this elective taught us something it was that it's not just Poor people and in racial diversity that we need to pay attention to it's also people who don't trust institutions And so how do we attack that basically? so Ladies and gentlemen, we have three practicing journalists on the stage in a week with a I'll say a significant amount of actual news and I'm very grateful for their time and for their service to the public. Thank you very much Okay, so we are running on time We now have a 15 minute break if you need a bathroom They're on either side of the hole this way our staff can tell you which way to go There's coffee and Nosh in the back Please come back to your seats by 1045 for our next panel on how social platforms are reshaping the news


We were just watching the intro video with you and realized we're talking about the space And yet the video has a lot of the history of the space. Yeah, the elements, right? Yeah, I remember the receiver from the living room that then went into reclaimed video the reclaimed video carpet Which was an ordeal to put in the co-working space, right? Yeah, it's interesting and then like that movement and all the different domain 17 conference stuff Yeah, it's interesting and where it feels like both interesting, but a long way away from where the space is now That's right. And where is the space now? It's in a pretty interesting evolution of it. It is it is an apotheosis I'm not like it's better. This is the space has Absolutely bloomed blossomed into a full-blown arcade. Yeah, you've got a nice little work shirt I'm working and Antonello says I look like the janitor of reclaimed arcade And like in some ways yeah, we have been for four years Like we've been just sure with the idea of trying to preserve something to bring it people to the because I feel Like it has taken a lot of maintenance and a lot of community beyond us people like monitor boy other people Who have actually helped us have a real Legends of the community. Oh my gosh. You haven't read that comic monitor boy. Yeah Yeah, it's been it's been a real trip and I mean, I think I was telling you yesterday I can't believe we're in week two already like we're already on our second weekend Well underway of the arcade being open and really literally right behind these walls 20 people are playing over 57 arcade games a pinball machines the 80s music is running like it's happening I just talked with two women in the the living room and they were basically like this is amazing this is exactly like the 80s like living room I had and then like started reminiscing and then we were talking about like when we opened and stuff and I was like Yeah, like it when it hits and people like it hits on an emotional level It hits as an installation of something of a time, but then there's also really nicely preserved Games yeah, and pinball which has been super popular and people dig it out Yeah, and that's been so cool to watch and the games are in a good position. Yeah in a good shape right now They are it's an awesome experiencing people walk in because I think we did it right Which is they come into the VHS video store and immediately they're like thought I was coming to an arcade and you're in this tiny room You can't see into the arcade from there it's just the reclaim video store with one door and You know they see all the videos and stuff they get checked in then they walk through the door and the first thing They see is the 80s living room like now They're in their living room before actually that they walk into the larger arcade space So it's like more and more elements of like where am I and just traveling back in time until they get to the main arcade space Which is both nostalgic, but also futuristic I mean if we really pulled in that almost blade-runner feel with the lighting and the music and all the sounds and everything and The games make great furniture, right? Like so it's a it's really impressive I think for people and you know you wouldn't know it from this like strip mall shopping center that you drive up to we've had some People just come in because they saw the sign up front and had no idea what you're in for when they walk through the doors Like what is happening? They're like really this is here in Fredericksburg. It's like yeah Yeah, and like when you walk in like Tim said it's like you usually as they're walking through the VHS store into the living room You hear something like holy shit Oh, like like what that like you hear that and then like about five seconds three seconds later you hear a And that's where they've actually moved away from the living room right and seen the actual Which is blown up by a neon sign Yeah, which was like the beginning of it in November when we were like holy the Potential for this space to just pop like that was real and we nailed it Yeah, it just the space itself is a trip like it's a wild corner to go around VHS living room Arcade I love that one two three punch. Yeah, and it's been cool that people have come out I mean like I said we're in week two. There's a full house behind us now It's been busy all day long and and even in future weeks We're already seeing people book out lots of private parties lots of families I've seen a lot of kids you have seen people We've got step stools and people are bringing kids as small as three and four years old and propping them up and playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with them. We're learning how to play pinball machines And hanging out in the living room talking about like one father today was working with his kids about Atari Yeah, and they were playing like I think Atari asteroids and then space invaders and that was super cool to just see Him explain well, this is how the TVs used to look and this is how the consoles like that switch you have This is kind of like what a kid my age when I was your age, you know what I mean would have had Yeah I mean, I think we've had everybody from three years old to 53 and everything in between here and everybody has fun Like everybody leaves here saying I'll be back like this is really cool and I'll come back So today we got and this is a thing of good today has been a great day You think I'm great compliments like the place is filling up like it just feels good. Yeah, it's a good day for a week I'm arcade and Someone on top of that came in with a tub of VHS. I was there you were there Yeah, like 150 VHS tapes on top He showed up he had emailed me ahead of time and asked um if we buy out stuff And I said no not really I mean if you want to donate stuff to us totally fine But we don't really we're not in the buy-sell trade whatever we just it's a collection that we use in the space And he was like, oh, okay well I'll probably still bring them and so then today he shows up and he's like I need help lifting them out of the car and I'm like Okay, so me and Shane one of our employees go out there And it is one of those massive rubber made tubs full to the brim with VHS tapes and a working VCR and a beautiful JVC Hi-Fi stereo VCR kind of late 90s mid 90s. Yeah, it was an absolute beautiful haul Yeah, it's been super cool to see just people in the community come out and to learn about that I think you mentioned that the people you were talking to were associated with a homeschool group Yeah, that his book two separate sessions for 30 kids to come out here and learn a little bit about the history of arcade games And all of that and then obviously get to play in the arcade So it's a little field trip for them to come out here and be able to do something safely and we're doing that during the week So even not while we're actually open. We'll be doing that on weekdays So that was a cool opportunity like already getting into some educational programming. I'm all about it, right? It's been it's been really cool. Yeah, and that the space is just kind of ready to be occupied Yeah, like we had sitting between Tim and I using it as an office or just have collecting these games for now two Years two and a half to see other people use them and to like have them where they should be in a position where they're Accessible is everything. Yeah, I think the hardest part is Resisting the urge to change things like resisting the urge to say well What's next because obviously we're always like we've worked on this concept for so long now that it's successful We're immediately like what should we open up more days? Should we do discounts on the weekends? Like marketing is a big part of it, too It's like and we're still trying to learn what it means to market a physical location that serves the public different It's very very different. I mean, there's obviously overlap in terms of the word of mouth aspect Which has always been really big with reclaim post Facebook has been gigantic. Yeah, whereas like reclaiming doesn't even have a Facebook account So it's like, you know It's like there are things that are the same and things that are very different in terms of how you market it But I think right now what we're trying to find Comfort in is just this is working and this is working well So let's continue that and build off of it and see what the community wants what they're asking for and kind of build it over time Rather than great now Let's change it up and let's do this this week and let's do all of that because we have tons of ideas I mean, we've talked about everything from Saturday morning cartoons with the half-off special with you and your family and We talked about opening up Thursday nights whether we do tournaments for World Combat 2 or pinball tournaments There's something like that and all kinds of various ideas and things and I think that stuff will come a Big regent a lot of that stuff is COVID, right? There's a lot of restrictions Rightfully so around how many people you can have in the space and how do you control the flow of traffic in there? And I think we've done a really good job right now of doing of Controlling that and knowing how many people are in the space leaving room for cleaning and for social distancing and stuff But it's really hard when you start thinking through things like well Just open it up on a Thursday night for people to come and you want to do it But at the same time you're like, well, we don't want just anybody to show up We don't want to be that kind of business that's just like yeah party, you know like alto midnight those kind of things So it's it's difficult. In fact, we've even doubled down on like Wi-Fi so so much are we concerned about this but rather than us having other things out there. We created a TV antenna That from this studio can send over Raspberry Pi of various kind of media And it's picked up on two different TVs so you can social distance the TVs and everything in between and send I was wondering where you were going to come back to Regulations and over-the-air broadcast, but it's been fun in that like it is very controlled small space But like we've been able to even on this trip Actually like do some cool stuff Yeah, like we built some storage because we have you know extra boards and stuff that we got to start maintaining We have like space now We got to make for these pieces and the games and the maintenance But then also like we have a little time to experiment with you getting games online Us playing with TV Filing in some of the living room and via chess store It's been it's been so cool to see it because it's super functional the space with 20 people in it feels like it's empty Yeah, right we have you know no one's in there with them. You have a party by yourself, but also like You're separate as an employee so they can all do that and everything runs the games have stayed up We haven't had major problems. Yeah, it's very self-service in a regard It's it's not only beautiful, but it's also highly functional right and I just love that about it Like it's a it's a really one-two. It's very in some ways the arcade itself is very minimal. It's just the game Yeah, and I and I think I think if there's a lesson that we've we've learned in taking From reclaim hosting and we took it here was that like, you know, we have employees from day one We train them up to make sure that like I mean We're sitting here recording an episode while there is a full house behind the game not literally like the green screen That's obviously just an image But there's a wall there is a green screen wall behind us and behind that is the arcade and there are tons of people not tons But there's a full house in terms of the limits that we've put on it over there And we've been able to hang out over here and be separate from that We really spent these two weeks making sure they were trained up and comfortable on answering questions answering the phone Problems that come up even basic arcade troubleshooting.  This is open on the weekends I Tim don't want to be here on the weekends, right? So I even have them looking for VHS mold and on beta and then also using the head cleaner Yeah, I showed and then we also have to show them how to use the select division the laser disc the beta max The vinyl like they need to be like that's kind of a job Like you need to be familiar with all the formats people are gonna ask you questions. So We're back and I think they could probably not hear us the whole time battery died on the camera, but we're back So they couldn't hear that either. I don't did you see when it cut out? This is a really professional Recording do we tell you how operationalized and good look I'm an arcade operator. I'm not a fucking, you know, studio man. I Moved on exactly From the TV studio in September. Yeah, it has moved that fast though It does seem like a lifetime ago But yeah, but like you were saying I mean the space is super functional People are having fun and I think the lesson that we learned from the space was you know Make sure that there's enough help so that we can you know be over here and not necessarily have to mind the arcade and everything else Especially it's open on the weekends. I'm not three days a week. Tim doesn't want to come on the weekend Yeah, but like that's the other thing like I mean practically Tim doesn't want to be on the weekends But three days means that it's not a five or six day a week job or seven And then it also means that you have time during the week to play with games to do some maintenance And it's kind of something we're just doing yeah several days a week But no one's really say you got to get to say like what worked what didn't and frankly there wasn't a lot that didn't work But I mean What was one of the big lessons that we actually readjusted that that very first weekend was we needed a coat rack Oh, right. It was a tiny thing But it was like oh people need somewhere to put coats because it's cold outside and they don't want to drape them over You know a table or something like that So we put a coat rack in the living room for people to set their coats down But there weren't any surprises like that not huge ones. I think the game maintenance will be a thing, right? Like so we already know yeah, that's something we already did this like what happened Wizard of war the sound chip, right? Had issues. We're testing the toot in common But we think it was a power Like you kind of modulated the power and that seems to have fixed toot in calm We got new board for phoenix, but the issue with phoenix still remains So we think it might be a power shoe But knowing like to your point about community knowing people that fix those things Like I can do some basic troubleshooting and then being able to send it off to someone that does the repairs and sends it back I mean, that's a good system. We have spare parts so that we can swap boards out and all that kind of stuff So yeah, I mean, I feel like we're in a really good place to even manage that which isn't you know Nothing considering the number of games that we have Yeah, 50. I think 54 Old-school video games on the floor and eight 10 mall wow 62 and at least like two more on the way. I believe so. Yeah, exactly Scramble super no super cobra Scramble and then we're going to get with the war back on. Yeah, we had so actually three I didn't even think of that. Yeah, so 57 in total that we almost We almost had space invaders. We thought back up and running It'll come eventually that was so but that was a moment where we were waiting for monitor boy to Maybe fix it in the moment if every game that would be You know, we'll get there eventually and that's crazy because we're already almost at capacity and it's been we've had to figure out like to your you know, like breaker issues with electricity electricity and like how many things go on an outlet The occupancy inspector was like, you're not allowed to use extension cords. So we're like, okay, so yeah So let's make sure that all that's good and we found out the way things were wired in the building Like half the building is on a single breaker So there have been some challenges there to figure out how to make it all work And you know, we can obviously make some of those repairs over time But we need to make sure we haven't had problems in that regard. No, we haven't no, but But, you know, it was a scramble, you know a week leading up to it to make sure that all that stuff was good to go And now it's been running really well and it's exciting It's been really rewarding to see people, you know having fun in the arcade and talking it up I love compliments, but I mean people, you know, just having fun and enjoying the space, you know It's it's out of our head and it's into the game. Exactly. That's the thing. It's like out there Now like whether it's good or not like we'll find out like whatever But like despite it, it feels it like it feels like Here is a space that's trying something that's pulling together some cool elements from our past and it sits Strangely between like the art of those cabinets in the 80s and those video games in the history But also like a feel of a place and a time and I like that it kind of like, you know It's concept and practical good fun. Yeah. Well, there were there were certainly some months there where I wasn't sure We were going to actually get to this point and in my hopes and dreams I don't think I expected that it would come in January So I think you know that we were ahead of schedule in that regard and realizing what we could do and That we could still even in the midst of a pandemic open safely and do it in the right way and have it still be successful So yeah, it seemed unreal when we were committed to saying we're going to get open in January But I'm glad we did it. Yeah, it happened and people are showing up and everybody has commented not just on how fun it is But also that the customer service and how safe things are and everything and so that's a real testament I think to the work that we've done. Well, that's the thing I think too that we brought over from reclaim hosting was, you know being a Being a bit like we knew good support goes a long way and people feeling happy and Taking care of and I think that's always been a strength You've had and like the wave and like when we have the snow on the first weekend Everybody got discount codes. Everybody was invited to come back. Everybody was like Hey, we know this is like a time like and then that goes pace forward. Yeah, it does for sure Because it costs you almost nothing, you know, yeah to be actually good is actually Probably a good idea like to have people who are coming to use interest in mind and to say look Thank you for what you're doing supporting us and showing any kind. It's so cool So that feels good too to be dealing with a public again in a different way Yeah, like a very physical present public So that's cool. I have no doubt that the story is not over I mean, like I said, we've got plenty of ideas and it's really just now navigating What's working and what we might want to tweak and what things we want to move into next and when's the right time to do Of course, that's a whole another element. I didn't I didn't expect to have to buy hand sanitizer stations You know back a year and a half ago when we were dreaming about that nice. They are they're super nice touchless ones Yeah, it's great But yeah, it'll be interesting, you know in the next couple months in the next year or so to see Where everybody moves and then how we respond to that because like I said that the current situation has Required a certain way that we operate very limited capacity Sessions that are booked in advance all that kind of stuff But as time goes on it'll be really interesting to just get a sense of like what do we want to change? What don't we want to change and where do we go from here? I just want to buy more game. So I think as soon as I get the green light, I'm going to be happy Yeah, well, if you know of another building that would be great Because we're pretty much a capacity. That's true though. Like I look around and like we filled it. Yeah And I don't have any more breakers for it It's full. It's like, okay. Yeah looking around here like Okay, where's that that wrecking ball? Well, we've got we've got options to expand if we need to we'll see how things go But it's been fun. I mean, it's super cool to be able to dream this up and to get to a point where it's reality And now where we go from here is all the next step of the next story. Yeah, so awesome Well, I think that's that's a wrap for this episode, but big fan. Stay tuned for the future Reclaim arcade for life


Good evening to you. I am Justin Acadone and this is the news now on PLOS TV, Africa. We begin with the Air Force Summit. President Borla Tinibu has encouraged members of the economic community of West African state Air Force to remain committed to ensuring that democracy remains the only form of governance in the sub-region. Speaking in his capacity as chairman during the opening ceremony of the 64th Ordinary Session of the Air Force Authority of Heads of State and Government, which is taking place in the State House, Abuja. President Tinibu asked the leaders to fight for democracy and stand against unconstitutional change of government among member states. West African leaders are meeting for talks with the region in a deepening crisis after four countries fell under military rule and with risks growing from Sahel jihadist conflicts. Security in the region, the folk upon, and we must achieve this regardless of other commitments. I would like to retrace the imperative of the unions to continue to re-engage under the military rule and basis of realistic and short transition plan that can deliver democracy and good governance. No alternative. I wish to underscore the fact that we stand against unconstitutional change of government in our sub-region and we will continue to do so. I therefore urge all of us to stand strong and highly committed in the face of any challenge in Syria alone and Guinea-Busel. The message must go down clearly that we will support a democratically elected government, not unconstitutional exercise without place of hindrance. Democracy must win. If we fight for it, we will definitely fight for democracy.