Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of The Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at The
Federalist and your experienced Shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Ryan Wolfe, Director of the Center
for Excellence in Journalism at the Fund for American Studies.
Ryan works with young professionals to further their careers in
public policy and journalism through a variety of fellowships, including
the TIFAS Public Policy Fellowship, Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship, and
the what is It? The Joseph Rago Memorial Fellowship for
Excellence in Journalism. Ryan, thanks so much, and welcome to
the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Oh, we have a lot to talk about. I don't
know if thirty to forty minutes is going to cover it,
because there's so much to delve into the world of
politics and American journalism and how American journalism covers politics,
this election cycle and what we've seen over the last
several years in this country. But let's start with the Well,
let's start with a Newsweek analysis piece that I find
particularly interesting and I think you're going to see, and
we've already seen plenty of these kinds of what happened
pieces out there. The headline is Donald Trump one, but
the biggest loser was the mainstream media. This from Newsweek's
Carlo Versano, giving credit where credit is due. Last month,
the entrepreneur Patrick Bette David had Donald Trump on his
podcast where he congratulated him for quote killing the mainstream media.
I did. I'm very proud of it too, Trump responded,
it was classic Trump bombbass that carried with it more
than a kernel of truth. While the President elect may
not have personally ended the media defined for the purposes
of this story as newspapers, TV, radio and the like,
including the outlet, your reading the press as a whole
comes out of Tuesday's election a far diminished force. Let's
begin there. Ryan. Do you believe as much that the
press has come out of this election cycle as a
far diminished force?
Speaker 3: I absolutely agree. I mean, there's a few ways that
you can look at this analysis. So on one hand,
you can say that the press has been greatly diminished
over the last twenty twenty five thirty years, just the
decline in local media viewership kind of going down across
radio and TV. So I think some of it is,
you know, you have a big event that helps you
realize trends that have been happening for a long time,
and I think that's that's one part of it.
Speaker 2: But along those lines.
Speaker 3: Where you see growth in the media is online, on podcasts,
on videos, and kind of more of an influencer focus
media ecosystem as opposed to a publication focused one, and
the publications that are doing well tend to be focused
around you know, news or opinion personalities. So that ecosystem
is something Trump really tapped into and took advantage of
this election cycle to get his message out to his
intended audience, which I think was younger people and younger men.
And so going on Joe Rogan, going on Theovonn's podcast,
Andrew Schulz's podcast, you know a lot of comedians, but
a lot of people with who don't watch you know,
the six pm hour of Fox or CNN. You know
that that really worked for him. It. I think young
men under twenty eighteen twenty nine moved about thirty points
in his direction from I think in small part to
his media strategy. And I would just say the second
point is that people want the media to tell them
what's happening on the ground, to give him an act
you at view of what the future might look like,
and they did not quite accomplish that.
Speaker 2: I think this election cycle.
Speaker 1: More on that in just a bit, but it should
become as no surprise that Donald Trump would tap into
the new forms of media, the new forms of communication
out there. He's had to do a lot of work around,
of course, over his time in office and his time
in campaigning for that office. We know what he did,
revolutionize the use of Twitter to get his message, you know,
the electronic fireside chats if you will, from Donald Trump,
you know, alluding to FDR and how successful Franklin delan
or Roosevelt was in reaching out and covering his message
a message. Of course, if I lived at the time,
I would totally disagree with in terms of massive government
growth that FDR kept proposing, but it was very effective.
Trump was very effective with Twitter, so effective that Twitter
wouldn't allow them to be effective. And so there are
two questions in the lead up, that large lead up
that I have. The one is, are are you at
all surprised that Trump picked up where Kamala Harris was
not able to connect, you know, in the new forms
of media? And how big a role did the buyer
of Twitter, Elon Musk, play in this election.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I'll start with with your first question.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think.
Speaker 3: In presidential campaigns, you know, over the course of time,
there's been sort of media traditions, right the candidates all
go on sixty minutes, they do a certain number of debates,
and you know, those traditions I think be done to
make a lot less sense in the last you know,
eight years, and as as the media has changed. So
I think but Trump is doing a sort of treading
a new path. I think every presidential candidate is going
to want to go on Joe Rogan now, and you
know there's sort of new traditions, new common sense things
every presidential candidate will do that are going to come
to the four Because of his success in this cycle,
Elon and his purchase of Twitter, I think was a
big deal, just because you know, he's more committed to
free speech, pretty committed I think to to you know,
not having at least not the same algorithmic bias as
other social media networks.
Speaker 2: And you know, I.
Speaker 3: Think ultimately it it was interesting because the media may
be downplayed some signs from X that Trump might do
well because of Elon's ownership, and but I think that
you know, his his personal advocacy for Trump and being
sort of you know, I think he's one of the
biggest sort of influencer type names on the planet that
you could have endorse you So him lining up behind Trump,
spending lots of money through his his pack, working hard
on the getting out the votes. So I think that
means a lot more than anything that was done on X.
I think that, you know, really Galvin I supporters got
Joe Rogan's endorsement for Trump. I think, so, you know,
I think Elon was was a major factor.
Speaker 2: He risked a.
Speaker 3: Lot in doing all of this, but I think you know,
he's he's hoping to get sort of the deregulatory effects
that will help his companies thrive in the next four years.
Speaker 1: I think where he began Musk was absolutely vital to
where all of this ended, and that was in the
purchase of Twitter. He exposed the executives and the people
of Twitter for doing what they did, colluding with the government,
colluding with the Biden administration, colluding with the deep state,
in shutting down conservative messages, conservative thought. And I think
that was agree or disagree. I think that was critical
over the last four years and in this election cycle,
in communicating further, not that this is the only example,
but communicating further to the American people, the news consumer,
and the voter that this is a kind of a
rig system big tech. What we saw with Mark Zuckerberg
and Facebook and Zuckerbucks in twenty twenty, the collusion that
went on. How much did that play in all of
this election with the mindset of the news consumer and
the American voter.
Speaker 3: Sure, I mean, American trust in institutions basically across the
board is all going down. So, you know, accusations of
things being rigged, regardless of how rigged it was, I
think people tend to believe it, or believe that there's
at least some sort of truth in those statements. I mean,
and with we have examples from Twitter, because the Twitter files,
you know exactly how that happens behind the scenes. But
you know, I think in this election cycle, if you
look at Mark Stuckerberg, for example, I think he decided
Jeff Bezos.
Speaker 2: For the washingon non endorsement sort of also.
Speaker 3: Decided that, you know, that kind of activism that they
were involved in in twenty twenty, the kind of fill
in propit spending that the Zeclberg channelis ship did you know,
was bad for the country, bad for the institutions that
they run, and they didn't want to do that again.
And I think you see, you know, many of them
have their congratulatory tweets and posts up for President Trump now,
and so I think what they're focused on is, you know,
with the decreasing trust and institutions in America, Yeah, that
means they're also trusting you know, Meta or Facebook less,
they're trusting Amazon less, and they want people to feel
comfortable using their platforms doing business on them. And so
I think they're changing their tune politically in order to
try to have that effect.
Speaker 1: I think that their very core, their opportunites. I don't know,
if they're business, they're trying to do business absolutely, and
you know, and God bless them for that. And so
they saw the writing on the wall. The Bezos thing
is very interesting to me because you know this long
standing feud between Trump and Jeff Bezos. But he, as
you mentioned, coming out congratulating Donald Trump. You know, Mark
Cuban is saying that, you know, as much of a
surrogate as he was for Kamala Harris coming out and saying,
you know, great race run by Donald Trump, congratulating him.
All of that sort of thing playing into this.
Speaker 4: The left keeps preaching for a quality of Kamala is elected,
but is this a dystopian America? The Watch Dout on
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Speaker 1: Be informed.
Speaker 4: Check out the watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris
mccowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: I want to go back to that Newsweek piece that
we mentioned earlier on because I think there's some interesting
stuff in here that we're seeing elsewhere. On CNN, political
commentator Scott Jennings, a former aide to President George W. Bush,
outlined where he said the media had aired in the
final weeks of the campaign. He said, we have been
sitting around for the last couple weeks and the story
that was portrayed was not true. He said, we were
told Puerto Rico was going to change the election, Liz Cheney,
Nicky Hayley, voters, women lying to their husbands. Before that,
it was Tim Walls and the Camo hats, night after
night after night. We were told all these things in
gimmicks were going to somehow push eras over the line,
and the story was not true. That's the question I
think a lot of Americans have. If the story wasn't true,
why did a press that tells us it is a
responsible and objective press, why did they believe it over
and over again.
Speaker 3: That's a great question. I guess I would say sort
of two things. One is that you know, for a
press to try to be objective, a really good question
for them to ask is like, must I believe this
is there just overwhelming evidence that will force me to
believe that this is true. And if you notice a
lot of the time when they're reporting on, you know,
certain issues that you know, the right has focused on
our conservatives about, they tend to have that disposition, or
at least good journalists, you know, will we'll have that
and not immediately dismissed concerns coming from the right. I think,
you know, in the last year or so, the Clouding
gay plagiarism example comes to mind as a story where
the evidence was just so.
Speaker 2: Overwhelming they sort of had to accept it.
Speaker 3: You know. The anti semitism on campus was another example
of that. They don't do the same thing where their
story is coming from the left and when they feel
like they are in a very very tight news cycle
and sort of all of the pr campaign folks that
they hear from all the time, from from the Hairs
campaign are pushing this message out to them. Now, what
we would like in the media, I think we would
all like to see in the media is sort of
you know, reporters on the ground that can give you
a gut check of you know, okay, you know, the
journalists living in New York or DC or LA or
saying this story is real, and activist groups are you know,
saying this story is real. Let me go out and
interview some people on the ground. Let me go out
to you know, voters in Iowa or Florida or Georgia.
Speaker 2: And and see what they think about this.
Speaker 3: We don't have a local media really anymore, and so
we don't really have this sort of quick, uh gut
check sort of analysis that we can get from people
on the ground. And so a lot of it is just, uh,
the mainstream media can kind of whip itself into a
frenzy when there's a video clip like the one from
Madison Square Garden without really talking to anyone outside of
their little group, and that includes activists, that includes pr people.
So it really does make you wonder. I mean I
really wondered whether Tony hinchcliff story. You know, he was
speaking hours before Trump. The words he said did not
come out of Trump's mouth. You know, he's a comedian.
It's supposed to be a joke. It doesn't mean it
landed well, but that was an attention and it struck
me that there was no way that this could move
tens of thousands of voters in the way that the
media was saying just because it was sort of an
inconsequential non event that was, you know, being passed around
the media, but.
Speaker 2: Probably not even making it into advertise.
Speaker 3: You know, online ads or video ads or TV ads
in time for the end of the campaign.
Speaker 2: So it's hard for me to see how it can
actually move votes.
Speaker 1: But I think that's an interesting point. Is it the
media's job? And as you mentioned, and I think that's
that's an excellent point in all of this, is we
have seen the absolute death and certainly the dirt of
local media in this country. That's a real alarming, problematic
thing because, as my colleague Mark Hemingway has written about
at the Federalist, that void is being filled by very
partisan news organizations across the country. There are a lot
of these models, and a lot of them are nonprofit.
That's a subject perhaps for another day, but that's what's
going on. But is it the job of the media
to move votes? Because I see them trying to do
that and moving votes in a one particular way. Of course,
I think a lot of Americans saw that in this election,
in the twenty twenty election, and I think to a
great degree in the twenty sixteen election. And I think
of all of this, where was the starting point when
it became this kind of activist journalism? And I think
you can look at a lot of entry points, but
one for me actually was kind of in a streaming
show that came out around twenty twelve. Do you remember
The Newsroom, Aaron Sorkin's creation. And I'm not saying that
this particular show with Jeff Daniels shaped every newsroom out there,
but I think there was a great deal of truth
about how newsrooms were approaching stories, particularly political stories in
America then and how truthful it's become now. And the
whole point of that show was we're not going to
take all sides of the story because basically the Republican
or conservative side of the story isn't meaningful, it's not true,
it doesn't matter. This was a good four years before
Donald Trump, and I think that's played out in newsrooms
across the country. What do you think?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I agree, I think, you know, the
famous opening monologue of the Newsroom was just pretty you know,
symbolic of what the whole show is like.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of issues.
Speaker 3: One is sort of that there's not many veteran journalists
out there. A lot of these news rooms are mostly
stacked by by younger people who are more on the left.
And every year that goes by, every election cycle that
goes by, more of the old school people who believe
in objective journalism retire, get.
Speaker 2: Bought out, and you know, move.
Speaker 3: On from working in the press, and more of these
young people, usually from elite you know, Ivy League, liberal
arts colleges, get hired, and their review of what it
means to be a journalist just looks very, very different
from the traditional American.
Speaker 2: Understanding of that position.
Speaker 3: They think they are supposed to be activists, or they
at least think they shouldn't help Trump win. If they
helped Trump win, that ends democracy. It's the end of America.
You know, that's their philosophical prior. And so I think
after maybe the Komi letter in sixteen, that's been a
pretty predominant view of.
Speaker 2: How the media should handle Trump, and.
Speaker 3: I think older school journalists, you know, we were mentioning
right before we started just how in twenty sixteen, the
Washington Post, in New York Times and a few other
places basically said, you know, we're sorry we missed this
election and what was going on, and we need to
treat our readers, you know, like adults and give them
the truth and go out and find the people that
we miss and do better reporting.
Speaker 2: And you know that ended.
Speaker 3: Right as the Russia hopes sort of started. But you
know that I think was the right instinct and it
was coming from these more better and experienced folks, and
I just it'll be interesting to see what the response
is this this time around, because there's less of these
journalists that believe in you know, objective news reporting and
sort of informing their audiences rather than guiding them left.
Speaker 1: That is where we're going to eventually go with this conversation.
It's what your organization really was created for, and that
is to deal with the next and to help shape
the next generation of journalism.
Speaker 5: This is Molly Hemingley encouraging you to listen to my
favorite podcast, Issues. Every day you get in depth interviews
with host Todd Wilkin, asking expert guests substantive, thought provoking
questions on all of the important news and issues of
our day. The expert guests are in culture, law, ethics, philosophy,
theology and apologetics. Expert guests expansive topics, always extolling christ issues,
et cetera.
Speaker 1: Our guest today on this hour, Federalist Radio Hour is
a gentleman who is on the front lines of that conversation.
Ryan Wolfe, Director of the Center for Excellence in Journalism
at the Fund for American Studies. Yeah. I want to
touch upon that point because I remember that distinctly post
twenty sixteen. These mia culpas coming from the New York Times,
the Washington Post, they're alms budsman. They're supposed to be
working with the public, the voice between the public and
the news rooms, and saying, yeah, we messed up here,
we screwed up. We should acknowledge that there are other
voices out there than our bubble. I don't think they've
learned anything. I think we'll see the mia culpas again.
But did this And I say this because I remember
right before the election. I think Brian Stelter from CNN,
who's had his own interesting career in journalism, he's had
he's had a journey, indeed, but I believe he reported
that he had talked to a network executive and who
told him that if Donald Trump wins this election, and
particularly if Donald Trump wins this election decisively, which he
has done, then the so called mainstream media, corporate media
is done for, because that means that Americans did not
listen to them. What do you think about that statement?
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's done for. Is pushing it.
Speaker 3: There's some structural advantages with the traditional media, but it
is a real crisis because I think they believed, you know,
if we guide our audience sort of away from Trump.
I think they weren't really they didn't necessarily care where
the audience landed as long as it wasn't there. You
know that if we can accomplish that, that shows, you know,
the media has some sway, some influence with the electorate,
and it didn't work.
Speaker 2: And people don't really either.
Speaker 3: Their their audience is way smaller than they thought it was,
which I think is probably true if you just look
at sort of you know, how many listeners does the
average Sharrogan episode have versus you know, how many people
watch CNN prime time.
Speaker 2: It's it's a pretty stark difference.
Speaker 3: And so I think, you you know, their their audience
is much smaller than they thought. And then I think
the other thing is that they're less influential.
Speaker 2: Than they think they are. And so I think the
question is are we sort of, you know, are is
the media supposed to guide its audience.
Speaker 3: Do they have this captive audience that they can sort
of take on a journey sort of where they want
them to go, or do we have to go out
and earn an audience and earn our influence and have them,
you know, win their trust so this audience will listen
and read and watch us. And I think that the
media is found itself in the position where they have
to go and earn their audience, and that's a pretty
hard thing to do. Some outlets have done better at this.
The New York Times has a big subscriber base. A
lot of it's for games and recipes, and that's really
what makes a lot of money there. But they have
subscribers that really, you know, fuel their business.
Speaker 2: They don't really have to go out and you know.
Speaker 3: Change their their presentation of the news or their opinion
page in order to keep that audience that makes them profitable.
That doesn't mean they don't have internal issues with like
the people who work on their their tech side that
fuels the recipes and the games, who are on stripe
right now, asking for lots of kind of crazy things
in their union contract. But at least like the Washington Post,
I think, really I have to face up to the
situation at their end, which is that they have to
go back out and try to win an audience's trust
and to get subscribers back, and that means that, you know,
their newsroom, their opinion page, their reporting is just going
to have to look very different than it has you know,
the past war to ten years. And that's a pretty
hard thing to pull off. You know, I don't know
if they'll be able to. I don't know if they'll
really be able to fully commit to.
Speaker 2: Trying to do that.
Speaker 3: And so in that case, I think that's where the
mainstream media is kind of has a pretty big problem
that they may not be able to fix.
Speaker 1: I think the reaction from the Washington Post newsroom to
the decision from Jeff Bezos not to endorse a presidential
candidate this cycle, I think that tells you just the
kind of problems that the Washington Post will have in
fixing the the internal bias that they have. But it
seems to me pretty clear that the Jeff Bezos marching
order is they're going to have to do that. Time
will tell One of the interesting exit polling notes that
I see here, and I want to get your take
on this, because we're talking about activist journalism and the
influence that wasn't it seems to me one of the
exit polls shows that this whole issue of threat to
democracy that the Harris Walls campaign kept pitching and a
lot of members of the media kept reporting on and
echoing that that was an issue. But I shouldn't say
a majority, but a number of voters came out of
those polls and said, yes, it was an issue. Democracy
has been threatened by how this current regime has treated
its number one opponent, it's number one political enemy. What
does that say about the state of American journalism and
where Americans are today?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean I remember taking a class in college
on Latin American politics, and what the professor said in
that class was, you know, in these Latin American countries,
when there's sort of a populist figure who becomes you know,
their president or leader in parliament or whatever, they the
opposition tends to mobilize and break lots of norms to
try to stop that figure and often in doing that,
they create sort of the spiral away from the institutions,
and you know, constitutions often that that they have that
leads to something like like a Jabez or someone like
that ending up in charge. And it struck me that
that cycle of sort of the opposition being willing to
break lots of norms in order to stop a political
figure who the people have elected has happened here too,
and so I think that's Apple just kind of reflects that.
I mean, one of the election live streams I saw
there was a Paris supporter who was saying, you know,
maybe we should have went harder, and we should have
packed the court, and we should have you know, made
DC estate and done all these unpopular things.
Speaker 2: But Lisa would have stopped Trump. And I don't think
that actually would.
Speaker 3: Have stopped Trump, but but just sort of not being
willing to commit to political norms, conserving institutions, stuff that
I think a lot of people on the left.
Speaker 2: Say that they support. They throw out the window, and
I think that is why those poll numbers look like that.
Speaker 1: Okay, so this is where your work your institution really
intersect and you have your work cut out for you.
I got to tell you. I say that because I
have led newsrooms, small newsrooms, bureaus in my time, and
I see some of the product, if you will, coming
out of American jay schools, journalisms schools. You know they're
coming out with, you know, basic problems, writing, reporting, deficiencies
therein in some cases because of how they've been raised
on the technology to begin with and how they communicate
on those technologies. But the bigger problem is the kind
of biases coming out of these journalism schools, and that,
as you mentioned before, we have we don't have a
lot of the kind of veterans that we had left
in a lot of the newsrooms across the country because
they're expensive and quite frankly, they don't always agree with
the corporate line that's going on and how to approach journalism.
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getting young journalists who are pre programmed, prepackaged in a
lot of cases, what do we expect that we're going
to get from coverage of politics and policy in America?
Speaker 2: Well, I think a great place.
Speaker 3: Newserms want to change to stop hiring people from journalism
schools because there's really not a lot of right, uh
up and coming talent coming out of those schools. You
hear people go to journalism school, I actually really don't
understand why people go to journalism school.
Speaker 2: Report it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't either, I didn't I know people who
have gotten master's degrees in journalism. You want to talk
about a waste of money and done. From my point,
my humble point of view, the best way to be
a journalist is to be a journalist is to journal,
is to report. That's how I came out of journalism.
And I know that's not the path for a lot
of people. And I think there are some people journalists
who would be listening to my comments that went to
the journalism schools and well, that's not that's not fair,
that's not right. That's just I guess that's my bias
going into it. But I see a lot of problems
in these these jay schools.
Speaker 2: Well there's there are a lot of problems.
Speaker 3: And I think, really, but you know, the New York
Times and you know the Washington Posts and others hire
a lot of people out of j school, and so
that's the population that they're bringing in. And often I
think the problem with.
Speaker 2: Journalism school students is that they don't know much about anything.
Speaker 3: They didn't study you know, economics or politics or you know,
any kind of useful subject.
Speaker 2: At an undergrad or graduate level.
Speaker 3: And you know, the sort of journalism faculty bias is
sort of one of the worst departments at schools around
the country.
Speaker 2: You know, there's almost no right of center faculty.
Speaker 3: Maybe some older school more objective type faculty, but again
they're aging out every year, and so it's really not
a great environment to develop journalism talent. And the other
thing I'll say about grad students for journalism is that
often I'll just say, if you're a very good writer
and you're very good reporter, there's a great job market
for you, because there's not that many great writers and
great reporters out there. And so if you're going to
grad school because you can't find a position, maybe you're
it's not what you're.
Speaker 2: Meant to do.
Speaker 3: You know, maybe you you know you're not as great
of a writer or reporter as you think you.
Speaker 2: Are, and that's that's a hard thing for some people
to accept.
Speaker 3: But you know, it's it sort of goes back to
the old adage, you know, if you cannot do, teach,
and I think you know, if you cannot do go
to grad school.
Speaker 2: Is kind of a similar thing in the media.
Speaker 3: But with the students that we work with on college campuses,
they are almost very very few of them actually major
in journalism. Most of them are majoring in politics, economics, philosophy, history,
kind of real topics. And you know, these are you know,
writer of center students. Some are moderate students who we
work with a lot of do A students on campuses
who have been on a bit of a political journey
the past you know, year or so, and so, you know,
we work with these students.
Speaker 2: And they are they are very great writers.
Speaker 3: You know, we do have to teach them how to
do the reporting part, but we can do that in
a few hours and then send them out to practice.
Speaker 2: And you don't need to go to grad school for that.
Speaker 1: That's the thing. You can teach reporting. You can definitely
teach reporting. It's it's a lot more difficult to teach writing,
and natural ability in writing is just something you can
never teach. And you kind of answered what my next
question was going to be what is JFAZ you know,
what is the Center for Excellence in Journalism doing two?
I guess, And it sounds like you're not trying. You're
not working with the students where you would have have
to correct all of these deep biases that are being
inculcated by very left wing biased professors and faculty. On
university campuses, you're actually working with people who are trying
to get real world experiences in other disciplines and then
teach them how to be journalists.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: So on college campuses, we you know, we work with
a lot of students.
Speaker 2: We don't have a political litmus test.
Speaker 3: I think what you're saying about sort of not being biased,
being curious, being open to learning new things. I think
a lot of college students, especially on the sort of
Ivy League, elite liberal arts college campuses that that we
work on. If you're a young, curious person who lands
on one of those campuses, you know you tend to
go on a political journey over the orse of your
four years. So we're sort of working with a lot
of students who I think are on.
Speaker 2: That app And yeah, we don't tend not to work
with journalism students.
Speaker 3: But what we do is we support sort of right
of center alternative student publications at these college campuses that
give these students who may not be focusing their academic
work on journalism and opportunity to do reporting on campus,
to learn how to improve the writing and to sort
of get their feet wet in what it means to
be a journalist. And so we have twenty one of
those student publications on sort of elite college campuses around
the country.
Speaker 2: We're at i think every Ivy League.
Speaker 3: School but Brown, many NESCAC schools now, and so we're
sort of on enemy territory in general. But the students there,
I think really make a difference. And I think the
fact is when you're looking at you know, who works
in the media and trying to change some of those variables,
I think you can only change so many at a time.
So a lot of the focus on elite schools as
while they hire students from these schools all the time anyway,
so maybe we can get them to look at some
alternatives as opposed to, you know, trying to get them
to hire from a completely different kind of school.
Speaker 1: I think that's more important than ever and I think
you will I hope you will be busier than ever
moving forward as some real actual soul searching goes on
in these newsrooms across the country. You know, the basic
job of journalism should be to report, to tell news
consumers what's going on in their communities, in their countries
around the world, whatever the discipline. It should be also
to call bs. And the problem with American journalism has
been because it's been really focused on calling what it
believes to be bs on one side and absolutely refusing
to do so on another. Can that Will that ultimately
be fixed?
Speaker 3: I hope so, I mean, I you know, going back
to the Washington Post example, when they hired their new publisher,
Will Lewis, they had a big meeting and he came
in and they were sort of all upset because Lewis
had worked at Murdoch owned media properties in the UK
and US, and so of course Washing Post newsroom was
not a fan of that. But he leveled with them
and just said, you know, we're losing you know, tens
of millions of dollars a year, and our audience is
down fifty percent and something has to change.
Speaker 2: And so my hope.
Speaker 3: Is that you know, a news publications across the country.
They take a hard look at that and you know,
try to adjust their coverage and their newsroom and their
news judgment, so you know, they will, you know, try
to be more of a fair referee than they have been.
Speaker 2: That's kind of a hard thing to see happening, or
at least to the extent maybe of a need to happen.
Speaker 3: And I'm hopeful though that you know, new institutions can
get built, both you know, on a local scale and
a national scale that can really take advantage of new
media trends and sort of gain a real audience in following.
Speaker 2: That the mainstream media has lost.
Speaker 1: I hope so, I hope so. But the work that
you folks are doing, I think will give us some hope,
some promise on that front. Thanks to my guest today,
Ryan Wolf, director of the Center for Excellence in Journalism
at the Fund for American Studies. Appreciate very much your time.
Speaker 2: Today, sir, Thanks so much forravity.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour.
I'm Matt Kittle, senior correspondent at The Federalist. We'll be
back soon with more. Until then, stay lovers of freedom
and anxious for the fray