(bright upbeat music) (bright upbeat music continues) (audience applauding) - Hello and welcome to "Journalism Liquidation Sale: Bay Area Edition."

I'm Greta Mart, news director here at Northern California Public Media.

This "Connect the Bay" town hall special program is a companion discussion to the National Public Television documentary "Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink."

"Stripped for Parts" explores themes of corporate greed versus community, the death of local news, the threat to democracy, and the struggle for journalistic integrity.

It focuses on predatory hedge fund practices that gut newspapers for profit.

The resulting news deserts that form in the aftermath of these acquisitions leave communities without the information and connectivity they need to make informed decisions.

In this program, we speak with three people who, each in their own way, are working to save local news and its vital role in society through their commitment to journalism.

With us today are John D'Anna, Queena Kim, and Rick Goldsmith.

We'll start at the end with Rick Goldsmith, the filmmaker who made the documentary you just watched.

Rick has been making social issue documentary films for more than 40 years.

"Stripped for Parts" is the third in his film trilogy about American journalism.

The first two, titled "Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press" and "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers," were both nominated for an Academy Award.

Goldsmith has a new Substack page titled "Eyes on the Fourth Estate."

That's journalism about journalism.

He lives in Oakland.

Hi, Rick.

- Glad to be here.

- Queena Sook Kim is associate adjunct professor at the the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

In addition to teaching, Queena is an editor and audio trainer at the California Newsroom.

That's a consortium of NPR stations across the state, including us.

For nearly two decades, Queena has worked in almost every journalism medium.

She started as a print reporter at "The Wall Street Journal."

She helped launch an online news website in San Francisco.

She's worked as an audio journalist and created podcasts for local and national news outlets, including KQED.

She lives with her family in the East Bay.

Hi, Queena, thanks for being here.

- [Queena] Thanks for having me.

- John D'Anna is managing editor at CalMatters.

That's a nonprofit news organization covering California state politics and policies, launched in 2015.

Before joining CalMatters last spring, John spent four years as managing editor and senior news director at "The Press Democrat" in Santa Rosa, helping lead the paper to more than a half dozen national journalism awards for projects on death with dignity, wildfire resilience, and government corruption.

Previously, he spent 27 years as an editor and reporter at "The Arizona Republic" in Phoenix, where the paper won a 2018 Pulitzer Prize for a series on the border wall.

John lives in Santa Rosa with his wife, Melanie, and their rescue pup, Ernie.

Hi, John.

- Glad to be here.

- So indeed, welcome, panel, and thanks, welcome, audience, thank you for being here.

(audience applauding) I really appreciate it.

So let's get the conversation started.

As we saw in "Stripped for Parts," the core conflict is between the financial interests of Wall Street firms seeking quick profits and the essential democratic function of local journalism, with journalists and communities caught in the middle.

The film exposes vulture capitalists who buy struggling newspapers, sell off assets, slash payrolls, and prioritize profits over public service.

And let's address something right away.

Here in Sonoma County, "The Press Democrat" was bought by Alden Capital last year.

And we aren't going to automatically assume what's happened in the past is going to happen here.

In fact, the dedicated employees, journalists, and even managers had no part in the buyout of the newspaper and they do great work day in, day out for our community.

I deeply respect the "PD's" coverage.

But in light of what we just saw, John, what's your response to Alden buying "The Press Democrat," since you're the closest to the situation?

- I have a lot of mixed emotions about it.

On the one hand, you know, as you mentioned, there are people there, my former colleagues, who are doing terrific work and vital work.

There was a big sewage spill up in Lake County, and they have been, you know, just leading all the journalism on that and doing what great local newspapers do, is inform their community.

You know, on the flip side of it, you know, after seeing Rick's movie, you know, you have to wonder what the future holds.

When the MediaNews Group leadership, that's the newspaper arm of Alden, when they came to the newsroom to announce the purchase, you know, they said, "One thing's for sure, your newsroom will definitely get smaller."

And that, in fact, has happened.

There have been some layoffs there.

But like I said, they are still doing great journalism, and their reporting force and their number of journalists on the street is still much larger than a lot of other communities the size of Santa Rosa.

- For sure.

Okay, Rick, in the film, you talk about public funding for journalism.

And since the film came out, the California legislature has come through with public funding.

Initially, $25 million set aside for the California Local News Fellowship.

And we, ourselves, are a direct beneficiary of that funding, because right now, it allows us, since September, to host a California Local News Fellow here.

Her name is Shandra Back.

She's with us for two years.

She is a bilingual reporter, and she's producing fantastic work.

So what do you think of the California state government supporting journalism through these competitive programs?

- Well, I think that we've been forced into that because the business model has failed.

As you know, we kind of say in shorthand in the film, you know, it was based on advertising.

That's how newspapers stayed alive, made their money, afforded to have a big newsroom to cover their whole community, as well as arts, sports, many, many other things.

And that business model started to fail about the beginning of the 21st century.

So the idea of government coming in and helping to pay or the taxpayer helping to pay for journalism is kind of new to this country.

But with all the money that has left journalism, even something like what has happened with the California legislature, which is actually a fairly small amount in the scope of things, that helps.

And if you asked any journalist 20 years ago, "What do you think about taxpayer-funded journalism?"

they would say, "No way."

Now it's part of the conversation.

I will say one thing.

Up until, well, this is a tough period of time, we've had public funding of journalism in the form of NPR, CPB, PBS for 50 years and more.

Unfortunately, that's being stripped away too.

And that's part of the conversation.

- Okay, got it, all right.

Now, Queena, you're working every day with the next generation of journalists.

What do you tell 'em about the state of the industry in light of what has happened to so many news outlets in the last 15, 20 years, as you say?

What do you foresee is the future of journalism in an environment of shrinking career opportunities?

- Well, I think the next generation of journalists are a little bit of the silver lining right now.

I teach at Berkeley Journalism, and the application pool has held steady.

The students who come in have still an amazing amount of faith in the power of journalism to hold institutions and people accountable, as well as shining a light on underserved communities, which many of my students come from.

So that's the good news.

In terms of what to tell them about the future, that's also something I struggle with.

Because as we know, this has been such a fast-changing industry.

I think your film showed that it was really foundationally, print has been the foundation of it, but as we all have been reading and hearing, people aren't reading as much anymore.

And sort of the news, the way people are getting news is changing into different mediums.

So then it's like, how do we pivot as both a school and an industry to prepare them for that?

Holding our foundational values sacred: reporting, interrogating both sides, fact-finding.

And yet, not being too precious about the way the stories are told.

And how do we do that both as a school and an industry?

'Cause there's also a lot of holding on to the legacy, right?

And a little bit of a feeling that it might come back, or if we just find the right way, like something will bring it back.

And I think that ship has sailed.

- Okay, got it, sure.

- I agree.

I don't think it's coming back.

It'll never be the way that it was, but you know, I think young journalists today have so much more opportunity than what I had when I came up in the business.

You know, when I came up, you either went print or you went broadcast, and never the twain shall meet.

- That's right.

- And now, we have journalists who are doing live stand-ups and then writing stories, and they're filing audio.

And they have all these great storytelling platforms and mediums.

There's just so much more opportunity.

Storytelling is always going to be storytelling.

But one of our big challenges as an industry is to meet people where they are.

- And Rick, you want to add to that?

- Yeah, I've been traveling around with this film for a couple of years, you know, all across the country and meeting with different types of audiences.

Some are older audiences, schooled in, you know, the newspaper and stuff like that, but also a lot of colleges and a lot of journalism schools.

And what I'm finding is that there's no falling off of interest among young people, even though the job market is probably, you know, taken a hit.

People want to do journalism, and kind of my theory about the whole thing is there's this journalism gene (Greta laughing) that is present in the community, maybe 5% of the people have it.

And probably everybody on this stage has it.

- Yes.

- And genes being what they are, that's not going to be different in the next generation.

And they're going to still have it, and they're going to call out hypocrisy and abuse of power, and they're going to say, you know, "That's not right and I want to dig into it."

The second thing that I think that leads to is, and you kind of alluded to this, well, I think you both alluded to this, is this younger generation who's coming into it, they have different ideas on how they reach their peers and how their peers get news, ingest news, exchange themselves, relate to their community.

And as we look for new models, because that's the period that we're in, looking for new models that work, both financially and structurally, it's the new generation that's probably going to come up with the next solutions for journalism and news gathering and news dissemination in this country.

- Yeah.

All right, well, John, let's talk about, like we learned in the film how traditional advertising-based models failed, now that you're in a nonprofit newsroom, how does that model really work?

- You know, I kind of want to push back on that notion that the advertising model failed.

It didn't fail.

It failed newspapers.

But the Googles and the Metas and the Facebooks and all those, they're raking it in, the advertising dollars, that a lot of which used to go to us.

And some of those advertising dollars are made off of our content.

- Right.

- So, you know, that's kind of an elephant in the room when we're talking about, I mean, the newspaper industry declined for a lot of reasons, many of which were self-inflicted.

But, you know, advertising still works.

The Super Bowl, I believe, is charging $8 million for a 30-second spot, and all the spots are sold out this year.

- Right.

- So yeah, advertising still works.

- Okay.

- But to go back to the nonprofit model, you know, I think that people who are working in that space maybe find a little comfort in the fact that they don't have to worry about offending advertisers.

But you know, you do have to worry about offending donors.

So in a way, it's kind of the same thing.

- Okay, thanks for making that point.

Thank you.

So Rick, the documentary highlights journalists fighting back against these predatory practices, becoming activists to warn their communities.

Is abject objectivity actually contributing to the demise of local news?

When the news becomes the news, it's kind of strange for everyone.

But how else do journalists save their own industry, their own jobs?

- Well, I think with the journalists that you see in the film, what's unique about the situation, as a couple of them make the point onscreen, is that, if this was any other industry that was really facing a crisis, they'd be all over it.

So for them to jump in where they don't, you know, they're usually taught, "Don't talk about your own profession, don't talk about your own industry," in this case, they were sounding the alarm.

And they recognize before anyone else what was happening to the newspaper business and to that part of the journalism in America picture.

So it seemed entirely appropriate what they did, because it was a community issue.

And it's now fired up communities, you know, I think because of these journalists, it's fired up communities all across America.

- And I think it's been a detriment that journalists have sort of not been more out there.

- Okay.

- And I don't mean necessarily as in like being activists, but just informing the public about what we do.

I think we've been traditionally trained to sort of be like therapists, right, not tell too much about ourselves, not really be involved in things, not get too intimate.

- Not have opinions.

- Not have opinions, right.

And I think what we found is that people don't know what we do, why we're important, what purpose we serve, how we do our job.

There's a lot of distrust about that, right?

And I think it's a hopeful step that journalists are starting to go out and advocate for journalism, not necessarily for a cause.

And I wish we would see more of it, because I think your film showed that it can have a lot of power.

And once people really understand what it is that we bring to the table and how we do our work, we can sort of motivate the public to be behind us more.

Whether that's for state funding or whether that's just to be subscribers, or you know, just that support is essential.

- And, you know, we haven't been transparent, and I think that's led to sort of a loss of journalistic literacy.

People don't know how our industry works.

I can't tell you how many times when I was at "The Press Democrat," people would call up to talk about an editorial and not understand that that was a different part of the organization, that the editorial voice of the paper had nothing to do with the newsroom.

And so, you know, just that basic fundamental aspect of journalistic literacy has been lost.

- Okay.

And Queena, at the end of the film, former "Denver Post" editor Greg Moore makes the point, I'm going to read it right here, "What happens when the government refuses to release records or demands extreme payment for them?

What happens when communities are flooded or on fire?

Do we think bloggers and, quote, citizen journalists will risk their well-being to tell those stories or fight those fights?

Is it even reasonable to expect them to do so?

No, and I don't think it'll happen either.

Only professional journalists will get the job done," and this is key I think, "Only well-resourced news organizations can cross swords with other powerful interests and come out on top."

So what do you think when I read that?

- Well, I understand what he's trying to say, and I fundamentally agree with it.

I don't know that I would've put it quite that way.

And so the crossing swords part is, when you're an independent journalist or just going out there, if you want to hold somebody who's powerful accountable, you got to be afraid of being sued, right?

And you as a private citizen don't always have the money to do that, but if you have a news organization behind you, they have lawyers, they have insurance, they can protect you.

So in that sense, I agree with him that it's really important to have a big news outlet behind you so you can do the hard work and sort of the impactful work.

I don't know that I'd slag citizen journalists like that, especially in this moment with the ICE raids.

I personally feel like, probably, the best or the most, like, the people who are really doing the work of documenting this stuff are citizen journalists.

We wouldn't know nearly the extent of what's happening in our state particularly, and probably the country, mostly focused on our state.

So in that sense, I feel like they are putting their bodies on the line, and they're going out there and doing really great work.

And then I'll contradict myself.

I think the problem is when you don't have a news outlet that can employ people to sort of think bigger and how do we connect all these little dots and all these sort of pieces of information that we're getting from citizen journalists, we lose something in terms of understanding, like, what's the final vision of these raids, what are they going for, how do we understand them, who's motivating it, who's behind it.

Like that's the kind of work that you really need resources to discover.

You need to file FOIA requests, which federal government is supposed to give you this information.

If they don't, often, a new outlet will sue the government.

That's not something I think a private citizen can really do on their own.

And so that sort of tough investigative work or sort of research work isn't, I think it's not really possible with citizen journalists.

So it's not a complete solution.

- All right, John, what do you think?

- Well, I think with citizen journalists, many have done great things, as Queena pointed out, you know?

We saw what happened to George Floyd because of somebody with a camera phone, and that scenario has just repeated all throughout our country every day.

One of the things, though, is that a lot of people who call themselves journalists lack the rigor and the training that most journalists go through.

And that is fact checking, it is balance, it is how to check your own biases at the door.

We all have biases.

There's no such thing as an unbiased reporter.

But we have to learn and figure out how to put them aside when we're doing our reporting.

And you don't find that kind of rigor in among some citizen journalists.

I'm not going to say all, because there's some out there who are doing amazing work.

So I think that's one of the things that, you know, credible organizations can offer, is a reliable place where people can get the information they need to make important decisions about their democracy.

- Okay, excellent point, yeah.

Well, next we're going to take some questions we received from the audience.

Diane Olsen asks, "How is AI changing the landscape of local and national journalism?

And do you foresee it worsening or improving in the future as AI scales up?"

And John, I'm going to ask you, what is CalMatter doing around AI?

- Well, I'm glad you asked that question, because we have a new newsletter out there called "My Legislator."

And you can type in your email address and your address, and it will tell you who your state legislators are.

And every week, you will receive an email that is AI-generated, and it'll have everything your legislator said on the floor of the legislature.

It'll talk about how much in campaign contributions they've got.

So it's just a fantastic tool.

And you know, just on a personal level, I use AI all the time.

If I have to write somebody's job description, I'm going to ChatGPT.

I'm not going to spend four hours doing something ChatGPT can do for me in 10 minutes.

- Right, so you're not seeing it negatively?

- You know, there are- - I mean- - Don't get me wrong, there are negatives associated with it.

Like I said, it's a tool.

You have to learn how to use tools properly.

- That's right.

What do you think?

- I think my concern with AI right now in the news industry is, it's a little bit of that fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

So the fool me once was- - How so?

- With the internet, right?

And I understand it, like we all felt like we had to go out there and give all our content for free and let Google monetize it, and never really thought about how that would affect our, you know, the business structure of our industry.

And now, I sort of feel like journalists are sort of going back there again.

You know, a lot of these AIs scrape newspapers, magazines, peoples' work, I mean, all kinds of creative work, right?

And I don't, "The New York Times" did sue OpenAI, but I'm not seeing like an industry-wide outcry about this or even the industry getting together and trying to figure out how to push back.

And I think it's a moment where we have to start seeing ourselves as having similar interests.

And how do we fight back against this tide that's coming and claim, like, our work back and make people pay for it?

- Yeah, and I think, though, I would draw a distinction between the AI as a tool and AI as a business.

- Yes.

- And AI as a business is, you know, fraught with, as Queena mentioned, you know, all the information that goes into building large language models, almost all of it came from newspapers.

They used our intellectual property without paying us.

- [Greta] Right.

- And so, you know, if we were to get some of the proceeds from that, you know, I might feel differently.

(laughing) - Oh yeah.

- But yeah, it's, you know, I have a huge ethical problem with the business side of it.

But the actual tool itself is great, except when it's misused.

And it's being misused to make deepfakes, the whole Grok controversy, you know, that's playing out on a certain platform right now, that it's just deplorable.

- Right.

- And abhorrent and, yeah.

- That's what keeps me up at night is I think, like, is something going to come in the newsroom that I believe and it turns out it's fake?

And how am I going to tell the difference?

But let's move on.

A student from Santa Rosa Junior College asked, "Where do you see the industry heading as we not only see hedge funds gutting newspapers, but also cuts in federal funding to public media outlets?"

And yes, we have not even mentioned what happened last year to the, you know, the cutting of all federal funding to public media.

Queena, I'll start with you.

What do you think is the future for public media?

- Oh god, if I knew that, (Greta laughing) I wouldn't be sitting here.

(Queena laughing) But I don't know, I guess, you know, I go back and forth on this.

I think the hyperlocals are giving me a lot of hope.

It's like the small mom and pops, like you know, I imagine how journalism sort of started back in the day, of people were just really passionate about their communities, really passionate about journalism, and just making it work.

People are going onto Instagram and whatnot, and I get that there's a lot of hits and whatnots you could get from it.

But it's not a tool that's making money for organizations.

Websites aren't making money.

So it's hard for me to see the business model.

I really have no idea.

I don't have any real insight into that.

- Okay, well thank you for that.

And our last question, "How are local newspapers sustained in other countries?

Are they facing similar challenges as in the US?"

So Rick, what do you think?

Can you answer that?

- Well, I haven't studied extensively, but I have some knowledge.

- You focus on American journalism, right?

- Yeah, I focus on American journalism.

But what I do know that, among the, I guess you would call it the Western, you know, countries, Europe, Japan, the United States, we do rank near the bottom in the amount of money we put towards journalism, towards news organizations.

We have somewhat of a maybe unique setup here in that there is so much local journalism here.

We're a very, very big country, both in area and in population, whereas a lot of the countries in Europe, they're mainly concerned with, you know, what is the, you know, the BBC doing?

What is "Le Monde" doing?

You know, one central organization.

So we have different challenges in this country.

But I will say that one of what I hope this film and the discussions that arise from it can help is more of a discussion about how important news organizations, opinion, is to our democratic process and our discussion.

- Okay.

Any last words?

Okay, well, thank you.

I could talk to you guys all night.

But that's all we have time for.

We sincerely thank our panelists for coming and being here and taking the time today.

Rick Goldsmith, Queena Kim, John D'Anna, and I'm Greta Mart.

And the documentary "Stripped for Parts" is available on the PBS website.

You can also find this program there as well.

And thank you very much for coming and good night.

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