(lively music) - Well, good evening to everybody.

- [Audience] Good evening.

- I'm Maurice Jones.

I'm the Vice President of News at WHRO, and we are really grateful that you are here with us.

This is our first attempt to try to have a series of fireside chats around the whole region in an effort to let you into the sausage making of our news efforts.

- I'm vegetarian.

- Okay.

(chuckles) True.

So I'll have to come up with another analogy, but you get it.

So I've got, and I'm gonna let folks introduce themselves, but I've got two reporters and an editor with me.

I don't touch the news.

It would be dangerous if I did anything.

So I attempt to help us stay sustainable financially, and a little bit of strategy work.

But we're grateful that you here.

At the start, I wanna thank some folks who have really been instrumental in bringing us together.

We have a Community Advisory Board at WHRO, which helps us keep a pulse on what's happening in the community, and provides us advice, and are ambassadors for the work we do.

And they have been the ones who have been actually inviting you primarily to this gathering.

I want the Community Advisory Board to raise their hands, all of the members, and we wanna give them some love.

(audience applauding) Thank you all.

Appreciate it.

I also wanna recognize Bert, which I know I saw him over here somewhere.

There he is, our fearless leader.

Seventeen years as the CEO, 18 years.

(audience applauding) We wanna thank Bert.

Among other things, Bert's commitment to local news, and making sure that we continue in this region to try to have more journalists doing the work.

And I'll give you a little context here in a minute for why I say that.

Also, wanna thank Kelsey.

Where's Kelsey?

Kelsey Backe in the back there, who is our everything community.

Thank you Kelsey.

(audience applauding) I obviously wanna thank these journalists for joining me up here.

And so let's just give them applause beforehand.

(audience applauding) But most especially, I wanna thank you, the audience.

Thank you for, again, spending this evening with us.

Thank you for engaging in the work that we are aspiring to do here.

Thank you for the feedback that you continue to give us, and the support that you continue to give us.

So this is definitely a team sport, journalism, and it's more of a team sport now than it's ever been.

I, when I moved to this region, was the publisher of "The Virginian-Pilot."

And if I took you back to 2012, "The Virginian-Pilot" had 300-plus journalists in our newsroom, plus our targeted publications.

And we were covering primarily the south side here.

Right across the street, so to speak, or the pond, the "Daily Press" had another 100 journalists in their entire media enterprise.

And so we had in 2012, something like 400 journalists just in the largest media enterprises.

And I'm not counting television and radio in that.

Today, as you and I gather, between the "Pilot" and the "Daily Press," there are fewer than 50 journalists.

So we talk at a time where we're at risk in this region of, if not becoming a news desert, so to speak, a very, very dry spot.

And so what we're trying to do at WHRO, with our news efforts, is to get more feet on the street covering the stories in this region that need to be covered.

Tonight, we're gonna try to show you how a idea, or a tip, or a concept, or a hypothesis moves into a story, and what the stages are, if you will, that it goes through.

So we will talk for about 45 minutes, or so, and then, if you will, invite you to ask us questions and give us feedback.

Sound good?

We haven't done this before.

I haven't shown them my questions, so we will ask for your grace ahead of time.

How about that?

But let me start with asking our esteemed panel here to just introduce themselves, and tell us how long you've been, if you will, doing journalism, and why, or how, or why you came to this work.

Introductions.

- So, my name is Steve Walsh.

I'm the military and the veterans reporter here at WHRO.

I've been here for about two and a half years at this point.

Before that I was in San Diego for a number of years, also covering the military out there for the station KPBS.

I do a lot of work with NPR.

I work directly with the national security editor there as part of a project that we're a part of, called The American Home Front Project.

I also do a lot of stories with that consortium of journalists, public media journalists around the country who cover the military in journalism.

I've been doing this long enough that I was embedded a couple times in Iraq with the National Guard.

So that'll give you a sense of how long I've been doing it.

So I have been covering that on and off for what, like almost 20 years.

Why I came to it?

I mean, the original story of why I started doing this is I was covering the State House in Indiana, and I saw something on television about how there were the war in Iraq that was gonna start up.

And then they were doing this new thing called embedding journalists.

And they showed like they were going through this whole training course and everything like that.

And I started calling and trying to make some connections between committee hearings, 'cause I thought that was like a cool thing to do.

Turns out that the program had been shut down, and those journalists had been put in place with units long ago.

And basically within the last 40 hours before they shut down the airport in Kuwait, I had my friend, my new friend at the Pentagon, told me, "You know, if you wanna do this, you're probably gonna have to do this right now, 'cause this war is probably gonna start on time."

Which I did.

So I had like go to an Army Navy Surplus Store and buy a flack jacket and a helmet, and then drive back to where I'm from up in Northwest Indiana, and the editor had approved it, and I got on a plane for O'Hare.

And literally it was the last plane to arrive in there.

And then I was there for about six to eight weeks, because they shut the airport down.

Once you got there, you did, there was really no turning around.

And eventually got all the way up to Baghdad with Special Forces.

I beat a lot of the networks there, 'cause I was working small and quietly.

And so they didn't mind putting me in the back of a Humvee, or in the back of a C-130, and having me tag along.

So from there, yeah, it became a passion of mine.

Not so much covering the big stuff.

I know what an F-35 is, and pretty much how it works.

But I am not the wonderful toys kind of person.

I'm the sort of person who loves covering the troops themselves, the people on the ground, the vets that have, you know, gone through this, and following them as they've dealt with injuries and trauma.

And I'm very interested in stories that people are taking care of, and that the men and women who were in the military are able to have their voices heard.

Though, I also cover Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump, and all those other folks, But the people I'm most concerned are those.

So that's a little bit about who I am, and what I do and why I do it.

- That's great.

And thank you for what you do.

I'm grateful.

Katherine, who are you?

- Oh, that's hard to follow.

I'm Katherine Hafner.

I cover environmental issues, and particularly climate change, for WHRO.

Past three and a half years now.

Before that I was with "The Virginian-Pilot" for almost seven years, covering all sorts of things.

Denise was my editor for a time.

And I started there as a summer intern straight out of UCLA, which is where I went to school.

Originally from the Bay Area in California.

And currently I am also a part of NPRs Climate Collaborative, which, similarly to Steve's project, works with stations around the country to produce stories about climate change, and kind of trade advice and story ideas, and that kinda thing.

I mean, I've wanted to be a journalist as long as I can remember.

I was a big reader and writer growing up, and just had a natural curiosity for the world.

And that kind of developed into journalism.

"Gilmore Girls" pushed me over the edge.

(chuckles) My great-grandfather was actually a night editor for "The Boston Post."

So it was a little bit in my blood as well.

But my first journalism job was in high school for an environmental nonprofit, doing radio stories.

So it's kind of full circle, even though I was in print in between.

So yeah, that's what brings me here.

- Great.

- Glad to be here.

- I'm Denise Watson, and I'm a, excuse me, team editor at WHRO.

I started in late January, so I'm sort of new to public media.

I spent about 33 years at "The Pilot" slash "Daily Press."

And- - [Steve] She started when she was six though.

(Denise laughing) - But I'm a Norfolk native.

I'm actually a marketing major graduate from Norfolk State University.

Go Spartans.

- Go Spartans.

- Behold.

(all laughing) But I did one internship in journalism, and the first day I was there they said, "Go to the girls club and do a story."

I said, "What exactly do you want me to do?"

They said, "Just hang out and take notes, and write about what they're doing."

Okay.

Then I did an internship the next summer with a marketing firm, and I hated it.

And after I graduated, the pilot offered me another internship and I was so grateful.

But I guess I was always, I was always the kid who hung out with the old folks, and just listened to them tell stories.

My grandfather was a World War II vet, and where everyone else thought it was boring, I just, I would go to sleep on his knee listening to him talk about his time in the service.

So to go from hearing stories, and being able to get the skill to tell stories has just been an incredible honor.

And after 35 years, and all of the changes in media, I still have so much fun telling people's stories, particularly stories of Hampton Roads.

And so that's why I'm here.

And Katherine is one of my reporters, excuse me.

I have two other reporters who cover local government, City of Virginia Beach, Hampton, Suffolk, and Williamsburg.

And then I'm also in charge of our freelance corps who cover arts and culture.

- Well, we can applaud Denise's work.

(audience applauding) All right, so let's flip our slide here.

I wanna go to Katherine's stories.

You can choose any one of those stories, or any other story that you've written.

Tell us about the story, to start with, and then I'll have a second question for you.

- Okay.

Well, I chose these three stories, 'cause they kind of show three different levels of effort or turnaround time for reporting.

So I'll start with the one on the left about local tensions over solar development.

- [Maurice] That's the one you wanna focus on?

Because I'm gonna ask you to go deeper.

- [Katherine] Oh yeah, that's fine.

- Okay, go for it.

(Katherine laughing) Go for it.

- The idea for it- - Well, tell us what the story is first.

- Okay, yes.

So this story is about how solar projects in Virginia are often getting pushback from the communities where they're attempting to be built.

And that is slowing development of solar energy across the state.

So the idea for that came from just being on the beat, and witnessing examples of that popping up in Hampton Roads in rural areas.

And I kinda put it on my list to look into.

And then over time I would be at solar related-events, and developers or local officials would talk about the issue as well.

Like how, you know, community pushback was becoming the number one barrier to solar development in Virginia.

And so, yeah, I can go deeper, but I guess I'll- - No, no, you, you were doing exactly what I wanted you to do.

Why did you think the story was worth telling?

- Yeah, so I don't know if you've heard, in Virginia we have sort of an energy crisis in that data centers are gobbling up all sorts of energy, and demand is expected to triple, or something like that, in the next few decades.

And so there's all this talk of where are we gonna get this energy?

And at the same time, Virginia, in 2020, passed the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which requires that a certain amount of the energy we produce be from clean, renewable sources.

So kind of parallel tracks of Virginia trying to build more clean energy, and more energy in general, both overlap in this case.

And it's about, this is one reason why it's not being built.

And then also explaining the concerns of the communities that are doing the pushback.

- And so, you had seen, this had been an idea that you'd been toying with - Percolating, yeah.

- for a while.

Give us a little more detail on the percolation to the actual story writing, and what happens in between there.

- Sure.

So I have a Google Doc with a long list of story ideas that, when I have time, I'll try to start on, so.

- [Maurice] And they may come from where?

Anywhere?

Tips?

- Well, because I've been on the beat for three and a half years, I mean of course we do get tips, but a lot of it comes from talking to sources, and then they'll mention something, they're like, "Oh, that's an interesting story too."

And then, you know, it kinda snowballs.

And then of course there are events or policies that happen that become news, and you cover that as well.

But, so in this case, I basically finally had some time to work on something, and I had been hearing more and more about the issue.

So I knew it was on people's minds, it came up at the General Assembly.

So I said, "Okay, I'm gonna, you know, actually work on this."

And I chose Sussex County as an example of the issue, because of a particular solar farm there that was getting a lot of pushback.

Facebook page against it had developed, and the permitting was denied, but the developer was trying again.

So I ended up speaking with a couple of the folks who were part of that pushback, and then also the developer trying to build the project, and a local board of supervisors member who had an initially been opposed to solar, and then, you know, changed her mind after looking at some of the financial incentives.

So it was kind of a, getting a holistic picture just in that one community.

And then also talking to some sources to put that in the broader context of a Virginia delegate, and some energy groups about, you know, how is what we're seeing in this one community being playing out across Virginia, and really across the country.

Because in the Climate Collaborative, we've talked about it there too.

So Virginia is a hotspot because of data centers and because of the way things get permitted here is very locality-focused, rather than at the state level.

So that makes Virginia unique.

But it is a national issue.

- How long did it take you to write the story?

- I mean it took me months to finish the reporting, and, obviously, it would be very abbreviated if I was only working on this.

But it's kind of bits and pieces as I have time.

Once I had the reporting complete, and just wanted to buckle down and write it, it's a couple days.

- [Maurice] Did you edit this?

- [Denise] I did.

- [Maurice] Tell us.

- We meet on Mondays, and we talk about stories, and Katherine is so good at her job, she'll just say, "This is what I'm working on this week."

But when she has a big project like this, she'll say, "I really need, like, two days to concentrate."

And it's my job then to sort of clear her calendar, and give her permission, so to speak, saying, "You don't have to go to this meeting, or pay attention to that.

If something else comes up, we can get another reporter to handle it.

So you can just focus on the story."

- Which I'm bad at, because I find a lot of things interesting, so I wanna do them.

So I appreciate editors like Denise.

- It's like taking out a wooden spoon.

It's, "No, no, no.

Get your hand off the cookie," (Maurice laughing) - For you as a reporter, what was the toughest part of getting this story in the newsletter?

- I think, honestly, kind of to what I was just talking about in a different aspect, knowing when to say, "Okay, I have enough to now write the story."

'Cause I could keep digging and talking to more people, and everyone would have a different perspective.

So a lot of our job is deciding what not to include, and what's important enough to, you know, make it concise enough for people to read it and understand the issue without getting bogged down in the details, like we are.

So honestly, that's a skill that you have to develop as an early journalist, I feel like, is learning that, okay, you have all of this information.

That doesn't mean every single note you took needs to be in the story.

So with that one, I definitely ran into that.

- So you anticipated my next question, which was how did you decide it was ready?

What was the moment?

- Well, the last piece that I was looking for was some voices from Sussex county of people who were against the project.

So I had been, you know, trying to hunt people down from this Facebook group, and city council minutes, and stuff like that.

And I finally reached a few people, so that was the final piece for me.

- And same question, or same two questions for you.

What was the toughest part for you in editing, or playing the editor role, and how did you know it was ready?

- Well, we'd been talking about it, so I knew she was working on it, and she was waiting for this last piece.

And so she finally said, "Hey, I got a hold of this group."

And so at that point it was sort of like, "Okay, what do you need me to do?"

And like I said, she's, you know, she organized it, she shipped it to me, and I'm reading it, you know, I'm putting my mind as someone from that county, and what do I need to know to understand this topic?

So that I'm trying to imagine someone at the grocery store diner explaining to a neighbor why they need to know this, why is it playing out?

And there are times when I might say, "Can we change the phrasing, and make it just a bit more casual?"

That kind of thing.

Because one thing, because she's really, I know you're considered an expert nationally when it comes to environmental and climate change among reporters, - [Maurice] Absolutely.

- because of what you do.

- [Maurice] Still deny it, but it's true.

- I know.

So, you'll know, and when we worked at the "Pilot," we actually came up with a list of environmental terms that kept coming up in the writing, because we knew that we would have to keep describing what sea level rise meant as in climate change.

- Resilience.

That's a big one.

- So we, excuse me, so we created a list of terms that we would embed in each story that we did.

So sometimes, you know, Katherine knows what she's talking about, but I have to say, "Okay, can you explain it to me?"

You know, sort of like a, you know?

- [Maurice] The 4-year-old test.

I'm familiar with that.

- A teacher told me that they printed that out and put it in their classroom too.

- Yeah, exactly.

I know that's how people use us.

And so I'm sort of as the just a person, like, just I read it as you all would read it, what am I not understanding?

And then I'll put questions in little comment blocks, and say, "Hey, can you explain this a little bit more?"

But that's it.

She's very easy at it.

- Good.

Hold your queries for now.

I wanna ask Steve to do the same thing with the story, and then I hope you will pop some.

I hope this is sparked some questions for you.

It certainly sparked a couple for me.

So let's look at Steve.

And you picked the one you want.

And just tell us the story to start with.

- Oh, it's got a lot of play.

So let's go with the National Guard troops in DC.

How did this start?

So I work with American Home Front.

We got a collaboration of reporters around the country.

We've got Andrew Sussman, who's the national security editor.

We've got Adam Hoffberg down in North Carolina who basically runs Home Front.

And often those two editors will like be, "What should we be covering right now?

What's going on?"

Obviously there's a lot of issues going on with the National Guard, and these domestic deployments.

So how do we get a piece of that?

What are some of the stories?

So you pitch all sorts of things, you know, of people being pulled away from their families, or people losing jobs, you know.

And you start looking at some of these, you know, and everybody.

But one of the things is like, nobody's talking to these people, right?

Nobody's talking to these people.

And, you know, normally, I mean, I've been embedded before, and some other reporters in this task force have as well, but they're not really providing much in the way of access in that way.

You know, they're not letting us see.

There's a handful, and growing number of National Guardsmen in Virginia that are working with ICE, but they're not.

The Virginia National Guard, to their credit, will at least reply, and talk to you about where they're deploying and what they're doing, to the degree that they know.

But ICE typically does not respond at all and tell you what they're doing.

So like, so how do you get a hold of people?

How do you do this?

Well, I mean, they're already up in DC doing this, and we know that they're gonna be deployed in other places around the country, even at that point.

I mean, I can, you know, I can embed in Washington DC.

- [Maurice] Just as easily as just drove up to DC.

- So drove up to DC.

Network paid for stay in a hotel room for a couple of nights, and my metro pass.

And I just went around Washington DC, going up to people, being told, "No, I don't wanna talk to you."

"Fine, nobody's forcing you."

Other people saying like, "I need to have you talk to the public affairs person."

But while they're doing fumbling for the number, and everything, they're talking to you about what they're going through, and what.

You know, and these are rank-and-file guardsmen from Tennessee and Louisiana, and other places around the country.

They're just here because somebody told them to come here.

And they're deployed in all sorts of places, Georgetown, and things like that.

The Metro's another big one.

They're picking up garbage everywhere.

They're deployed around the National Mall.

So I just simply spent about 48 hours starting at about seven o'clock in the morning both days, and going in up until as late as I saw them anywhere.

And you just keep approaching people to do the story, right?

And eventually you get enough people who say yes, and not only say yes, but they really wanna say something about why they're there, and what they've experienced.

Like how have people treated them.

I guess early on, not so great.

People were very apprehensive.

Little later on, they were much, they were seeing that they were not being deployed to crime scenes, or shooting people, or doing some of the things that they saw some of the other federal agents are.

So some people became much more appreciative.

So you could really develop a boots-on-the-ground picture of what these troops were doing, just by going up and talking to people, and being willing to be told, "No," over and over again until somebody said, "Yes."

- Is that why you thought this was worth telling the story?

You wanted folks to get this boots-on-the-ground view?

- Where else are you gonna get it from?

Where else are you gonna get it from?

You've got decision makers that are making these decisions, and we know what the mayor of Washington D.C.

thinks, we know what the Trump administration thinks, but we don't know what the people who are actually doing the work, and what kind of impact it has on them if they are going to be deployed over and over and over again over a series of months.

So yes, that, to me, is the most important perspective.

It takes some doing to get at it.

You're not gonna be able to like go up there and try a couple times, and then have your story.

You're gonna have to show a certain amount of commitment to it.

But as we know, more and more Virginia National Guardsmen are gonna be out there.

More and more guardsmen from around the country are gonna be out there.

So it's best to get in there early and often.

And in the end we came up with a story that I really have not seen in other places.

Places have tried.

Because they're rank-and-file guardsmen, I granted them anonymity.

I know who they are, and I, but you know, because it's radio, you can just use their voices, and people think their voices are really distinct, but unless you're Roger Marks, or something, your voice is not really that distinct.

So it allowed them to talk and be comfortable, and tell their stories without a lot of interference and not a lot of filtering.

And it got a lot of response.

- What was the toughest part of getting that story together for you?

- Oh, the toughest part is you just have to keep going, going.

I mean, how many times did anybody like being told, "No," or, "I didn't want to," or, "Oh, stop right there."

And you think like, "Okay, well this was a mistake."

You know, you go for like hours of this, and you think, "Oh, this is a mistake."

And then you just turn a corner- - Did you buy them lunch, and did you have little tricks of the trade?

- No, no tricks of the trade, and specifically not tricks of the trade in any kind.

I don't have my kit with me, but I have a big old microphone, the big fuzzy, what they call a dead bunny on it.

So you really see it.

You see my recorder, I was wearing it around my neck, and I was doing this.

So you knew somebody was recording you when you were talking.

The last thing I wanted was to like sneak a microphone behind my back and trick somebody into something that they don't wanna do.

People knew they were being recorded, they knew they were talking to a reporter, 'cause I introduced myself immediately, and war ID, this was not, there's nothing clandestine about this.

We were not hiding behind trash cans, or anything like that.

We were telling people what we were after, what we were looking for.

And I believe I kept my word that, you know, that it was their stories, free, for the most part, of any of the political context that we all know.

- And when did you decide, or how did you decide that the story was ready?

- Normally how I find out, people keep asking for the story to be done.

(all laughing) - Folks are like, "When are you ready?

We wanna read it."

- I mean, sometimes there are projects that I worked months on, but, you know, this was like, this was literally, and I wish that my timing was good, was this good naturally.

But turns out I happened to show up one month after the Guard had been deployed to Washington DC, one month later.

It was like, well, everything you wanna news peg for everything.

And the network wanted it as soon as they could get it, so.

Got it back, went through mounds and mounds of tape.

It took a minute, takes, you know, it takes a little while to put it together.

But as, you know, as soon as we could get on is what people were asking for.

- So, two stories, right?

Two different subjects.

And you've heard sort of a number of things, ideas that had been percolating for a while.

A notice that there was a gap in coverage.

A you gotta talk to a lot of people to get a story, and be refused an audience with a lot of people.

- [Steve] I've been thrown out of better places than this.

(Maurice laughing) - You have a moment, right?

You had a movement in Sussex County that actually you could tell a story around.

All of these are elements of what goes into a story, becoming a story, right?

Now, I'm gonna ask them one more question, and then I'm gonna ask you all.

So how do you, Steve, I'll start with you this time, how do you prevent, actually that's a wrong way of putting it.

You come to every story with your own biases, predispositions, idiosyncrasies, if you will.

How do you attempt to make sure that they don't cause your story to be, if you will, inaccurate, if that's the best way of putting it.

But take that question however you want it.

- Thanks.

(Maurice laughing) It's great.

Journalism is a profession like any other.

There's a process you go through to verify the information you're getting.

You don't pick just the information that you like, but what provides the real context of what the story is in.

You get two sources to make sure when you're dealing with things that have not been made public, to make sure that this information is not just accurate, but is in full context, not just a piece of something somebody is giving you to make a point somewhere.

I mean, everybody has, yes, feelings and thoughts on how things should be done, but in many ways it's no different from a surgeon who, some, you know, there might be somebody who is, a murderer comes in there, and they're bleeding out, and they need to fix them.

I mean, you can set a lot of that aside.

Is it 100%?

I don't know.

People argue about that.

But honestly, as you're doing the real work, and doing things over and over again, those muscles that I want this to be accurate, I want this to be good, I wanna make sure I'm properly reflecting people.

They didn't just say those 16 words that I put in there, but this properly reflects their point of view on that, if you know, no matter what that point of view is.

So you have to put in that extra work.

You get really excited about stories that are good and accurate and that really perform.

But I mean, on the flip side, you all read it, you all know this.

You go on TikTok, social media, you read some.

Three people go to a Trump rally, and then three people report.

You can't see everybody else's and stuff.

Eventually this stuff goes right into the wild, and if it's inaccurate, or immediately falls apart.

It's crushing and embarrassing.

Sometimes that happens because you just simply didn't have that one last piece of information that you didn't know you needed.

That does happen.

Journalists make mistakes.

But, you know, the stuff has gotta stand at, especially in this day and age where everything goes on the internet, and then stays there until your grandkids are born.

So there's no point in just rushing something into publication that is just simply not going to stand up for more than 48 hours.

I understand news cycles and everything, but it's just, it's crushing and embarrassing when you find out your information was not the full story.

It bothers you on a very deep level.

And even very small things will drive you insane.

It keep you up at three o'clock in the morning.

I am not kidding.

I mean the greatest feeling in the world is when you finish something where, like, you've checked out your sources, you've got this information.

I did a whole long piece that went into access to abortion by women in the military, and had to use a lot of anonymous sources, 'cause people had to, but you gotta make sure all that information is verified.

But you get it all done, and you get it ready, and it's gonna go.

That's the greatest feeling.

"Oh, it's done."

And then three hours later it's like, "Oh, is this?"

(Maurice laughing) And then you agonize over it.

Then it gets out, and just, "All right, who's gonna start screaming at me?"

And it's, "Oh, nobody started screaming.

Like, wait, does that mean nobody cared about this?"

So it's a long process.

And the thing about professionals is if you're wrong a few times, you do not wanna be wrong again.

It is a painful process, that people take very seriously, and it just cuts to the core of your professionalism.

And so there's a great deal of agony that goes into making sure it's right, and stays right.

It's not just like, "I wanna be the first, I gotta be the first one to get this out here.

I'm gonna beat Twitter.

Okay, great."

But if it doesn't stay correct, it's painful.

- [Maurice] You wanna add to that?

How do you?

- Definitely everything Steve said, but I guess I'll add, well, first of all, if we wanted to promote our opinions about things, we would not go into journalism.

There are better ways to do that.

We are guided by a quest for the truth, and especially at WHRO Education, and connecting you with your community.

So that's at the core that I think we remind ourselves as we're reporting, and seeing what's needed for any individual story.

I'll say, one thing I've learned also is to let the reporting guide your story rather than the other way around.

And what I mean by that is I might think, "Okay, here's an angle for something that I think is happening," and then I get out in the community, talk to people, and they're like, "No, no, no, that's not what we're seeing.

It's like this."

Don't just barrel through with your initial angle, you know, adapt and find where the story actually is.

So that definitely happens as well.

And I think that's goes back to accuracy and fairness, and like Steve, and all reporters, we hate getting an email five minutes after something posted, "This is wrong," or, "Why didn't you reach out to me for comment?"

So we really are trying our best, and if we do get something wrong, you'll see a correction on the story that says exactly what was wrong, and what the right information is.

- You wanna jump in this?

- Yeah, well, as an editor, I'm sort of, I will play the reader or the devil's advocate.

And so if I get a story, and I'll say, "Have we talked to someone?"

and the reporter might say, "Yes, but they wouldn't call me back."

I'll say, "Well let's put that in the story," because we're letting the reader know that we tried to reach X, Y, and Z, and they did not respond to emails.

And we will say, "didn't return phone calls or emails, however they tried."

And if a reporter says, "Well, I've sent an email," I said, "Well, have you tried to call?

Is there a phone number?

You know, go to the place."

We don't want to just give up after one try.

As a reporter, it was, goodness, I think of a lot of the emotional stories that I covered.

I remember there were times when I covered stories around 9/11, for example, and I had to, like, just literally get up and walk away from my desk and walk around the block.

And then I would tell my editor, I would say, "Well, please make sure when you read this, make sure I'm not in it," because I knew how close I got to a source or information.

And the last thing you want is for someone to, like, you say, you put your heart and soul.

I remember I worked on a series at the "Pilot" on massive resistance.

I lost 15 pounds while, in a month, because you go, you print out the story, you go line by line, checking sources.

And that story dealt with local history going back into the fifties.

So I've got newspaper clippings, microfilm, going back 60, 70 years, and I wanna make sure everything is as accurate as possible, because obviously if I'm using a source and the source is incorrect, I can only go with what I have.

But as a journalist, I know what my job is, and I know sometimes if I get too close, that is my editor's job to say, "Okay, I think we need to phrase this a bit differently, or X, Y, Z, one, two, three."

But that's why journalism is a craft.

I think of it as a craft.

And I also think of it as a, I mean, it's really teamwork there.

I mean I can, we could be working on something, and I can turn around and say, "Hey, let me run this by you.

How does it sound?"

That kind of thing.

And that's what we expect from one another.

- We have reporters, we have editors, we have folks who take seriously the science and the art of this work.

And now I'm preaching, because not everything you see out there that says it's journalism goes through this, right?

And we attempt to invest in these kind of journalists, and these kind of editors, and these kinds of processes.

So we get it right.

Do we make mistakes?

Yes, we do, even with all of this.

But I'm hopeful that more and more folks will understand that journalism is more than just being able to let folks know what you think.

And we got a lot of that going on out there, right?

With that, I want to first applaud these folks.

So let's do that.

(audience applauding) And then, I'm hopeful that, we have one mic over here?

I'm hopeful that you have questions, or reflections, or comments, or lots of praise, but we would love to get engaged with you at this time.

So now is your time, but you gotta come to the microphone please.

- So my question is kind of to the point that you all were just talking about, of the process of journalism, and with so many other avenues of getting information, good, bad, or indifferent, how do you, as a reporter, how does WHRO really look at, we need to keep instilling this journalistic process in the community so that people know, hey, when you go to this source, this is what you're looking for, whether it be WHRO or elsewhere?

And so kind of a, sorry, this may be a little bit more than, - You're good, - more complex.

But so I'm thinking number one, you as reporters, and how you advocate for that, but then number two, how do you look at the next generation and say, "I know you really wanna go on TikTok, but if you're really serious," and I'm not picking on TikTok, I'm just using that as an example, - I go on TikTok all the time.

- but as you look at people who, they're interested in telling that story.

How do you say to them, "I know this seems very 20th century, but it's still important."

So how do you do that in your job?

And then looking elsewhere at the future generations, - Who wants to try?

You wanna?

- Well, I'll just say I think it might be a surprise to find that even young people don't question, "Oh, why would I talk to you?

You're with legacy media," or something.

Which it's also interesting, 'cause WHRO, the newsroom kinda feels like a startup, in a way, because we only started five years ago.

So we have a mix of the legacy station and the community goodwill that comes with that.

And then also we've been building something within that.

So to your first point, I try to explain that, because a lot of people that love WHRO don't always know what the news side is about.

We do events like this, but yeah, I think more people are invested in journalism than would maybe say it if they were filling out a survey.

But if they see a reporter out on the street, they think that's awesome, they want them to get the story, they wanna talk to them.

Anytime I do a story with very young kids, they all crowd around the microphone and wanna talk.

So that's a good sign.

But yeah, in terms of, I mean, this is less reporter and more digital strategy, but we do have two digital staff now who are focused on growing our online audience through both the newsletter, and things like TikTok, vertical video, that get you information.

- We're on TikTok, by the way.

- Yeah, so we're doing some of the, I think what I've realized is that people, you have to meet people where they are.

So we wanna be on TikTok so that if people see one thing about the story, they see it from us, even if they're not gonna go click on the link, and come to our website.

And then we have readers in all the different avenues.

Some people just listen on broadcast, some people just read the newsletter.

So that's why we're investing in all these different forms of each story.

- Denise, you've been doing this for a little bit, since you were six.

(Denise laughing) How would you answer that query?

- I spend a lot of time educating.

I mean, I've literally, when I was at the "Pilot", we had a journalism camp in the summer for high school and college kids.

And that was our way to create this, build this new generation.

Last year I taught a master class at William and Mary, and the reason why I signed on to do that was to, because they have a newspaper but they don't have a journalism program, so it was a way of educating them about what we did, and to get them interested in following me.

And just last week I was on a panel about AI in writing, and it was talking to college students, and telling them, you know, use AI as a tool, but remember when you get this little AI summary, they're pulling information from news sources.

So click on that link and follow it to the news source, or make sure you're checking.

So a lot of it is, and even personally on my face, I have a Facebook page, 98% of the time, I'm just promoting stories.

But I will also remind people, I posted one of Steve's stories the other day, and I was like, "Steve is a ace reporter, you gotta read this story if you really wanna know what's going on about this subject."

So when I can, I try to just remind people of the importance of what we do, and how this democracy, how we are dependent on a free press and the journalism and civic engagement.

You know, we need people to be involved, and knowing what's going on in the community is the way to be involved.

- I think people need to understand that so much of what's going on is that the business of journalism is unraveling.

People aren't getting the newspaper, television stations are hollowing out, all of the what would be called legacy media, there're losing staff.

There are fewer people in the community.

They're becoming a smaller part of a much bigger landscape of media that people tap into.

We've been through this before, in many ways, where there was a day when newspapers were like the "Kansas City Democrat," and the, you know, the "St.

Louis Republican," like that.

And people just put their own views out there, and they put that right up front, and people got kind of tired of that after a while.

And that's why the masthead for the "The New York Times" is "All the News That's Fit to Print."

That's a reaction to that.

I think we are going through that cycle.

I think a lot of it is economic, not so much that people just don't want facts anymore.

They just want their opinion.

And so the only real counter to that, honestly, and yeah, sure, I'm on social media, the station is on social media.

But I think a lot of that is, while a lot of these stations, and a lot of these entities are draining out, there are very few that are trying to build up, this is one of those places.

Public media in general is, and this station is one of those places where we're trying to bring more reporters back, bring that whole system.

And I think as that, social media's never gonna go away.

I'd be disappointed if it did, but I think if we can get to a point where we can at least get some equilibrium in the industry, you're going to see, people will still want to know what happened, not somebody's impression of what's going on.

- And I hope we can do more of these kinds of conversations, and do it with audiences that know little about us.

So, we've gotta do that.

Yes, ma'am?

Tell us who you are, and.

- Good evening.

My name is Season, like the four, Roberts, and Steve, you sparked this question.

So I used to watch this show, called "Newsroom," and the last season he protected his anonymous source no matter what.

And so you were talking about how you have anonymous sources, but you also have to check that information.

So I think my question is more technical, like what goes into an anonymous source, and how do you protect them, and does anybody in the newsroom know who that source is?

And then- - [Maurice] He can't tell you this.

- Yeah, I can't tell you.

(all laughing) I love the speeches in the newsroom.

Some of how they go about doing the news is a little bit wonky in the newsroom.

Yeah, people always know.

If I'm putting an anonymous source on NPR, or locally for that matter, somebody over at the station knows it.

It didn't used to be so much of a process, but now there is a very strict process.

Like even if you're going to use an anonymous source for it, because people abuse being an anonymous source.

They put out stuff that, you know, to go after an opponent, or whatever.

So that's not what that is for.

That is somebody who's in actual jeopardy of, you know, getting into some serious trouble if their name were put out there, but they have accurate information.

So I know who they are.

There's an editor that knows who they are.

I mean, in the case of the National Guard, you know, the M4 and the helmet is pretty much a giveaway.

But there are stories I've done with veterans where I'll have to go through, and they have something called a DD-214, which shows like what they did when they were in the service.

And so if somebody's claiming that they were in Iraq, and they got, you know, head trauma from being in Fallujah, then you go through their service record, and, oh, by the way, they weren't, they never deployed outside the continental United States.

Well, that's probably a clue that that story isn't 100% accurate.

But yes, there's a checking process where, it used to be, I mean, when I first started, it was kind of the Wild West of everybody got to be an anonymous source.

You'll find it throughout, like, legacy media that that is shrunken down to people.

And you have to know what theirs, because yeah, you don't want to be in a position of coming back and finding out later that you were fooled by somebody's really cool story that turns out they wasn't quite accurate.

- [Season] Thank you.

- Thank you.

Yes, ma'am?

- Hello, my name is Blair.

So with stories, especially for like the environmental articles, like the solar energy argument, how do you know that a story's done?

Like how do you decide when you go back and follow up, or give us, like, a part two?

How do you decide that, okay?

Or when, because like you said, you have so many stories that you wanna cover, when do you decide enough time has passed to follow up?

- Well, I think once you do a story, sometimes you get a lot of response from people that you didn't know when you were writing the initial story.

And sometimes that leads to follow ups.

In the case of this, it's a solar project that's, again, trying to be permitted.

So a natural follow-up would be when it goes to the local board of supervisors, what's the vote on that?

Or when legislation related to the topic goes to the General Assembly, as it probably will in some form.

That's another, you know, opportunity to follow up.

So for stories like that where it's very focused on the news, there's a lot of natural follow-up points.

And I'll, if I'm writing about something and there's a date for something happening, I'll put that on my calendar so that when we get to that point, I'm not forgetting to follow up on it.

And then of course, once you've made contact with sources, you know, I always say, you know, keep in touch, let me know what you have going on, whether it's about this, or anything else.

And people follow up, and once you, you know, give them your info, they know who to come to with information.

- Yeah, and once somebody like Katherine, who spent, like, six months working on something, you don't come away with a story, you come away with like six stories and you only tell them one of them.

And so there's like, you know, maybe one or two of them, once you start really thinking about it, that you'll come back, and you'll take another look at.

But there's usually plenty left over after a really good investigation.

- [Maurice] Yeah, great question, thank you.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

Yes, sir?

Yeah, we can clap for that.

(audience applauding) - Hi, I'm Jim O'Brien.

My background's in the sciences, so I really appreciate what Steve and Denise were saying about the role of, essentially, curating for accuracy, and watching out for that bias that we all are subject to.

I was wanted to ask Katherine, this story you did with the local tensions, I'm unclear on what that's like.

If you could elaborate that a little bit, and if you could also tell me what you think the course of those local tensions, relative to the solar energy, where it's gonna head.

- If I knew that I probably wouldn't be in journalism, but can you repeat the first part of your question?

- Yeah, the local tensions, is it people who want land only for agriculture or for to sell to developers, or?

- So there's a lot of different sides of the issue, which makes it particularly interesting, because there's a lot of people against these projects, but it's not always for the same reason.

So there are people who are against clean energy altogether.

There are people who are against using viable farmland, or other land that could be used for other uses.

There are people concerned about storm water runoff, or other, like, physical impacts from the panels.

So it's a mix.

And then there are people in the community that are supportive as well, like farmers, who are leasing their land for these projects, and some of the local officials that are approving it.

The Board Of Supervisors member who I talked to, who had changed her mind on the subject, said that essentially she saw it as a saving grace for smaller rural communities to get tax revenue because they're losing population, and don't have the money to cover basic services without bringing in businesses like that.

So I don't know if that answers your question.

- [Jim] Yeah, it's very helpful.

Thank you.

- And then I forget the second part.

- [Jim] I'm sorry?

- I forget the second part of the question.

- What do you see about the future of that?

Were the supervisors gonna handle it?

Is it... - Well, I mean, I'm interested to see if the Board Of Supervisors approves it, because the project has been changed to adapt to community concerns.

There are still plenty of people who don't support it, but you know, it hasn't been voted on yet.

So that's possible that it will get permitted.

But the larger issue, I think it would have to come from the Virginia General Assembly.

Some of the solutions that have been proposed are something like a state-level review board, where developers could appeal local denials.

That has gotten a lot of pushback from localities about control over siting, but there are other sort of less extreme versions of legislation too.

So a lot of people, I think, think it's- - Have you had anybody say, "Why don't you put your solar on top of those city buildings?"

They're gonna use the power, just like the wind farmer.

Most of it's gonna go to urban use.

- Yeah, and that's another point, is people are, they're reading about data centers, and they're upset that their community is having to bear the burden of producing power that is gonna fuel data centers, largely, that are hundreds of miles away.

- Thank you.

- Stay tuned, the General Assembly will be taking this issue up.

- Yeah, if I hear anything, you'll see it in the news.

- Thank you.

- You'll see some more stories.

(laughing) - [Jim] Thank you.

- Thank you, thank you.

(audience applauding) So I think, is this our last question?

- [Audience Member] Yes, the last one.

- Okay, last question.

It better be a good one.

- Pressure's on.

(audience laughing) - My name's Andy Cohen.

I'm curious if there's an intentionality in when you're writing, editing, producing for radio, and obviously it also goes on the website, web and social media, but how you think about what you do, and how you approach it that would be different if it was going on to print or television.

Both in terms of how you approach a story, but then also how you're thinking about the consumer, the audience, and how they might be interacting with that story differently than on other media.

- Yep.

Well, Katherine, you wanna take a first shot at that?

- Yeah, I can give the perspective, coming from print, and then Steve's been in radio, so he will have a different perspective.

But I was used to only doing the, I mean the reporting is the same, but it's a different format, and I'm used to writing, and having, you know, all these words to deal with, to get my point across.

In radio, I mean, some of these stories are three-, four-minute features, but most of the time it's a one-minute spot, including, you know, sound bites from your source.

So writing the script and writing the web story are completely separate processes.

So in terms of how to approach a story, if there's going to be an audio component, you want it to be an interesting and compelling one.

So sometimes we do stories where we're just, you know, talking to folks on the phone or video.

But ideally we wanna meet people in person in a place where we can record them, that gives a sense of place, whether it's, you know, with the troops in DC, or you know, on a boat, looking at the offshore wind project, stuff like that.

And especially for longer stories, we want to add texture with additional sounds.

So not just me talking, and then someone talking, but some other sound to bring in.

So that was new to me, but I think it's been really fun.

But the reporting that I'm trying to get is the same.

It's just how I go about recording the information, essentially, and then writing the separate script.

And we also try to get videos and photos for our digital team to then do TikTok versions.

- Steve.

- When I was in San Diego, I used to have to, on deadline, do a radio version, a television pack, and then a digital piece after that.

I don't miss that.

(Maurice laughing) Just nuts and bolts.

I always pick the medium that I'm writing the story in.

If it's a feature for, you know, locally, or NPR, or the American Home Front, I usually, I'll start with that.

That usually just has three sources in there.

Radio is your voice.

You don't wanna include like a lot of numbers and data, and things like that, because people are not gonna pull off the road, because most people are listening in their car, and, like, write all this stuff down.

So that's not gonna come across.

What it is, is here are passionate people who know the topic.

Let them explain to you why this is important.

So you'll get two, you'll get three or four of those voices in a feature that will hopefully set the scene, hopefully, or you were somewhere where people were walking around on gravel or something, to get some sort of sound, or something.

I will say over the years, as the features has kind of been sort of supplanted by two ways, and in talking, I think it's much more important to get the compelling voices, people who are really speaking to me, that will help connect with the audience, over atmospheric sound, and things like that.

I do both.

I wish I did more, but sometimes it just doesn't work out that way, and it slows the process down.

So you do that, and then usually then I'll, if that's it, I'll take that, and use that as a template to make a digital story.

Alright.

Or if the spot, the spots are like 40 seconds long, so you're not gonna put everything in.

So you're gonna pick one idea that you can say what it is, and have somebody talking about it.

And then we all live happily ever after.

Just boom, right?

Like when the president was here for the 250th anniversary, I filed one story for locally, and one story for NPR.

Local one was the lead, the second story that I sent to NPR became the second graph in there, you know, second or third graph in there.

And it's just a component of the story.

Sometimes when you have a lot of, a really data-driven thing, a story that you've been working on that really does have, like, a very large data component to it, then I will too write the story out, and then I'll make a spot or a feature from that.

But you usually start with one of the other, 'cause it's, the story kinda is one or the other, these things.

So you have to kind of, you know, accept the fact that, you know, you're gonna have, you're gonna be somewhat of a prisoner to the medium.

- [Maurice] You wanna add anything to this?

- Well, I'm thinking, as far as an editor, we do a lot of planning.

And so for example, we have a newsletter, you know, Monday through Friday.

So we know if it's a big story, we know that we wanna run it, like, in the middle of the week, because people aren't gonna go online on Saturday and Sunday.

So planning for a medium that isn't daily is a little bit different.

We know that a lot of people come to the website through the newsletter, so we can post a story today, but we know it might not get a lot of traction until it appears in the newsletter tomorrow.

So there's planning in that way.

Because I spent so much of my time in print, visuals were a huge part of a package, and I have to get, I've gotten used to that not being, it's more radio and sound than visuals to go with a story.

So things like that.

- So I- - The one-idea thing, - Oh, go for it.

is hard for us print people to get our head around.

But I have all this reporting that you have to know this- - You're saying everything.

Hopefully you'll say something.

(Maurice laughing) - Exactly.

But it's been three years now.

- So, I wanna thank you all for, let me thank these panelists again.

(audience applauding) But, I also wanna thank you.

I wanna thank you for your engagement, and I wanna thank you for, I think for this to work, for local journalism to flourish, people have to care, right?

These folks have to care about what they're doing.

They have to care about you.

You have to care about what they're doing, and you have to care about this beloved place that we're trying to make stronger and stronger and stronger.

This is definitely a journey of caring.

And I thank you for caring enough to be with us here this evening, and for consuming what we try to do, and for giving us feedback, good, bad, and ugly, on, when we mess up, tell us we mess up.

But we hope that this can be a contagion.

We want more folks to care about this, so we can continue to do more of it, and hopefully help us all to make this the greatest place to live and work and raise a family and have fun.

So, be safe, and thank you for being here.

(audience applauding) (lively music)