[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC STING] - Hi everyone, Steve Adubato.

We kick off the program with a compelling, important conversation about media and democracy with Dr. Keith Strudler, who is Director of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University, my alma mater.

Good to see you, Doctor.

- It's a pleasure to be here.

- You got it.

Hey, Keith, do this.

I'm pretty sure we're like-minded about this, that the future of our representative democracy, and our graphic will come up, simply called "Media Leadership & Democracy," that our representative democracy in danger, by any reasonable standard, and that the role that we in the media play is critical to democracy's future.

Just elaborate from your perspective.

- Look, I end up talking to a lot of perspective students and their families about the value of a college education and the kind of things that they should be learning and studying, and I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that there's kind of two really critical areas that are gonna determine the fate of humanity, for lack of a better word, and one is obviously everything that's happening with AI and STEM and the development of those technologies, which is gonna change the workforce and so forth, but the other is really our ability to understand mis- and disinformation, to communicate effectively, to understand truth from fiction.

I think it's not in any way an exaggeration to say that both the trained people that work in this field that are ethical, that understand the foundations of media, communication, journalism and democracy, and also to educate a wider public that understands the difference between truth and fiction and how media works, is, you know, the fate of the planet is on the line.

I'll throw global warming in there as third, for those of you that wanna study that, as well.

- Oh yeah, that global warming thing.

- Yeah.

(both chuckling) - Hey Keith, how about this?

So I said to you right before we got on the air that two of our executive producers, I met at Montclair State, I was teaching a course in journalism and media 15 years ago.

Best of the best.

But the media and journalism initiative at the university is dramatically different today than what it was then.

The curriculum's different, the orientation is different, the world is different.

What is it today, the School of Communications and Media at Montclair State?

- So, boy, I mean, I could spend probably the rest of our time just kind of talking about what the school is and what it's evolved into- - How's it different than traditional media and journalism that I taught all those years ago?

- Well, first of all, I think anyone...

There are fewer walls between the silos of storytelling than ever before, so, you know, when you were teaching here there were pretty strict walls between different forms of journalism, certainly between film and television.

- That's right.

- The PR people were over there, right?

The reality is everyone is kind of engaged in some form of storytelling using various tools, working with different audiences.

So if you're gonna be working in this business now, you're gonna have different kinds of relationships with people that you used to think of almost as your enemies, right?

And you are going to have to be able to- - Those PR people?

- Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, the people that study PR, they are effective storytellers that are using the same platforms that journalists are using.

You know, not that long ago, there was a big war over who owned social and it was really between the PR folks and the advertising folks.

Like, "It's PR," "It's advertising," and that was when everyone proclaimed that advertising was dead and journalists were like, "We don't even wanna touch that."

The reality is there are countless platforms now that we all need to figure out how to use to reach audiences, to tell stories.

And so, regardless of which program you're in, you're gonna need to learn the foundations of storytelling and the foundations of using the correct technological tools to do so.

So everyone needs to use how to... You know, it used to be like, "I'm not a cameraperson," right?

"I don't touch the technology."

Or, "I'm not a writer.

I'm not gonna do that.

I'm just in the control room."

The reality is, if you're gonna work in this business you need to be able to understand how stories are told and developed and how to use the tools to engage your audience.

- Well said.

I'm gonna followup on that.

So we're a not-for-profit production company, but highly entrepreneurial.

Affiliated with public broadcasting, but the folks at PBS, they're their own entity and they have their own challenges, but we're partners and colleagues with them.

However, the one thing we have in common, Keith, is that both entities, those of us who lead organizations, not-for-profit media organizations, public broadcasting, we're constantly dealing with the economics of our industry.

There are layoffs everywhere, there are media platforms closing like that.

They opened up a year ago, big announcement, all these new hires, digital, gone.

Question, of all the skills and tools, I'm obsessed by the question of leadership, media leadership, what is the place and the role for media leadership, meaning, in this case, understanding the economics of producing, putting out there, promoting, and paying for important content?

I know that's a loaded question, but I deal with it and think about it every day, Keith.

- Well, I'll give you kind of the easy first answer for that, and that is that this year we launched a co-taught class with the business school on the economics of the media business, which focuses exactly on everything you just talked about, which is what's the economics of streaming media, how does social media get paid for.

One of the things that I think is different today than certainly, you know, in our days, to date ourselves a little bit, you know, we didn't worry too much about who paid our bills and we just needed- (Steve chuckling) - Right, it was like, "There's a salary and there's someone who's gonna pay."

You need to understand who's producing content- - That's right.

- How it gets paid for.

And that was really a foreign concept to all of us.

You know, there was a day not long ago- - With a separation, church and state?

- Yeah.

And newspapers, if you had to print, you were literally printing money.

If you were in the newspaper, there was no end to this, right?

And you can blame whoever you want.

You know, first it was Craigslist and then it was the internet, but you absolutely need to know exactly how media's getting paid for, how your business is going to operate, and so we are much more intentional now on ensuring that students have the opportunity to learn media management, and media management not in the kind of traditional sense but really understanding the economics and the business and the synergies between kind of the corporations that oversee media, who are not inherently the bad guys anymore but are the people that might be facilitating the ability to do journalism.

- So interesting.

Again, I am fascinated by this whole concept of media leadership.

You'll see the graphic coming up, "Media Leadership & Democracy," the conversation with Dr. Keith Strudler, who is Director of the School of Communications and Media at Montclair State University.

It'll be one of many interviews we do, many segments.

Keith, let me jump into this.

TikTok.

I know as we tape this towards the end of March 2024, things are moving all over the place here.

We don't know what's gonna happen.

Why is the future of, quote, "TikTok" relevant to the role of media in a representative democracy, where people need to know what the heck is real and what ain't?

- Yeah, so I mean, there's a lot in that question and some of it is just this notion of literacy and being able to understand misinformation and disinformation, which is a huge challenge with, look, we're dealing with a population now that is natively kind of working with phones and social media, so the students that we have now and the young people that you're gonna be hiring soon, these are people that never grew up without social media and never grew up without a production tool in their pocket, right?

We come into it with a sense of cynicism, right?

With like, "Well, that's social and that's TikTok but I'm gonna watch Steve's show, I'm gonna watch nightly news, I'm gonna get my real information- - I'm gonna watch PBS.

- I'm gonna watch PBS, "NewsHour," right?

I'm gonna- - We've very high-minded, Doctor.

(chuckles) - Absolutely.

Absolutely.

We love PBS.

But the reality is these students have grown up thinking that they're getting their news and information from places like TikTok and Instagram and so forth and so there is this whole, you know, there's a whole process that we need to go through, which really needs to, I mean, to put it on universities is a lot, Really needs to be part of secondary education, which is helping students to understand what is real and what isn't and how social media operates, how algorithms operate, why you're getting fed what you're getting fed, understanding why your feed looks very different than other feeds.

Look, I had a conversation yesterday, it was an agency executive who is, you know, they're obviously very aware of what could happen with TikTok 'cause their clients love TikTok as a way to use influencer marketing.

It's a very effective sales tool for young people.

But the reality is each one of these social platforms, whether it's TikTok or Instagram, and then some of their affiliated, anything in the Meta platform, and obviously Twitter, which has its own issues, they all operate using different algorithms and with different kind of motivations, so it's not even as easy as understanding, and I'll get to the initial question, kind of how social works and mis- and disinformation works.

The reality is, the question of TikTok really deals with understanding how TikTok operates and its motivations and how influencers get to young people and how young people continue to get fed information.

- But let me, this is so interesting on so many levels.

I know I'm blowing past the breaks because this is important but let me try this, so very often when we go out to funders or perspective underwriters they'll ask, "How many?

What are the ratings?"

The ratings are what they are.

But again, more and more, a part of media leadership in my mind is taking your content and obviously everyone has to do this, having it on so many different platforms, and so we look at those metrics, if you will, right, Doc?

But here's, let me throw this at you and connect it back to democracy, the future of our country, a free people, a representative democracy, a republic.

As some people will say, "Adubato, it's not a democracy, it's a republic."

I'm like, "All right, we're gonna that conversation.

I'm not doing that now."

Here's the question, numbers, if I, this conversation about media leadership, we'll put it all over the place, I don't know how many people are gonna be willing to watch any of it or all of it, if I were to interview a white supremacist who said the most vile, outrageous, hateful, racist things, I guarantee you the numbers would be off the chart.

Here's the question, how would I be doing anything meaningful as it relates to promoting and protecting our representative democracy?

- Well, you wouldn't, but that's not how the platforms are set up.

They are not built on, you know, look, with all due respect to Facebook and Meta and all these other companies, they don't have as their singular goal to save democracy, their goal is to generate revenue and to feed information- - Is it any goal?

It's not their singular goal, is it any part of the equation at all?

- You know, they would suggest that opening up a platform for a wide range of voices and that they have people that monitor content, but the reality is a lot of the things that you talk about, things like hate speech, the platforms are in many ways specifically set up to encourage that kind of dialogue.

The algorithms continue to feed you that information and we become thirstier and thirstier and thirstier for it, so the more you look at it, the more you're gonna get.

So the reality is there's, and I don't wanna set up a kind of a dire kind of perspective of how the world's gonna end, but the reality is there is, as much as I believe in free information, free press, and the idea of restricting or limiting TikTok is a little disarming because we start to say, "What does that mean?"

but we have to get a better handle on how information is getting disseminated and how we prepare people to get it.

- We have literally just scratched the surface.

We're talking with Dr. Keith Strudler, who is director of the School of Communications and Media at Montclair State University, our series, "Media Leadership & Democracy."

Dr. Strudler, I promise we will have you back with other colleagues in academia and in the media to talk about this because regardless of how many likes we get, we know it's important.

Thank you, Keith.

We appreciate it.

- I appreciate it as well.

- You got it.

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

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