 Ah, Community Matters here on a given Thursday. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech, and that's Steve Petraniak, Hawaii Business Magazine. We call it Hawaii Business. Yes. It's very generic that way. We are everywhere. Digital, social media, in events. Steve and I collaborate on a program called Morning Media Symposium with the emphasis on the word media. And we looked at the media as we do, as we used to do under the name, what, News Morphosis you reminded me. We did two of those. And it's very important that we look at the media because the media is under pressure these days and the media, it becomes more important. It seems to me the media protects the Constitution and if we don't have the media healthy and vibrant and vital, we're at greater risk for people who would like to undermine the Constitution. So that was a great program, Steve. Thank you. Thank you. It was a great program. I agree. It was in their intelligent conversation. Yeah, the test is always whether you come up with stuff you never thought before. This is true. And we had a really wide range of people and people in for-profit media, people on the outside. We had a lot of lawyers and asking First Amendment questions in the audience. We talked about how to pay for news because fake news is real cheap. You and I can make up a whole. We could do lots and lots of fake news for nothing. Good news takes a lot of money, reporting, video, whatever you need to do. And so that was a huge consideration because the money going into real news media is less and less. Yeah, we live in very hard times as far as the media is concerned. And it signifies that it's going to get harder. It'll be harder going forward. I think so. It's interesting. So I looked up some stats on when you talk about digital native newsrooms. And I guess this is a digital native newsroom because your platform is social media, is the web, that sort of thing. Civil beats another digital native newsroom. Buzzfeed, Vice, those are all digital native. They're really growing. From 2008 to today, they added 13,500 newsroom jobs in that segment of the media. So that's a great growth. However, the losses in newspaper newsrooms in the same period, we're about double that, we're more than double that, 33,000 jobs. I've seen that number, yeah. So if you're talking about the total number of news jobs, it is declining. But it's growing in some areas and declining fast in others. Clearly print media, print newsroom, making news, is declining. We've been flat in the Dwight business. Our circulation is flat in print and is growing enormously in digital. So we are, but print newspapers, I mean, they can't survive. If they're built on news, you already know what's in your newspaper every morning if you've been paying attention. Yeah, 12 hours earlier you found out, so it's all news. So the medium is not quite right. Print is better for the deeper stories, the ones that are more meaningful and that you, when you have time to spend with print, and a magazine has a better format for it, there's a tuck of when you're on digital and you're reading digital news, you're leaning into it. It's really short in your time frame and your attention span is shorter. When you do spend time with print, you're sort of leaning back and giving it some time to think and that's where we target that sort of audience with Dwight Business Magazine. Let me make a guess and say that the people who read those long stories are a different crowd than the people who get off on the short stories and there are not as many people who read the long stories because the way we live in our hyped up world, we want it fast. We want it now, we want as much of it as we can possibly get. The long stories take too much time, so I think that probably there will always be some people who want to read long stories, but it's right now I think it's in a shrink mode. But let me add this though, sometimes you go on the web like for the New York Times, Washington Post, and you have a headline that's very catchy. You have a first few paragraphs, very catchy. You know, you could treat that as a short story, but then you keep on reading. And then you keep on reading and reading and reading, you find out this is not a short story at all. This is a story that's going on for 10,000 words. This is pretty good. And so you have a kind of choice with some of these newspapers that have gone online. Well, absolutely. And one of the principles of news writing was the inverted pyramid. You know what a pyramid of course, an inverted, that means that the most important stuff has to go at the top. Do you read that long story? You've got to make sure that it's organized in a way so that if you're only going to read those three paragraphs, you get the essential point. Keep reading, you're still getting more and more. And then the least important stuff is towards the bottom. And if you give up before then, you know, you've missed something, but you haven't missed the essence of the story. It's a challenge to write that way well, but the online media have learned how to do that. You know, we've talked, you know, going back to the original news morphosis about, they didn't call it fake news then, but you know, the quality of the news you're getting and the need to apply critical thinking and what you're reading and to select publications that are giving you the straight scoop and don't have an agenda that they're not necessarily telling you about. And you know, I think, you know, there's an interesting third dimension to that. And it's what stories do you cover? You can cover the du regur kind of stories, what's going on in the hearings and how things in Iran like that, the stories that require you to treat it as a thread. But there's other stories that pop up that don't necessarily get, you know, in the media that you're looking at because that media, you know, doesn't treat it as a priority story, doesn't catch it, or doesn't think it's important enough. So when you evaluate the media, you also have to evaluate them, not only for credibility, not only for, you know, agenda, but also for priorities. What do they want to cover? What are they in fact covering? What are they not covering? You see, one of the things, I think one of the reasons President Trump was elected is because he created an entertainment out of his rallies. And political politics has always been a little bit of entertainment. People would go out for the Lincoln-Douglas debates, but then it was substantive. So that the point where, when the impeachment hearings started going live, you had TV critics calling them boring, you know, well, there's no, you know... You need smoking guns here. Well, you need entertainment. And that's the reality that President Trump as well as others have created. This thing where if it's not explosive every time, people are going to get, well, this is boring. No, no, that news is not supposed to be entertaining. It's supposed to be important, and it's supposed to be revealing. So if your model is an entertainment model, you're going to only, if that's what you're picking your stories based on the entertainment model, you're not going to be giving people a good sense of the news and the importance of a subject. I mean, I was thinking back to the Army McCarthy hearings, and I'm dating myself, I wasn't alive then, but I know that changed America when they went on TV. If you showed that today, no one would watch because they were incredibly slow movie. But you had America on TV then between Joe McCarthy and people like Marshall, General Marshall, and America was at stake then. America's at stake right now. It's not supposed to be entertainment, America. It's supposed to be the principles of democracy and truth and all these things that are so important. And our future together on the planet. Right. Now news, I'll make a distinction between entertaining news and engaging news. Now we have to write it well. We have to make every word count. We have to be, call the, you know, the unnecessary stuff out of it and make it compile, make your time matter so that when you're investing your time in the news, you get the best possible account of it. But don't look for entertainment here. Turn on Netflix if you want entertainment. Don't go to the news for entertainment. Go to the news for the future democracy and the future for our children and our planet. Those are the issues you should be looking for. Incredibly, our educational system over the past 50 years, maybe 70 years, hasn't really taught people, taught the whole country that they are part of the government. The government is part of them. They have to care about it because ultimately it will affect their lives and fortunes. They have to really deal in that realm. So let me pick up on one of the things you said. Netflix is always entertaining. I mean, that's their business model. I've got to be entertaining. But there's a lot of stuff on Netflix that are either quote, documentary or fiction, emulating fact. A series that deals with something that happened in government. Madam Secretary is one example I would give. Here's the Secretary of State. These are the kinds of things that happened and it's just like the kinds of things that you see happening in real life. And there's a blurred line. I think there's been a blurred line for a long time between the fact and the fiction that emulates the fact. And it's very confusing for somebody who has not been trained to distinguish those two. So you're getting all these messages and cues from the fiction that you carry into your perception of the fact. Right. So when me people say I don't trust the media, I ask which medium are you talking about? Because media is a plural noun and it includes everything from Hollywood blockbusters to Facebook to my magazine and a million things in between. So it's similar in a way to that question and it's often asked by pollsters you trust Congress and Congress usually gets down to 16% at a pretty low rating. Do you trust your individual representative? Yes. That's often a much higher ranking. So people trust media that they trust. They trust Hawaii Business Magazine. Maybe they trust Civil Beat or they trust The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal. That's think-text. So there's certain things that they come to depend on for their news. So I don't know that I've entirely answered your question but I think it's important to understand this notion that there's a million different sources out there pick wisely. My wife teaches journalism at UH and one thing she teaches in media literacy and sadly young people have a hard time distinguishing what you're saying between advertising and PR between opinion and between news and she's trying to teach them that and it's really hard because they've grown up in an environment where PR tries to sound like news and opinion tries to sound like fake news tries to sound like real news and doing a pretty good job of fooling people. Fooling people, thank you. That was the word I was looking for. It's a whole PR phenomenon. There are professionals there are far more professionals in PR than there are in reporting. And then you read, you read and I won't name the names of media but you read these stories that are supposed to be news stories and you say wait a minute this sounds like PR. Well it is PR because what happened is the PR person for American money wrote the thing, sent it to the paper as a press release what have you reported, took it wholesale and made it into an article without changing very much at all. The result is that PR is made into news news is PR and it's got a big agenda and it hasn't been vetted, it hasn't been fact checked, but there it is the line again is blurred. It's very problematic I think. Well and I think it's lack of resources in those newsrooms I mean there's so many fewer people we used to have two newspapers in town in Honolulu and they were bigger than, they had much bigger newsrooms both of them than the current one we have the Star Advertiser which is a merger of the two papers so it's a lack of resources I don't want to be too self-righteous about it because you just don't have the manpower that you used to have. People need to understand they have to pay for news. Free news is often fake news or it's bad you know it's just not well done. In order for people to get good news they have to understand they have to pay for it and very few people are paying for news nowadays. Yeah and the lesson to go to the educational side of this as you mentioned, the lesson is that you've got to train students coming up how important it is. The news is important for their democracy, the continuation of their quality of life, the improvement of quality of life, the control of government which gets uncontrolled sometimes and you that's not something you wake up in the middle of the night at the age of 40 and you realize it's something you have to be taught like your wife is teaching it but you know when I was a kid we were actually in school in New York we had a course in reading the newspaper and it wasn't just how to handle the double fold that was part of it. How do you read a newspaper in a subway where you fold it this way and that way it was like how to pick the articles how to appreciate how to connect the dots and a little of that training goes a long way unfortunately like so many other things in schools these days we have dropped that kind of thing off like music, like art and so many other things but I think we need that in a democracy we have to train those kids at a very early age like with reading reading, reading news they're both connected and how to read a newspaper and I guess the ultimate point which I'm sure your wife teaches at the university is that this is the key to our future everyone must get on board you don't have to agree with it but you have to know about it and we don't have that and we had better get that well you know I'm the child of immigrants and their English was not great but my dad would read the paper every evening I know my mother would often read it and they would watch the TV news religiously every night that was they felt that was their duty as a citizen to be honest there were less things to do back then you had the evening paper and there were three channels on TV and everyone put the news on at the same time so nowadays we know there's a million different ways to at six o'clock in the night there's a million different things to do possibly you could read the paper you could read the news or watch it but so many options and here's another thing you know what we're also up against and it I think it's larger than a lot of people know is the you have something like Russia which is a dictatorship and you know Putin and his oligarchs they don't need to what their goal is is to show that democracy is as bad as what they've got so the people in Russia stop complaining you know you want democracy look what democracy looks like in America or in Europe and Britain and that's their goal their goal isn't to necessary to do get Trump in office although maybe they've supported that what they want to do is sort of destroy the democratic process make it so much that people would say I'm not going to vote I mean I can't choose but everybody's a crook everybody's lying everybody everything's broken down why should I vote it's a waste of time that when that happens the Russians win the Chinese win but we have a democracy and it's better than those systems but we have to make it work it does take effort that's why it's so nefarious to say the press is the enemy of the people it's like saying we're our own enemies let's divide up I think another thing it sprung out of what you were talking about a minute ago your parents it's a story that's worth looking at why did they feel like they were doing it as a citizen the immigration service didn't tell them that but they picked it up somewhere they decided that it was they did it as a citizen who was like pay back to the country to be actively engaged in the community conversation and they picked it up they realized that it would help them in the integration into the but it was also going to help them in their careers and one other thing and this is a critical thing they could talk to people they were educated enough so they could have a conversation about their views of things with anybody and I think over time we've lost some of that we were in social media silos we only talked to the telephone we don't talk to people like you and I are talking right now exchanging ideas like that and views we may not agree and so I think that we have that kind of communication A. it helps to read the paper and do discerning reading of the news but B. it's part of that same fabric of understanding that we're all in this together right and which the last point I would make in a free association here is that by doing that when your father sat in his arm chair read the paper he talked to you didn't he Steve? he scolded me once I made a comment about a particular government he said no that's wrong and I was wrong he communicated all that stuff to you and it made you a journalist it made you a responsible citizen too that's exactly it you have an obligation it's not a one way street as a citizen you have obligations as a citizen almost the lowest form is the obligation to vote it goes beyond that to engage in the public discourse with your neighbors with your friends with people at work and to be engaged in what the important matters are and then to speak out on not just to be silent but it is the first word is obligation it is I don't know that people as much feel that obligation I know among immigrants it's very strong because they have volunteered to come here and they have often come from some places much worse they work hard to do the right thing that's why immigrants are so important to the country some of our best citizens many of our best citizens now we're at the point where we have to ask ourselves primitively what to do what to do in the media what to do in the public because I think this is we have a divisive problem part of that is we're in silos and we don't want to sort of shake the tree with the guy who we know feels differently we don't want to come to a consensus we don't want to have a vote really and have that conversation the country has sort of culture going off the track this way to get back won't be easy the media definitely part of it what do we do what do we do as part of the media what do we do as citizens it's we talk a lot about news bubbles when you're in your news bubble you're only hearing what you want to hear what you already know and it's being reinforced and other people in there the biggest problem is not the bubbles that is a problem but it's partisanship it's an inability you're a republican I'm a democrat we're never talking building those relationships and real warm relationships not yelling at each other relationships that starts to break down the barriers that more than getting out of your news bubble let me give you an example we talk about Fox News or MSNBC being very partisan and they are but way more people watch the six o'clock evening national news still and that those shows aim to be centrist and you have republicans and democrats watching the same news and coming away with very different perspectives you've got democrats seeing what's going on in Washington and they're saying that's an impeachable offense and you have republicans saying that's a nothing burger so it's not the news bubble that's the worst problem it is a problem but the worst problem is partisanship and we not having relations anymore with people we disagree with and we have to build those up so I think it's very important to talking to people who you disagree with and not yelling listening and talking maybe you're not going to change their mind or they yours but you've built a relationship and maybe it's a relationship of trust and you can find common ground let me offer a thought on that I've been trying to think this all through and what I've come to well is I'm very patriotic although I went to law school I understood about the branches of government before I went to law school that was part of my pre law school training I was sensitive to it then and I'm even more sensitive to it now about trying to keep the machine going properly healthy and so last week Colbert, one of my favorites gets on with a couple of musicians and they decide they're going to sing America the Beautiful Ray Charles rendition who made that song famous and they sang it and they sang it with jazz over a very American rendition of America and it touched me and I realized something it really touched me every time I hear that song let's not sing it now Steve but every time I hear that song I am touched I mean really emotionally touched and here's a point that comes out of it is that aside from this silo and aside from the divisiveness and unwilling to have a conversation and rejecting the other side at Hark out of hand you have to believe in the country you have to believe in the social fabric that over arches any particular political position you want to take and so when you start out with the notion that this is the group my mother would say this is the greatest country in the world be thankful to God every day that you live here you were born here you know we have to all see that as the fundamental point these questions of the media and the silo and the divisiveness first you have to understand and agree that patriotism overall right of a country that is from sea to sea not this area not the what some people call the real America the real America is everything the real America is everything from Brooklyn to San Francisco to Iowa to North Dakota it's all America and it's always been that way we have always been a country of many different types of people many different types of places and that's why it's a great country yeah the other point is immigration by the way I get a similar reaction when I hear the Emma Lazarus poem you know give me your tired huddle you know yearning to be free that also touches me because I believe that that's part of this recipe you're talking about so you want to know my solution see how you think about it one of the biggest mistakes the country ever made and it was in reaction to Vietnam was terminating the draft because in the military you get to rub shoulders with everyone you get to understand them you get to like them you get to feel there's a common bond and that carried through a number of generations the greatest generation after the war the greatest generation was polyglot it wasn't just a bunch of old howdy guys it was polyglot and so that's we need to do that how do you do that you need national service of some kind that is an interesting idea we did lose a lot when we lost the draft and it would be nice if we brought it back to include women in it I mean there is a because that's one of the divides we have in our country between the way men think and the way the reality women are living in interesting solution can you bring it back to the draft well you're going to have a lot of young people out there who are going to oppose it it's about public service yes it was about the war and we were throwing men into a war that was very painful and lost their lives if it becomes a more of a public service the draft is for public service which may include military service and maybe people will think differently all things considered the program morning media symposium the news that you read and write about every day you live more than really anybody I know you live in a world of news you are sensitive to everything that's happening thank you and then of course all the you know the concerns optimism pessimism about where this country is going, wrap it all together let me ask you how do you feel about the future are we going to be okay well people often draw a comparison between this time and this pre-civil war and then a civil war itself and that is I think a valid concern we have people who can't talk to each other because they're understanding the world we live in is so very different we got through the civil war what we also face and this I think terrifies me even more is climate change and the wrenching choices that we'll have to make that climate change will force upon us including literally hundreds if not billions of a billion climate refugees from places all over the world which be no longer be habitable and those people will come knocking at our door and how we deal with that so I am optimist by nature I think we will get through it because I have no history and we have gotten through things that have been this worse this bad before but I see so many huge challenges and I hope that as a member of the news media I hope to help break down those barriers that allow America to be one country again and to be one country united and moving forward because we have done that before even in spite of partisan differences we have had shared agendas that allowed us to move forward and become great maybe even one world together let's fix this one first and then see how we work go after that thank you so much next time soon