 Welcome, I'm Mia Parrish, I'm the head of ASU Media Enterprise and this is our latest free speech project conversation. The free speech project is a year long inquiry of Future Tense, which is a project of ASU, New America, and Slate Magazine, that we're doing in collaboration with American University's Tech Law and Security Program. Future Tense is holding a series of events throughout the year, looking at how technology is affecting and challenging our traditional free speech, legal and cultural norms. And we are publishing articles as part of the project on Slate every week. I'm joined today by Suzanne Nossel, who's the CEO, Penn America, and the author of a forthcoming book called Dare to Speak, Defending Free Speech for All. It comes out in May. It looks fascinating. I'm already, I'm in. Penn America has also been a great partner with us on a number of these free speech projects and events, and Suzanne spoke at our kickoff event at American University back in February. Very glad to have you. Also with us is Kyle Pope. He's the editor and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review. He's a hybrid media and television at the Wall Street Journal a time ago, as well as having super relevant and interesting experience running hyper local papers in Metro New York, and he also edited the New York Observer for a time. This is, as we have said again and again, a really vital time for free speech and free expression, not just in America but around the world. And an informed citizenry and a vigorous press are vital to holding the powerful accountable, and this has long been a hallmark of New American democracy and is integral to our right to free speech. But as more and more communities in the collapsing business model come in on them and create create trouble and controversy for them to be able to have their robust role in the community. We're seeing a cascading effect in traditional media business models and COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of us having a robust repress at the same time as really causing a lot of financial issues and is creating a crisis for those ever shrinking countries. I want to thank all of you for joining us as we consider the future of the news business and the remedies to the threat that could prove devastating to our democracy. And a reminder that we will be taking questions you can log this at the bottom. I'm looking forward to this conversation. I thought Kyle maybe you could sort of set the stage for us and what's going on today and what you're seeing as an observer and a reporter, educated, knowledgeable person on this. Yeah, unfortunately, the state of the local news business is bad before the coronavirus arrived. You know, we're hearing a lot about pre existing conditions and vulnerabilities and this is an industry that was very, very, very, very sick. Before any of this happened and I'm, I'm sorry to say that I think it's just going to decimate the local news landscape across the country. At CJR we do a lot of reporting on this. We compile a lot of data and I got to tell you that pretty much a day is doesn't go by in the last couple of weeks where we don't get an email from somebody saying, I'm a member of the staff of the paper they're laying off people they're cutting our salaries. They're discontinuing our operations so it's very, very widespread. And I just fear that it's going to accelerate so there's for us is sort of two projects one is chronicling that and understanding the depths of it and how widespread it is and how many people are affected and what it means but then we really have to start thinking about what is the what is this business going to look like and and I don't think it's it's not going to reconstitute itself as it was we're not going to see a newly vibrant commercial landscape or profit local newspaper that I think is over. So, the question now is, is, what is the one of these models look like who's going to fund them. What kind of help is going to be needed we at CJR have already started running sort of op-ed pieces by people when one piece was sort of proposing a journalism stimulus program similar to the stimulus plan that Congress has passed for the overall economy. Other people are talking about, you know, sort of a rallying cry for philanthropy but I think for us. It's going to be the defining story sort of going forward once we emerge from this sort of terrifying healthcare crisis that we're in right now. I mean, though it is related, you know the terrifying healthcare crisis is causing. I liken it to a patient who already had all the underlying health conditions and now was infected with the virus right. I mean, it was this was not a blow that this industry couldn't withstand. It was already teetering and and you know a lot of these outlets were really just trying to hold it together and this is just going to prove to be too much. Hold that thought because that is central to to the question of you know what is that we're going to do about it as well. I thought Suzanne could weigh in on you know you're an expert you've spoken internationally on free expression and free speech and in this time where we're having certainly a lot of misinformation but also cries for, you know, maintaining free expression in that. What do you see as the big challenges and how. Yeah, sure. I mean, just say a word about how it is that pen America became involved in addressing this issue. Absolutely. Yeah, so we are a membership organization of writers all over the country, united in defensive free expression and after the 2016 election. We evolved from being kind of a New York centric organization to really mobilizing our membership across the country, and we now have a network of chapters and as we did that. Some concerns were uppermost in our mind, we were worried about Donald Trump's attacks on the media his threats against journalists and we were concerned that there wasn't really a constituency in defense of press freedom in this country that ever had had to be mobilized because you know we were able to kind of by and large, take some of these freedoms for granted they were encroached upon to some degree but this was an unprecedented attack. But when we went across the country, you know what we found was something quite different and I'd say the concerns were heard overwhelmingly were much less about President Trump and his attacks and denigration of journalists and far more about what was happening at the call face in these local communities where they had seen their newspapers be with a closed down decimated becoming what we call ghost papers where there's almost no original local reporting and everything in there kind of comes from somewhere else and it's stitched together. And the sense that says being taken over by hedge funds or large corporations that were essentially milking these businesses taking out as much cost as possible, shrinking down the reporting staff to skeleton levels and the sense of alarm that we heard around the country about you know what was being lost as local news was disappearing, you know the ability to hold officials accountable to be informed to, you know, foster community across different subcultures for minority communities to have their concerns heard and heard and so we put together a big report called losing the news that we issued last November kind of chronicling all of this and we've looked at three in depth case case studies on Detroit, Denver and North Carolina and we also examined, you know, what are the solutions to these business models be reinvented, you know what, how far can the role of philanthropy go, and we really reached the conclusion that there's a $35 billion gap in terms of lost revenue in this industry and that to make that up or even come close. So we kind of an all hands on deck approach, we do need a much more robust and up to date approach to public funding. And, you know that really this represents a crisis for democracy, if we allow these local news outlets to get to wither away and I think the crisis, you know, one silver lining is it's just made the essentiality of local news so manifest and undeniable you know when people need to know what stores are open what precisely are the local regulations you know where can you test for Coronavirus like these very basic elemental needs that citizens have, you know, amidst this pandemic, local news outlets are fulfilling and we think of local journalists really as first responders like they are and you know, and they have been journalists have been designated as essential employees just about everywhere so we talk about the grocery store workers and the police, but it's also the journalists are doing this vital work putting themselves at risk. Yeah I know it's really interesting how it you know it's literally as listed as an essential operation which it is it's essential to the to our health and safety and you know the knowledge and security and that. So we're also having a crisis of people not wanting to pay for that I've seen so many time you know a lot of the operations have dropped their paywalls, and there's some controversy around whether that's a good idea or not. I think, I don't know what Kyle's opinion is on that but in the response to this we're not seeing a ton of people jumping in to say, you're right I really need to support local media, you know they are seeing it and meeting it but they weren't they weren't doing that before this crisis right. It's been very hard for local media to make the case for paid subscriptions. The Wall Street Journal has been able to do it the New York Times been able to do it, the Atlantic has been able to do it but very very very few local outlets across the country. And I totally agree with what Suzanne saying about how this highlights the critical nature of what these reporters do. And I think that's going to be even more the case. Once we emerge from the sort of the current immediate health crisis, because then we're going to be, you know, then there's so much reporting to do I mean the amazing thing about this pandemic is it sort of shown a spotlight on all of the problems in our society and in our, in our life that we knew we're there but we didn't know the depths of them so whether it's like, what is the state of readiness of our local hospital or what what has been going on in our local jail or how was the local school district to handle remote learning I mean these are all stories that are national stories but they're all replicated in towns and cities all around the country and, and just the desperate need to understand sort of how we ended up in this place. I mean forget Trump and what he did I mean there's, there's just a lot of local work to be done to figure out what the impact on each community has been. I think, you know, just in terms of thinking through, I mean this gap that Suzanne mentioned that their report surfaced. You know, there's basically nobody that can fill that. There's no, there's no foundation big enough. There's no collection of hedge funds that are going to have enough money. I mean ultimately this is going to come down to us, making a case that local journalism is a necessary public service, and that just like the water department and the EMS and the fire department is, and you know, whether that, you know what that looks like it could look like some kind of public private support in the community, or it could just look like a sense of obligation for people who live in those towns to say, this is important to me and it's, and as we've learned in the recent months, it's important to whether I live or die. I mean, I'll pay for this. It's incumbent on me to support these places. That is the only place we're going to be able to make up that kind of gap if people, if there is, if there's a public spiritedness around how important these outlets are. Because there's no rescue, big enough that's going to come in from the outside. I've seen an example of where that's worked. I mean, there are some internationally probably what the Guardian has done and some others where there's been more movement toward that. The market doesn't tend to operate with public interest as a motivator, you know. There are, you know, there are examples around the world. I mean, the Guardian is interesting. I mean it's a national newspaper, but they actually have a, there's a lot of people who buy Guardian subscriptions and give them as gifts to other people, which I find interesting. And it sort of gets to the point that we were just making. In some cases around the country, there was a group in New Jersey that was really looking at, is there a way that we could add a small tax that would then be used to fund local journalism? Obviously, it's very problematic because you really want the government involved in administering this, but it was more of a thought experiment, I thought, that was interesting. There have been other cases where just sort of local community leaders have decided, you know what, having a good local outlet is important to us is having good parks and a good public education system and a good local theater. So we are going to like put our money where our mouth is and sort of support this and we're going to rally other kind of prominent local people to do the same. That has happened in some communities. So we just need to be seeing a lot more of that. Suzanne's made the point about the ghost papers and more than 2200 newspapers have gone out of business in the last 5, 8, 10 years. You're going to see more and more of them. They're still continuing to be, you know, they're going dark or they're going to, they're more like ghost papers. That's happened with TV stations as well where you'd see that commoditization of news that's built out of New York showing up in Des Moines or whatever. It's not just a newspaper issue. And we're now we're seeing that accelerate. Obviously COVID's going to, there are a variety of newspapers have gone to two or three times a week in print or not at all. And that really exacerbates and accelerates that problem. Are you seeing, what are you seeing Suzanne out there that is is helpful or, you know, and I'll just share one of my frustrations where in this you look at the comments on the stories and people are saying, you know, why are you charging me for this it's essential and like I charge you get charged for the doctor and water and your gardener wants to be paid and all sorts of people want to be paid. It's an interesting conundrum to me that it's so vital it should be free. But it's, but it's so important and it actually costs money that people don't see the value in it so curious. There's still sort of a, you know, a hangover from the days where, you know, everything on the internet was free and people expected it to be free and it was seen as an entitlement and information should be, you know, unshamed. And we are dealing with a separate front, you know, the Internet Archive which has declared for itself an emergency license to all sorts of books, just to disseminate them freely without any copyright royalties back to the author so there is still this idea of an entitlement and I think, you know, many local news outlets as you touched on have decided to drop paywalls in relation to COVID coverage as a matter of civic duty and public service and I think, you know, that's honorable and the right thing to do but it just doesn't answer the question of, you know, how on earth are we going to muster the resources to continue to produce this vital information and we see, of course, there's now a tracker day by day, whether it's layoffs, furloughs, pay cuts, cuts in print distribution that are being announced by local news outlets, you know, day in and day out. I mean, this was really sort of a perfect storm in that, you know, the business model that, you know, was destroyed and has eroded so sharply, you know, was one that hinged on advertising and some of the remaining sources of advertising that, you know, these even threadbare publications were still reliant on, of course, are retail stores, restaurants, event businesses, all of these outlets that have, you know, themselves been absolutely slammed by our national shutdown and, you know, they're, you know, working on fumes right now because they don't have revenues coming in and of course they have no need to advertise and so it's this very difficult kind of confluence of circumstances. I'd say the one, you know, I try to be an optimist. I think, you know, one thing that gives me some hope is that this issue is finally getting some attention. I mean, when we started out on this topic, I'd say, you know, over a year ago, I mean, Kyle was an expert and there were experts in some of the journalism schools across the country who were looking into this and doing important data collection and reporting, but it was not a mainstream stream topic of conversation. And just today, you know, I think there's an illustration of how it is breaking into wider awareness. There were two letters that were issued today. One was by Penn America and the consortium of other groups, including Common Cause and Free Press, about 45 different organizations writing to Congress to ask that local news be addressed in the next stimulus package. And the second on a very similar theme was a group of more than a dozen senators led by Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut calling for the exact same thing. And so, you know, there is more momentum and, you know, we can talk about what the pitfalls of public funding are because I think it has to be done very carefully. And, you know, it was not our thought when we entered into an examination of this topic that Penn America would ever come out in favor of public funding for journalism or that is as part of a major part of the solution to what ails local journalism, but it was apparent to us, given the size of the gap that it has to be part of what it has done to shore up this sector in its essential role for our democracy. So, you know, that bit of momentum and attention, you know, I do think is important. Obviously, we have to see it through and make sure it leads to action and that's not going to be so easy. Right. You're seeing a lot of challenges. You know, obviously, the in the past, the idea of government having anything to do with, you know, real journalism was anathema, but you're at this true crisis point where all these questions are having to be asked and and experiments are being done in Canada and other places, but we'll see. Well, and let's also remember that it's anathema in this country, but it's very common in other parts of the world, especially in Europe, where we know the model that the BBC has. But all over Scandinavia, there's public funding models and there's, you know, there are people doing very good work there so it's not like this is something that's completely, it's not like it's completely unheard of idea. There are people who are doing it every day and doing it well. And the the news outlets at the moment here we're really seeing some increases in attraction have been public media. So PR and public television are actually doing pretty well right now and I think some of that has to do not so much with the government support but having had a different diversification of the revenue model along with membership and sponsorship and other, they've been able to be more stable and not as reactive perhaps and able to invest. So there's, there are, we do have models of government funded or supported real credible journalism now so it's not completely crazy for us. Are you one of the other things that I think has been interesting has been the some talk about Fox News and whether or not they should be held accountable in terms of the misinformation space and what that looks like, especially in light of the virus I mean I'm not sure if either of you had thoughts on that and that's another thing you, you, suing the media has not been something that any of us were interested in doing but that's starting to bubble up with this crisis that's been a new thing as well. I'll put that over to them. Yeah, I mean, a free expression question right you know it's like, I mean it's something you know, you know our general view we've done a lot of work on questions of misinformation. And fake news and you know the vast, vast bulk of it is protected under the First Amendment. And, you know, we support that we don't think the answer by and large lies in banning or punishing it and we are very concerned about the, you know, the thin lines that can separate, you know, whether it's hyperbole or political who ha, I, you know, or just the heated rhetoric of a vociferously waged campaign from actual, you know, fake news and so it does concern us to embolden empower the government to crack down and silence and you know I think the danger is particularly vivid, you know, if, if, you know, you imagine sort of prosecuting news agencies right now you can imagine who would be on the receiving end of that and it wouldn't be Fox News. Now, you know that being said, Let's, by the way, I'm sorry to interrupt but let's remember that the president has sued the New York Times and CNN already. So he's already gone down this room. In his, in his personal capacity, which I, you know, I, I think is outrageous and to me, intuitively, you know, is just totally inconsistent with the First Amendment, although a First Amendment lawyer will say that he can do that in his personal capacity because he's not, you know, it's not an action of government but it obviously carries the weight of the presidency for him to, you know, seek to retaliate against whether it's a book author, or a journalism organization for the content of what they've done, you know, a private lawsuit, you know, I think it's a question of whether there's any sort of cause of action. I mean, you can prove that, you know, this is deliberate, willful dissemination of misinformation and, you know, medically unsound information that is contradicted by the internal guidance that was circulating within the news organization for their own employees. I don't know if that rises to the level of a cause of action. I think it does raise concerns, but I think a lot of it will hinge on, you know, whether that standard of willful deceit and reckless endangerment can be met and whether, whether the evidence will substantiate that. I think there's more in the vein of, you know, these things are debatable and, you know, different scientists are saying different things, you know, which has been true throughout a lot of this pandemic. You know, I think then, you know, regrettable, irresponsible, you know, but not illegal. Yeah, I mean, I think they're going to have to answer to their own viewers. A lot of whom are quite our older, it's an older audience and they're very vulnerable and there are going to be people who are going to suffer as a result. So I think, you know, the I mean, I'm the last forgiving of them because I think, you know, it's one thing to do. I mean, a lot of this stuff that they were spouting wasn't debatable. It was just it was fantasy. So I think there's going to be a, you know, this could finally be the thing that where they have to pay a sort of commercial price, which I think is why you're starting to see members of the Murdoch family, for instance, sort of step up and say, well, maybe we maybe this went on too far. I think they're starting to be afraid. That's the question of their advertisers, you know, how can advertisers sort of stand by this, you know, as we learn that, you know, there were, there was different guidance being handed out internally there were people who were aware of the facts and recognized that what was being broadcast was inaccurate. You know, obviously the picture is complicated by the fact that, you know, we have the misinformation purveyor and chiefs at the White House podium, day in and day out talking about unproven scientific treatments and containment measures that haven't been implemented, you know, that he says are working perfectly. And so, you know, the whole kind of quality of our discourse is degraded by that and people become enured to misinformation. So I don't have enormous confidence that the viewership of Fox News is going to stand up and rebellion. You know, I think we would all be better off if people did hold both leaders and new groups organizations accountable for accuracy. Yeah, I do think it's important for us to have responsibility and culpability in some of the decisions that have been made and some of the outcomes that we've seen both on the business side and then on the new side, you know, that's, you know, there are different extremes of that, but we're seeing a lot of that play out now in ways that are perhaps unfixable and really disturbing. Well, I honestly think it, I think it's related to this subject that we were talking about earlier, which is how do we get people to rally around the importance of local news in their community. And if, if they're being told by the large most watched cable outlet in the country that the a lot of journalism is fake, and that, you know, reporters are out to hurt the country it makes that it makes that case more difficult. Which is why, you know, the President's, you know, it's easy to dismiss the President's rhetoric as, as a political stump speech but it is insidious in that it does, it does trickle down and into local communities around the country and the New York Times can defend itself. But, you know, now we're at the point where much smaller places in some of them in parts of the country that support the president are going to have to make the case that we need your support and his actions and Fox's actions have made that case more difficult. Yeah, I mean, a couple points, you're absolutely right that we see, you know, I think kind of the trumpification of our whole society and this impulse to punish people for speaking out, you know, Ron Santis, excluding a reporter from a news briefing in Florida because they ask about social distancing, you know, in the press room. And so we do see this kind of pattern of copycat dismissiveness and contemptuousness toward the press. You know, that said, you know, the survey show that citizens consistently trust their local media, more than they do the local media. And, you know, they believe that these reporters who they see within their own communities are more connected and more truthful in their coverage and so that, you know, is a kind of shred of hope. You know, if we want to rebuild an information ecosystem where people, you know, know where to turn for factual information, local news should be a centerpiece of that. And I think in the COVID context, you know, that's being borne out and people are really, you know, they are seeing that this essential information about how to sort of go about your life under this crisis is coming from these local outlets and that they're a lifeline. And seeing some of the stories now that people were believing that the media was overhyping early in the coverage when that's just, we don't overhype we just report what's happening. And so now the reality of what's happened has caught up. And I think in this case there's so much that is coming true that we were sort of told by some outlets, wasn't going to be true some individuals and outlets, and that that's been a bit of a sea change because typically it's like a story in a place versus the story everywhere. And so the preponderance of that is different than what I've seen in my career previously I think that we may see kind of a, it might be something of a sea change but it might be too late to Kyle's point, because at the same time that we've had this hit on the side of me, it's been a gigantic hit on advertising that's a huge element so it's hurting this other business that's related to the business that we do as well. And I think a little about the business models and other things too but So it's devastating the alt weekly landscape, I mean those outlets depended on live events for a big chunk of their advertising and restaurants and basically everything that you do when you're with people. Music, luncheons, everything. It's completely now just has sort of been taken out from under them. And you also frankly, seeing a little bit of opportunistic cutting where I think you had some outlets that were not doing so great and, and, and we're especially that are owned by sort of investment groups or who sort of sees on the opportunity. I mean I thought very quickly is like oh, where are we going to have into this and they're saying well we're going to cut way back so that was clearly in the works already. But it's just going to become. I mean it's like everything that we're living through right now we, none of us know where, none of us know where we're where the other side is. I don't, I mean I don't know where the other side I live in New York City and, and every day I sort of look for glimmers of hope in the data and some days I see it and some days I don't, and I'm trying to sort of think about, you know, are we going to, you know, are my children going to be back in school or what is that you know and we don't know anything and I think we have to get through that phase first and then we can start like looking at, at the, at the battlefield and sort of say where do we go now. So what is that, what does this phase look like you've got a situation where, like you said we don't know where it ends how long it's going to take what that looks like the things that we've done in the past really haven't been working. And the, the things that we lean on for revenue are gone, you know how do you build that trust what could that look like. And the trust is up with local that's a the latest Gallup poll the credibility of local news operations has increased in the most recent polling, but is there a, are you seeing some green shoots of hopefulness or silver lining in any of this. My hope is that the, some of the stimulus money is whether it's local news outlets that are independent and can apply for small business administration financing, you know, or a more structured scheme. And so, you know, that's a bridging move that's a stop gap that's something that, you know, we hope will prevent outlets from going out of business entirely because once they disappear, they do not come back, and so there's a finality at stake here, you know, just over the next you know extraordinary period where you know we we may well see news outlets just shut you know closing their doors permanently. And then once we get beyond though that kind of you know this kind of crisis phase it really is. Yeah, the hope is, you know, as we sort of start to look at many facets art of our society, you know, for example, the health disparities that are leading to some of the grave gaps that we're now learning about in terms of who really is hit by this disease and how are in terms of different minority populations within cities, you know, my hope is that the the precariousness and essentiality of local news is, you know, another great societal revelation that emerges from this and we have made the case for you know that that local journalism is a public good and that we need a congressional commission, you know, in the style of the original Carnegie Commission that led to the establishment of our public broadcast corporation to reexamine the support that we give and bring that whole system up to date so that we can provide some permanent long term sustenance to these organizations showing up the role that they play in our democracy we think it needs to be done very carefully and that we need to be looking at models from around the world in terms of how territorial and independence is preserved. There are also models in the scientific arena with research funding in the art sector and humanity sector with with the very substantial funding that goes to US universities so you know we think there's a way to do this and that you know perhaps this stimulus phase can kind of destigmatize the idea of expanded public funding and catalyze a robust in depth debate and examination you know that will take place going forward that you know that that I would say is the hopeful scenario. Yeah, I agree. We have, we have a couple questions so I thought I would hop to those. The first is from Gordon Skinner and he asks what about having the press and journalism as a public utility you know we've touched on that sort of and why not have it be a public benefit corporation and not be underwritten by the government or be a privately held business so the idea of a B Corp idea. I know Kyle you've written a little bit about various business models that might make sense. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think that's the things get bogged down very quickly and in tax issues and legal issues but I mean I think the idea is sort of right. I already, I think there's some legislation is presently missing about this in California that enables for profit media to create nonprofit arms so they can collect that kind of funding. I think that's a really interesting idea. I mean even, you know, even the New York Times is doing that now I think they're, they're, they're, they're creating some sort of nonprofit funds. Yeah, to fund foundation recording I mean to to allow for foundation funding. So I think, I think those are the kind of kind of creative approaches we got to be thinking about I think, you know, there is a, there is a risk that a lot of what we're thinking about these are really big ideas, they're going to take quite a while to unfold at a time when everything else in American society is being rebuilt at the same time. So I do fear that some of this stuff isn't going to come soon enough. So I think, you know, we also have to be thinking short term about what can news organizations do today I mean one of the things that you're starting to see a lot more of is just cooperation across outlets. I think the idea that we're all kind of competitive with every other journalistic outlet in the country is, I think a is not, is not the way to look at the moment that we're in so you're seeing now a lot more, you know, a lot of people have been doing this for a long time where they cooperate with local news outlets and, and NPR has been very good at kind of stitching stations together to do reporting but you know, we don't we got to be looking at, you know, the la times and the local newspaper in Texas and a local newspaper in Illinois and the local TV station for it all working together on a story that they have common interest in sharing and pooling resources. We at CJR had been, we grew frustrated about a year ago with the lack of adequate coverage of the climate crisis so we decided that we are going to try to put together a collaboration of news outlets around the world and with the goal of everybody doing better and better climate coverage and sharing their content that they have. And we didn't know what would happen, we didn't know what people would be into it, we were trying to get competing organizations to be part of the same collaborative and sharing their information. It's called Covering Climate Now and now there's 400 news organizations around the world including competing like there's Reuters as a member as is Bloomberg as is AFP. They're all in the same business but they recognize that in order to really move the needle on this stuff they have to work together and they have to share. So, I've been really encouraged by that I mean that seems like a million years ago that we launched that and it seems like, you know, people are focused on different things although I would argue that there are a lot of crossovers between the corona story and the climate story. But it does prove that news outlets can work together and collaborate and sort of have an impact that they can magnify. I think you're seeing, I'm a strong believer in collaboration and partnerships and I don't think that the TV station down the street is my enemy. Like, I think, you know, there are a lot of other bigger enemies or threats like Facebook and Facebook are becoming most of the digital advertising. You know, there are things that are more detrimental to our operations than being able to partner with the TV station or the NPR station in El Paso or, you know, figuring out ways to get the coverage that you need, whether they're one of your cousins in your company or not. Your example is the LA Times and others who are independents which I think is a really good example. Someone also asked about nonprofit news and the nonprofit model. There is, you know, one newspaper is the first one out in Salt Lake which has that nonprofit status that they had gotten agreed to. There are a couple others that are dabbling in that space. I tended to say that that is not a solution. You know, it's part of a solution. It's not a magic bullet because you still, even if you're a nonprofit, you still have to figure out how to fund journalism. So what is that, you know, they're not suddenly also not taking pay. So I think that's an interesting thing. To that point we have another question from Bruce Gaber in Bethesda, Maryland who says, I'm fortunate enough to have been looking at ways to creatively spend my recovery money. How might we spread the idea of contributing some of this money to support local journalism and, you know, certainly we encourage people to subscribe and I've been subscribing like crazy, you know, and it's, it's not a ton of money but what other things have you seen where that's been and you talked about the foundational money going into to support some journalism but other things that you all have seen answering Mr. Gaber's question. I think one point that bears mentioning is, look, there has been this huge philanthropic infusion of 300 million dollars over the last few years into journalism and some amazing organizations have, you know, been brought to life with those resources like Prophubica that are doing extraordinary work and they're partnering with leading media outlets here in the US and around the world and breaking vital stories but a comparative way, very small percentage of those resources really are going to local media and, and, you know, this part of the market and, you know, there are all kinds of reasons for that it has a lot to do with how foundations work they're trying to change it, you know, there are new projects underway that try to push those monies out to the grassroots, to say it is not a panacea first of all, you know, even if the most robust and rosy projections of how that philanthropic investment might grow just doesn't come anywhere you know you're talking 300 million and 35 billion you know the numbers just don't add up it's never going to be a way to compensate and keep alive the kind of local in the news infrastructure that we are accustomed to. So I think it's very important I think, you know, one piece that it, you know, particularly we would like to see is more connective tissue within individual communities so that local philanthropists and citizens recognize the value of local media and celebrate that value and support that value, you know, potentially not justice subscribers but as you know where we're nonprofit entities and arms have been set up as as supporters and donors as well and that's something in the communities where we were creating that that you know that while the data on trust is points in the right direction and levels of trust of local media are high, there also are all kinds of disconnects and misperceptions about local media people don't know a lot about how the news is made they often don't know especially younger generations. They don't know the individuals who are behind it so a lot of the work we've been doing is sort of building up that connective tissue so people understand and recognize these local news organizations as vital institutions within their community that they engage with that they support you know the welfare of which they see as a matter of public concern. Well, it's also incumbent on these news organizations to humanize themselves I mean we did a story. And now it's been a couple years ago but there was a paper in Pennsylvania. And that was in a where where most of its its readership base voted for Trump, and they kept they after the election they started getting you guys are fake news you guys are fake news, and they decided, instead of just arguing with these people they actually sort of invited them into the newsroom and said hey come on in. We'll show you how we work you can meet our editors and just get a better sense of how we operate. What was interesting is that when they first put out this call. Nobody took them up on it. So they sort of up the ante it said okay we'll buy you a pizza, like, we'll pay for your lunch if you'll just come in. And, and ultimately people did and they had this, they had a really interesting conversation about like, you know they asked the readers why do you think we're fake news and they would say well you ran this headline it said, and the local people were like, that was an AP story like we didn't write that story. That was a wire service story so can you point us to something that we did that feeds this belief. And so there was sort of slowly a kind of breakdown of this kind of mistrust that that still existed there so I think you know it, it's important for sort of leaders in the community to take this on but it's also important for the news outlets themselves I mean one other little story I was. You mentioned that I ran a sort of group of hyper local papers in Manhattan for a little while and we decided we wanted to do the same thing so we like like sort of crazy idea but we, we got an RV, and we parked it on the sidewalk on the sidewalk in Manhattan and we basically said this is office hours for the local newspaper, come by the RV and chat. One problem was that we didn't clear it with the cops that we were going to say did you have a quickly surrounded by. But once we sort of sold them on the idea that it wasn't terrible. So we kind of lined up and people came in and they brought stuff and gave us ideas so. I mean, I do think that there is it's incumbent on us to make to make it clear that we're that we don't stand apart from these communities in that we're in these communities. And people want to feel connected and they want to feel like they belong and they, they want they have pride of place, and we should do because we're, we're serving them and being reminding people that were their neighbors and their family and friends to and what that looks like and that requires some vulnerability and humility to I think that you're seeing more and more of it I had a student introduce me to his aunt and uncle. He was not long ago and the uncle said, I remember you, you actually answered my email when I emailed a question about circulation and I'm like, absolutely I did but not everybody does and it makes a difference and he remembered that from, from years ago. I did another question about. Have you seen local publications that have successfully bridged the digital divide, you know we people talk about this being oh you know if they were only digital net that that as you know we know isn't the answer but have you seen local ones that have done a good job of that. The national players obviously in the wash in the West return, which was very early to the paywall game but I mean there's the ones that I'm most familiar with are have a sort of different funding models and the Texas Tribune and Austin did an amazing job. That's a purely digital publication as is the city, which is a fairly new publication in New York that covers local news really, really well. When I got to say like the, the number of examples of what were traditional local, especially independent print publications that are not thriving digitally it's a very very small number. They're, you're not seeing I mean even the pure, pure play digital properties are struggling and having to do layoffs and, you know, even some of the digital darlings because they're supported in the same way that the traditional media are by and large. There's just this obvious problem of scale, you know the way that the New York Times the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal can do it is that they offer national product and so even though the advertising rates are so much and the subscription prices are so much drastically lower than it was back in the days of print, you know they can make up for a lot of that on just shared volume by offering a national product but if you have only got sort of the universe of Seattle or Dallas or Des Moines. You know to work with in terms of who would be interested in the news that you're producing, you know those numbers just don't add up and we have seen, you know Seattle Times and others innovating Dallas Morning News. You know and doing creative things and having some success and traction, you know with particular strategies and approaches and offerings and I think you know there are other ideas afoot about trying to make local marketplaces and you know access to the kinds of very localized vendors whether it's for weddings or funerals, you know, easy to reach through local papers building on you know some of the services that you know outlets like the wedding channel provide but making it happen at a very local level. You know it hasn't fully manifested and whether it can and it will you know remains a big uncertainty nobody has cracked this if they had I think we would see that that model replicated all over the country. I've seen some really interesting stuff out of the San Francisco Chronicle just sharing where they focused very intensely on conversion and what kinds of stories convert people to paid subscribers. I'm focusing particularly on digital those digital subscribers and that using that data to really help that you know understanding of what it is that people are looking for and what makes them loyal to the experience I think is really thoughtful and smart using the research the data that you have and the behaviors of people to help make determinations about how to build that connectivity. That question was from Michael Elling and I have one more from Jim Loving asking from a public policy perspective, has this challenge made it to the radar of the US Congress or any state houses. So, what are you seeing out there. I mean I mentioned this earlier that you know there's just this letter that was put out today by about a dozen Democratic senators talking about the importance of channeling stimulus monies to local news. And that's getting a fair amount of coverage today and so, yes, there are folks in Congress who have become seized with this issue of late you know I'd say, and COVID is helping with that because they, you know, both because they recognize the value that local news is providing, and also because of the intensification of the pressures on local news and they kind of manifest shedding of jobs that we are witnessing and yet we have seen some signs of life at the state level I mean New Jersey, Kyle touched on and it's you know it's a bit of a sob story, you know it began as a huge initiative to channel some spectrum licensing revenues that had come to the state. And so, I think that's one of the hard things here as, you know, the essentiality is obvious to us and it seems particularly important to us to be aware of how local news is going to be, you know, essentially will be used for that purpose and so I think that's, you know, one of the hard things here as, you know, the essentiality is obvious to us and it seems particularly evident, you know, at a moment of national crisis and the health crisis that impacts localities very differently. But we're not used to paying for this we're not used to prioritizing it it's sort of not on the list alongside your education, health care and sort of the voting issues that and the pocketbook issues that people center in how they think about our politics how politicians think about budget so it's an uphill battle to sort of notch a position that local news is a public good and that we actually need to take money away from, you know, other public benefits and services in order to underwrite this. That's a tall order. You know, I agree with Kyle, you know, maybe a long time before we make significant headway I do think it's a debate. We have to have because there is no other solution and we should capitalize on the momentum we have now where there's suddenly some more interest and recognition of this problem. We just have a couple minutes left and, you know, covered a lot of ground here. Perhaps, what glimmers of hope are you seeing or what, you know, what silver lining in this as we talked a lot about the focus on or that Kobe is putting a focus on this and how important it is. I don't think for for that would. Yeah, I don't have. I don't have as much hope right now on the on the model front. My, my area of hope lies in journalists sort of individual commitments to sort of tell these stories I mean I can't tell you how many pitches we've gotten from people who said I was laid off yesterday and I want to do this story today. I mean there's you know people are. I mean I expect that we're going to see what we saw after the 2016 election where after the 2016 election you saw a surge of people applying to go into journalism college journalism programs just because they felt calling. And I have a feeling we're going to see the same thing now so that is great and it's heartwarming, but we just have to find a way to pay these people salaries. We've seen a bump Trump bump in admission to journalism schools and Cronkite has its largest class ever, you know that came in this past fall. We have a sort of fun and heart and heartwarming thing one of my colleagues posted yesterday on asking journalists, something that they love about their job. And I was really loving reading that thread because like you said there's still so much heart for the work and dedication to the mission under some really really difficult situations, you know whether, not just you know you're, you're reporting from home you're, you know, the economy's going crazy and there are a lot of things that are making that harder to do the work and there's a lot of pressure in that and they're also out on the front lines reporting and putting themselves in harm's way. So I would agree with you on that. Suzanne any last thoughts as we're wrapping up and I guess, you know, a hopeful thought is that the public also not becomes sensitized during this crisis to the essential role of journalism I think it is a moment where the idea of holding our public officials accountable I mean the way this has gone down in this country both at the national level and local level and delays and mistakes that were made that have cost lives and affected families and communities in such a profound way that there's a sense that, you know, telling unearthing digging up these stories holding these officials accountable, you know, allowing people to know why it is that, you know, their family member, you know, lost their life because lockdown wasn't called earlier enough or they were not aware of a piece of the risk. So I have some hope that people's interest and belief in journalism will be stoked by this crisis and that you know that too will help fuel and find a solution. Absolutely well I want to thank both of you Suzanne and Kyle and everyone who tuned in today which means you actually care about something that's really vitally important to all of us but certainly to the three of us. So the free speech project, as I said as a year long inquiry as with future tense, which is a project of ASU new America and Slate magazine in collaboration with American universities tech law and security program will be holding additional events like this, and we really appreciate all of you and your interest and your continuing support of a free press free expression and democracy in America so thank you so much. Thank you. Bye bye.