“The Paper,” “The Lowdown,” and the Drama of Journalism

11:26Vinson Cunningham:Which, of course, makes me think of someone like Elon Musk owning Twitter. you know, yeah, you can pour all the money in, doesn't necessarily need to give you returns right away. What do you actually want to get out of it? And in Charles Foster Kane's position, what he wants to get out of it is dialing up the Spanish-American War. Let's get it cranking, which is, of course, such an American attitude about newsmaking.

11:47Alexandra Schwartz:Yeah, I think this attitude is definitely like built on and we've talked about it a lot. These twin poles of sort of grit and glamour. and how the figure of the journalist is not unlike in my mind the sort of the figure of the the novelist in the 20th century which is someone who is right on peering over the edge of the bourgeoisie like is a part of society as we know it is sort of a play acting at regularity so that they can gain entree into spaces but also sort of almost constitutionally kind of like avant-garde outside someone who is like inside enough to get the goods outside enough to break it all down um it's such a role in society it's such a classically you know all the presence of men it's also like actually such a suit to wear yeah you know i'm thinking about the the macho this person with like sort of chest poked out wearing a tailored suit you know can sit down at the seat at the table with the ceo but also be like i'm on to you buster you know this there's a

12:52Naomi Fry:There's a certain swagger involved, for sure.

12:55Alexandra Schwartz:Speaking of the costume, both sort of spiritual and actual, I do want to talk about something that I remain obsessed with in the moment, which is the Gilded Age.

13:04Naomi Fry:Ah, yes.

13:05Alexandra Schwartz:One of my favorite characters in this is this character named Peggy Scott.

13:09Naomi Fry:Mm-hmm.

13:10Alexandra Schwartz:She's a young woman.

13:12Naomi Fry:Played by the beautiful Dene Benton.

13:14Alexandra Schwartz:She's amazing.

13:15Naomi Fry:Mm-hmm.

13:15Alexandra Schwartz:And she is a writer and journalist. I think she styled a little bit after the iconic black journalist Ida B. Wells, who famously chronicled lynchings all across the South and making this practice more known to a wider audience. But there's an episode, a great episode in season two of The Gilded Age where Peggy goes with Mr. Fortune, her boss. They go down to visit the Tuskegee Institute in its building, the school founded by the sort of iconic figure Booker T. Washington. And, of course, in black New York, at least, this project of the South, which is, I guess you could call it conservative. It's like pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

14:02Alexandra Schwartz:Yeah, it's like irrespectable.

14:05Naomi Fry:That's right.

14:05Alexandra Schwartz:We're not worried about political independence. Leave all that to the white man. We're going to work up, learn a trade, and we're going to build ourselves up as an economic base. and the two characters, Fortune and Peggy, are kind of arguing, even in New York and on their way down to the South, about the implications of this project. And it continues at the dinner table of Booker T. Washington as they have sort of accepted his hospitality on the night before they go and see the school. I mention this only to say that another role for the journalist to play, it seems to me, at least at some point in our history, is, yes, there's the fact finder, whatever, But there's also the person who is involved in shaping and further, maybe further deepening the great issues of the day.

14:50Alexandra Schwartz:The crusader journalist who, you know, wants to weigh in on those fights that like sort of helps the national conversation roll on. And similarly, at the dinner table, this great tense moment, Fortune is arguing with Booker T. Washington. I'm not going to sit and, you know, achieve some detente with these white people who have seen lynch people that I know. And Peggy's like, no, I love what you're doing, Mr. Washington.

15:15Naomi Fry:I think that the Tuskegee School is a political argument in itself. Can't you see that you both want the same things? It's only your methods that differ.

15:24Alexandra Schwartz:We've seen a little bit of her sympathy away from Washington, but she's also buttering this guy up. She's like, I love what you're doing here. This is so interesting.

15:32Naomi Fry:Yeah.

15:33Alexandra Schwartz:Playing this role of like really jumping into the water of ideas to understand better, help others understand better.

15:46Alexandra Schwartz:In a minute, two new shows about the state of journalism today. The paper and the lowdown. This is Critics at Large from The New Yorker. We'll be right back.

16:06Vinson Cunningham:Hi, I'm Nicole Phelps, the Global Fashion News and Features Director and co-host of Vogue's podcast, The Run-Through. Each week on the show, our listeners get an all-access pass to the world of Vogue with the latest fashion news and the most exciting voices in the industry. On Tuesdays, join me to hear interviews with influential leaders in the industry like Calvin Klein, Daniel Roseberry, and Jonathan Anderson. On Thursdays, join Head of Editorial Content at Vogue, Chloe Mal, and Head of Editorial Content at British Vogue, Chomenadi, as they explore style and culture through the lens of fashion with guests like Martha Stewart, Kamala Harris, and Tracee Ellis Ross.

16:44Vinson Cunningham:The Run Through with Vogue, new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

17:00Alexandra Schwartz:Fall is in the air. And I don't know about you guys, but I'm feeling refreshed, crisp, ready to give some new, fresh advice.

17:10Naomi Fry:Crack your knuckles.

17:12Alexandra Schwartz:We're getting in there. We're plotting another edition, that's right, of the hit series. I need a critic. But we, the critics, need you. And more specifically, your cultural questions. What kind of questions? What are we thinking?

17:29Naomi Fry:Like, what's a movie that everyone in my family will actively enjoy? Children, adults, the elderly, what have you, all together.

17:39Vinson Cunningham:Yeah, what should I listen to on a solo trip so I feel less alone?

17:43Alexandra Schwartz:I'm getting into Tolstoy. Where do I start? This and so much more. Write to us at themail at newyorker.com. Subject line, critics. And help us help you.

18:03Alexandra Schwartz:So we've been talking about depictions of journalism in the past. And it should be said that the industry these days is in a very, you can't overstate this, a very different place. People don't trust the media the way that they once did. Circulation is way, way down. And the paper, this new show on Peacock, takes that dire situation as its starting point. Does somebody want to synopsize that for us?

18:30Naomi Fry:Okay. So the same documentary crew that for nine years, nine seasons, covered the happenings in the office at Dunder Mifflin on the office is now following the doings of a small newspaper in Toledo, Ohio, that belongs to the paper goods company that replaced Dunder Mifflin. So it's a paper goods company that makes like softies, toilet paper, and so on. This paper goods company is owned by a larger corporation, which also owns this small failing local newspaper. And as we open, there is a new editor in chief who comes in and decides to turn this absolute failing rag that is just full of like bullshit and like clickbaity stuff that they pick up off wires and no actual original reporting and so on to turn this organ into like a living, you know, working local newspaper like in the good old days.

19:38Naomi Fry:The problem is, of course, that there's no budget for this. The corporation that owns this newspaper refuses to provide funds for this new reporting. And so this young, you know, energetic editor in chief asks everyone who works at the office, bookkeepers, we have like the person who does layout, we have like even a salesman on the like the toilet paper side. if they want to do volunteer reporting, then join him in this new endeavor. And so basically the 10 episodes of this first season of the paper, which has been already renewed for a second season, documents these comedic and yet earnest efforts to be real journalists, to bring real journalism back to the Toledo Truth Teller newspaper.

20:28Naomi Fry:The TTT, Toledo Truth Teller.

20:31Alexandra Schwartz:Yeah.

20:32Vinson Cunningham:Yeah, exactly.

20:33Alexandra Schwartz:What did you think of the paper?

20:35Vinson Cunningham:Well, I'll just say this before I tell you what I thought, which is let's just establish some basic facts here that are obvious. But I want to just because I want to do my journalist job, I want to put them out right there up front. Just the facts. Just the facts. The paper is the story of a culture in severe decline. And that culture is American journalism. The entire premise of the paper is that no one would subscribe to a newspaper. You'd have to be absolutely crazy to get one of these things. In fact, in the credit sequence, which I found to be rather amusing, the credit sequence shows a variety of ways that one can use a newspaper aside from reading it.

21:12Vinson Cunningham:You know, perhaps you might wrap a food item in it. Perhaps you might wipe dog shit off your shoe. You know, whatever. There's a kind of a little visual gag reel of what the news has come to. And these tropes that we have been talking about from depictions of the American news are very much also alive in the minds of the characters of the paper. For instance, Ned Sampson, the new editor-in-chief of the TTT, played by Donald Gleeson, he talks about the influence that these depictions have had on him. He says that he dreams developing sources over whiskey in a smoky bar. I mean, that idea lives on even if it's Sudoku that's keeping the paper alive.

21:51Vinson Cunningham:And they talk at the start about like, what's our world going to be? You know, even the New York Times would be failing without its world. So the assumption, which I would say is not incorrect, is that the American news landscape is bleak from certainly an economic standpoint. So what did I think of this show? I liked it. I kind of liked it. But here's how I'll say it. I liked it.

22:14Alexandra Schwartz:You got to go into your falsetto to talk about it.

22:16Vinson Cunningham:I liked it. I'll watch it. It's fine. I don't feel very strongly about it.

22:22Alexandra Schwartz:One interesting aspect of it, especially in the pilot, is that it is kind of about this like delta between what was and what is. So there has been and we kind of see it first kind of just as a cut and then as playing on Ned's laptop. That is a documentary based in the 70s, 1971, at the sort of hype of the Toledo truth teller. And the editor of it back then in its glory days is played by the great Tracy Lutz. He's like swaggering around the newsroom in a beautiful suit. He's wearing goggles down in the production room where the machines are turning out papers. He said, I worship at the altar of this machine.

23:08Alexandra Schwartz:So there is in its structure from that point on an inkling of this sort of decline. Again, as you said, Ned has seen the movies that we're talking about and is always doing things that he thinks this kind of person is supposed to be. He's jumping up on people's desks to give speeches. At one point he says, I'm about to say something very noble. You know, he has this idea of what the person's supposed to be. It's almost like the culture doesn't anymore produce the kind of person who can even play these roles. Everybody seems to be sort of play-acting at the thing. maybe the story of the season is people find like a kind of almost like virtue ethics philosophy where like fake it until you make it toward the end of the season no spoilers there's an actual issue that forces them to look straight into the abyss of like okay wait we work for this corporate concern can we do our jobs honestly or whatever and all of a sudden this like actual nobility sits alongside this sort of play acted nobility which i think is interesting because one way i would characterize our current American moment is this feeling of, oh, I missed the high moment of morality, heroism.

24:26Alexandra Schwartz:There are lots of problems, but fewer people that I feel that I would look to to help solve them. The moment of earnest and innocent engagement struggle is kind of over. This is sad, but I know. And so it's like we make lots of references to the past, partially because of this lacuna that we feel in the present.

24:50Naomi Fry:Yeah. I mean, I think it's a show about reduced expectations in some way. It's the landscape, as you say, Vincent, has completely changed, has radically changed. This has been a big discussion over the last like decade of like, are we going to pay interns? Like, how can people enter the profession of journalism, for instance? And here, it all depends on the kind of goodwill of these random participants, you know, these random employees in the company who somehow, though, within the context of these reduced expectations, are trying to make do, are trying to do their best with what they have. And so, like, everything has shrunk.

25:35Naomi Fry:And yet, it's not a nihilistic show. This show is about kind of like, okay, we might be kind of idiots. We might have no experience. We might have zero money. And yet, there is a sense that we want to try. And whether that's enough for one or not is a question, you know, or whether that's more depressing than comedic is another question. I kind of liked it. I mean, it was like in Gu Kang, one of the New Yorkers TV critics wrote about the show and she was likening it to not another journalism show so much as Parks and Rec, the Amy Poehler sitcom about like a small town Indiana city hall. and how, again, this is like the stakes are small.

26:31Naomi Fry:The expectations are also pretty small. The achievements will not be off the charts in any direction. And yet the hopes are there. And I kind of like that. You know, it did give me a bit of a warm, fuzzy feeling, like even with my kind of like, you know, dark black heart. You know, I kind of was like, oh, this is kind of cute, you know? All right.

26:57Alexandra Schwartz:Alex, you have been like visibly thinking, I want to hear.

27:01Vinson Cunningham:I'm prepared to make a clearer statement than I was before. Something is wrong with this show. And here's what it is. We made Alex like the show less. Something is wrong with America. Well, something is 100 % wrong with America. But here's what it is. Something is wrong with the paper. Nomi, I agree with everything you just said. It is a cute show. It's about being cute. It's about people being kind of just regular schmoes and shooting it up together at the workplace. And some of them sell toilet paper and some of them are trying to get a news story out. And how cute is that? And here's the thing, guys.

27:33Vinson Cunningham:It isn't cute. What the hell is going on here? Now I'm really starting to wake up because the thing is— Wake up! I'm waking up, America. You may enjoy the experience of watching it. I had dinner in front of the paper. I had a nice dinner and I had a nice time watching the paper. It's very that. I chuckled. It's a very chuckle. I chuckled and I smiled. I understand it's a charming show that's meant to entertain people and keep us, like, all happy enough for now. And with a comedic edge. And I say this as someone who loved—

28:03Alexandra Schwartz:I understand that it is bread and circuses.

28:04Vinson Cunningham:Well, I loved Parks and Rec. And I think that's what's so great about Parks and Rec is, in part, it uses the workplace comedy and all the tropes of the workplace comedy. your coworkers, the overenthusiastic boss, the one who's totally opting out, the idiot, the grump, to actually say something very Obama-era and hopeful about civic engagement in the United States and the people who care and the people who want to make it work. Look for the helpers. Right.

28:30Alexandra Schwartz:Goddamn right.

28:31Vinson Cunningham:And here's the thing about the paper. So let's step away from the show itself for a second. There's a crisis in local news. Newspapers are vanishing from local news markets. the kind of papers that can employ reporters to really report on what is going on in a given community, the number of papers that can do that are shrinking. I mean, here's a stat. The United States has lost almost 1 ,800 papers since 2004, including more than 60 dailies and 1 ,700 weeklies. We are living in a really impoverished news environment. And in my mind, that's really tied to 2008 because, of course, the model for journalism has always been advertising.

29:11Vinson Cunningham:That is the standard model. So since 2008, when the advertising dollars just dried up in the financial crisis and didn't come back, there has been an absolute crisis with news deserts in this country. And this is all what the paper is gently satirizing while trying to put this kind of we can do spin on it. But what I don't like about the paper, and I haven't finished this season, so maybe this changes, what I don't like about the paper is they can't seem to find stuff to report on. What I don't like about the show is the idea that there kind of isn't that much going on in a small town or a city.

29:45Vinson Cunningham:Toledo's a city. There's not that much going on here. We don't really know how to get information. What could we possibly look at?

29:52Alexandra Schwartz:Like calling the morgue being like, anything weird going on there? Yeah.

29:55Vinson Cunningham:This is all very yuck, yuck, small town America stuff. But we are in an absolute crisis where big stories about what's going on in local communities are not getting reported because there aren't the funds to do it. And the people who are reporting them are getting demonized by those who have the most to lose from the truth being told. We are in a bad and a vicious cycle. I think this is why the three of us are so drawn to 70s comparisons. Because the political situation in the 70s is, I would say at this point, not equally bleak, but still really, really bleak, maybe equally bleak. But there was still a robust power to investigate it.

30:28Vinson Cunningham:The fourth estate. And there also was a belief among the people who were reading the news, among the citizenry, that there was a value to the news.

30:38Alexandra Schwartz:It does seem, and this goes to the other show that we watched, I would love to ping it right back to you, Alex, to provide a kind of summary of the lowdown, the new Ethan Hawke vehicle. But it does seem to me that in that show, we're facing another, a different kind of news desert. It's set in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and it's this noir, almost kind of a Western. And finding the news presents itself as a kind of frontier, something that has to be done alone with sort of no cooperation from the various stakeholders. And so all of the unction, all of the will has to come from the renegade reporter.

31:22Naomi Fry:He's a cowboy.

31:23Alexandra Schwartz:Tell us a little bit more about the lowdown, Alex. Yeah, tell us.

31:25Vinson Cunningham:Tell us, Alex. Here's the lowdown on the lowdown. Nice. Okay. So The Lowdown is created by Sterling Harjo, who is also the creator of Reservation Dogs. But at the center, we have Lee Raybon, played by a resplendent Ethan Hawke. Resplendent? Guys, I'm into The Lowdown, and I will tell you why. So Lee Raybon is what some might call a citizen journalist. He is what he himself would call a truth-storian, which makes him sound totally wackadoo, which is good because he is totally wackadoo.

31:57Alexandra Schwartz:What exactly is a truth-storian? I read stuff. I research stuff. I drive around and I find stuff. And then I write about stuff.

32:07Vinson Cunningham:Some people care. Some people don't. He's this guy who owns a rare bookstore in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and he is absolutely obsessed with getting the dirt on high up political figures who may or may not be up to no good. Of course, he thinks they're up to no good. He sees vast conspiracy. He wants to know what's going on. But usefully, helpfully, he wants to actually prove it. This is good. So as the show starts, there's been a death. This guy, Dale Washberg, has died in what is an apparent suicide. His brother is the aspiring governor of Oklahoma, played by our favorite Kyle McLaughlin.

32:47Alexandra Schwartz:He's great.

32:47Vinson Cunningham:So great. A resplendent Kyle McLaughlin. A resplendent Kyle McLaughlin. and something stinks to high heaven. So Lee Raybon is, you know, he is a kind of combo of some favorite American tropes that we have. Like, as you guys say, he's the cowboy figure. He's rustling around in his creepy white van. Another character on the show calls him pedo, which I actually found very funny because he drives this horrifying white van. He's a lot of masculine bravado, but has a daughter, loves the daughter. The last thing I'll say is that as the show's beginning, Lee has gotten into trouble with some white supremacists.

33:20Vinson Cunningham:He's been doing some reporting on white supremacists. And this is kind of a good contrast to the paper. The place where he's published his reporting is in a local newsletter, it seems. It's not exactly a robust news outfit, let's say. It has news about strippers, possibly, and crime. Like, it's called Tulsa Beat.

33:43Alexandra Schwartz:It's called Tulsa Beat. The editor of it is Killer Mike. Killer Mike is great. Who's doing a great job as like, you know, a tabloid showman.

33:51Vinson Cunningham:Exactly. So he just wants to get the word out about these white supremacists and Tulsa Beat, which is really not generally about this kind of thing. And he gets into trouble that way. But what I like about the show, I like a lot of things about the show. I like the texture and the sense that it's based in real place. That's always a major plus. And I have to say, I like this twist on the classic American's conspiratorial thinking character, because what's so confusing about America, what's so confusing about American journalism is the bad stuff is often true, but not always true. And people want to believe so many things but not the truth, you know?

34:33Vinson Cunningham:Like there's so many bad things that are real. And yet there are so many other peddlers trying to convince you of the things that aren't real. And they meld in this way and never more so than in this moment where anybody can speak to anybody, where we have social media and you can just broadcast your own thing. And so what I like about this show is that it's someone who still really believes in the process. who's trying to dig up the goods and who's trying to prove something. He doesn't even quite know what, but he sees a scheme and he's trying to follow it much as they do in All the President's Men.

35:08Vinson Cunningham:That's right. And he does not have the backing of The Washington Post behind him. What do you guys think?

35:12Naomi Fry:I liked it. I enjoyed it. I found it diverting. I don't know how seriously I can take the character. Sorry. You didn't find him responding? No, I do find him responding. I think he's a great actor and, you know, he does a good job. I kid Ethan Hawke. But much like we were saying about the paper, I mean, it's a different type of show. It's more noir-y. It's more hard-boiled. It's tougher, et cetera. But there was something about the character that didn't totally compute to me as a realistic figure. You know, he seemed a little bit like a collection of tropes rather than an actual character. And that doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy it.

35:51Naomi Fry:But if we're talking about, like, a depiction of journalism in the modern era, right? which we are yeah um i don't know that i completely believe this version of it you know the sort of like i have like a bookstore in tulsa but i'm also like fighting neo-nazis at night and like my ex-wife is still in love with you know i don't know it just seemed like a little bit too kind of a convenient collapse of a bunch of different things which again is not a bad thing but kind of more of an idiosyncratic kind of collection of gestures.

36:27Vinson Cunningham:I mean, 100 percent. Like, don't if you're looking to get into journalism, let's just say this to be 100 percent clear. Don't get kidnapped by white supremacists and put in the back of a trunk. Like, don't do that. Try not to. Try not to. There are other ways.

36:39Alexandra Schwartz:Yeah. It's interesting. I would say that there's something interesting formally in it. Interesting. Say more. That, you know, it's kind of trippy to watch.

36:50Naomi Fry:Huh.

36:50Alexandra Schwartz:There's a kind of surreal edge to it where you're not sure if there's moments when you're kind of standing on the edge of dream and reality. It made me think maybe Hawk isn't necessarily the figure of the journalist so much as the individual even trying to understand the truth now who is beset by options that come at you in these weird different ways. People like sort of whispering into your ear sort of the corporate world being like, hey, listen, just here's an algorithm for you. Go over here. You know, people offering you alternate ways to access. Do your own research, man. It almost, you know, the kind of surrealism of looking for what actually happened.

37:30Alexandra Schwartz:It's like just to be a person trying to understand the truth. You're on this weird frontier by yourself and there are mirages everywhere. That I appreciated about this.

37:39Vinson Cunningham:You know, Nomi, I think what I'd say, I hear your critique and it makes total sense to me. Like certainly this is not a depiction of like here's how the news works in 21st century America. It's one kooky guy with a creepy van who's like running around getting beat up. But he has a lot of heart. But he has a lot of heart. I think it points to the same thing, though, that the paper does, which is like this guy is a – he calls himself a truth historian, but he does want to be a journalist. There just is nowhere for him to do that. Like there's no local paper for – in the world of this show for him to do that.

38:15Vinson Cunningham:There's Tulsa Beat, and there's a mention that he makes quite comically, I think, when he's getting beat up by the white supremacists of writing for a long-form magazine. So he aspires to the thing, but the thing isn't there for him to— Yeah, and that is the commentary, I guess I would say, because this Lee Raybon character, whatever else you can say about him, he's a true local. You know, he's of a place. And he wants the place to be better. and that, like maybe the cheesiness of the paper didn't totally do it for me, but for whatever reason, the cheesiness of that does do it for me because it's something I believe in.

39:03Alexandra Schwartz:Trust in media institutions, let's face it, is at an all-time low. So how does art about that same media reflect that? That's in a minute on Critics at Large.

39:43Vinson Cunningham:broadcaster and producer. In this podcast we tell the story behind the story of the literary classics everybody wants to read, feels they should read or has already read and loved. We reveal their secret histories, hidden players and big ideas behind the great books. We show how they came into being, why they matter and how they changed the world. The deeper we go the weirder the questions. Is George Orwell's 1984 on some level a comedy? Is Dracula the Freddie Mercury of horror? And why do so many literary honeymoons go wrong? Whether you're a committed book nerd, or just curious about the history of ideas, The Secret Life of Books is the podcast for you.

40:28Alexandra Schwartz:Maybe what we can do next is make two departures from the fictional to perhaps the non-fictional, and from I think what we've established are these two pretty positive depictions of journalism in the paper and the lowdown to a more negative affect that reigns today about the news. One way to do both of those things is to talk about the news of the day, the murder of Charlie Kirk. and perhaps not so much about that fact itself, but how it has been digested in media and how all of us are taking that in. We live in a society. We work for a news organization. I wrote a piece over the weekend, and I could feel all of us working together, my editors, fact-checkers, the editor of our magazine, all working to be like, is it the right tone?

41:21Alexandra Schwartz:One of the things was, you know, let's bring down the temperature. Something about how the news still does play this societal role and perhaps the reason that people don't like journalists as much anymore as we've established is because people think that journalists, whether they're like individual people, you know, playing a role or the great multinational corporations that tend to own the media outlets that make their way to the public, are trying to effectuate something negative like in the world, pit us against each other, or tug to the right or to the left. Trump, when he is sort of excoriating the media, is always talking about MSDNC.

42:06Alexandra Schwartz:The fact that perhaps journalists have become these faceless, part of a conspiracy, as opposed to the person struggling to uncover it. have you guys felt that recently this like I don't know this kind of cloud this environment

42:25Vinson Cunningham:yeah I'd say I felt it I think going back at this point almost 10 years when you have a then presidential candidate and soon to be president pointing to a bunch of people in a press box and saying you know everybody boo them here here's the fake news here's your enemy these are not the things of healthy democracies I think we know and it's scary the paranoid style of the 70s that the three of us are very attracted to that we've been talking about today, which presents news gathering as a dangerous thing because people don't want the truth to be out. The powerful don't want the truth to be out.

43:00Vinson Cunningham:You know, you're at risk. Again, going right back to all the president's men, the movie ends on this note of Deep Throat tells Woodward, your lives are in danger. I was very struck this morning. Every morning I read, speaking of my own news habits, I read reliable sources. Brian Stelter from CNN. This is not a paid advertisement. It's just something I do.

43:19Alexandra Schwartz:It's a good digest.

43:20Vinson Cunningham:It's a very good digest.

43:21Alexandra Schwartz:Shout out to Stelter.

43:22Vinson Cunningham:Of what's going on in the day. And so I read this morning that according to the AP, quote, two men have been arrested on suspicion of placing an incendiary device under a news media vehicle in Salt Lake City. I don't know much more about what's going on. By the time this airs, certainly more will be known. but I don't need to know much more right now than people wanting to kill journalists. And I think, Vincent, like you're talking about what's been said and done in the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder. I was reading an article in another mainstream publication some of us may have heard of, the New York Times, and there's a professor at the University of Delaware, professor of communications, who is talking about noticing a restraint, which is what you're describing, Vincent, this kind of, you know, everyone trying to be careful about what they say, to realize that words matter, and they absolutely do.

44:16Vinson Cunningham:At the same time, I think this restraint can drive you a little bit crazy when you're reporting on things that are so unrestrained. And when you're trying to write about things that are so unrestrained, you know, so much of the challenge is if you're trying to account for reality and trying to present reality, and reality is increasingly intemperate and divisive and angry and aggressive and violent. How to do that without fanning the flames or seeming like you can't meet the moment? That's a big challenge. And I think just if we want to talk about depictions, so many of the depictions that I've recently loved about journalism are on two totally opposite poles.

44:54Vinson Cunningham:I love Spotlight, the movie about the Boston Globe's investigation into the crimes of Catholic priests, the pedophilic crimes against children of Catholic priests because it shows what commitment to a story and to truth can do. It's a very moving and exciting story of how truth gets out. Love Spotlight. And on the other hand, I love Succession and its depiction of the evil empire, ATN, based on Fox News, which is totally in cahoots with power. There's an amazing sequence from the end of Succession where ATN calls the election early in favor of the far, far right candidate. And when I first watched it, I thought like, wait, what's going on?

45:36Vinson Cunningham:Of course, like a news organization can't decide who wins the presidency. And then I realized, oh, right, of course, in this poisoned landscape, what you can do is give the impression that if anyone contests this, they're lying. They're on the side of corruption. They're not. You can create a total question mark around the truth so that the actual truth doesn't end up mattering. These are two depictions I love because they show to me our very polarized reality. Those are two forces that are duking it out. And I don't know exactly where it leaves us. It leaves me scared.

46:11Naomi Fry:Sometimes when I like look at my Twitter feed or on Instagram or whatever, I'm just like, does the news even matter anymore? Is anyone even listening either for ill or good, like with ill or good intentions? Like the fact that journalists are still seen as a threat along these lines almost surprised me. Because like in the response to Kirk and his assassination, of course, there was much written. In the Times and like everywhere in our own magazine, you know, it's every news organization responded to it. But so much has just been going on on social media, which seems to be to be just as if not more effective than people actually reporting on what happened or writing opinions for like recognized institutions about what happened.

47:02Naomi Fry:That it seems like almost quaint and kind of like, again, just to make clear, I'm not happy that, you know, journalists are being threatened. God forbid anything happens. But it just seems to me that like in the current landscape, especially when it's we're talking about such polarizing characters, so much of the conversation is happening not from people who are officially journalists or official news institutions, but rather just people voicing their opinions.

47:35Vinson Cunningham:Yeah, there's a huge dilution in the environment and there is a huge, I mean, I think we all know this, but it's definitely worth stating over and over again. There's a trust issue. The story of the American news is, since the 70s to today, is the story of extreme hyper-partisanship where the news just increasingly is about, it is about slant and bias. And the people who are fighting against that often get like shunted to the sides because it's not as exciting or enraging. It doesn't give you that little boost and doesn't reflect your truth back to you. And so— Certainly less clickable. Yes. I mean, obviously, it can feel extremely demoralizing.

48:14Vinson Cunningham:And yet the job is to really, like, keep going in the face of ever-increasing opposition.

48:20Alexandra Schwartz:Yeah. To look back at these new shows and kind of maybe use them as a way to look forward, does all of this trouble that we just outlined, plus these new narratives, these new representations, Does it give you any idea of where we're going in terms of this kind of representation, even who the journalist is supposed to be in the popular imagination?

48:44Naomi Fry:It's interesting that there's the depiction itself, the most recent depictions that we talked about, whether it's these two new shows or something like Succession, which is quite recent, are so polarized in and of themselves. That is, one is kind of like drilling down like super particular, super local, super particular, and the other is talking about the system, essentially. And I'm wondering, is there a space for something in between?

49:20Vinson Cunningham:Yeah, I think there is. You know, I think there is because here's where I want to say something a bit rousing. Okay, thank you. I need this. I want to say something a bit rousing. Rouse.

49:29Alexandra Schwartz:Rouse on.

49:30Vinson Cunningham:The figure of the journalist is not going to go away because it's something that is bigger than any particular business model. The journalist is someone who wants to know the truth about what is going on and who wants to tell other people and who thinks that that goal is vital and is necessary in and of itself. In an ideal world, the journalist has a large institutional backing that shares those goals, that can fund them, that can provide the means so that they can be properly researched and edited and fact-checked. That's in an ideal world. And it still happens, but not as widely as we might like.

50:01Vinson Cunningham:But the journalists themselves, like, take, for instance, this documentary that's recently been released here by Julia Loktev called My Undesirable Friends. And it's about a group of Russian journalists who are reporting in Russia on a situation that endangers them personally. Just trying to tell the truth in Moscow is a dangerous business. But they're out there trying to do it. Look at that. Look at, for instance, other business models that are cropping up because the journalist is going to continue to exist, you know? Like I've become interested recently in this thing called 404 Media. Do you guys know about this?

50:41Vinson Cunningham:I don't. So it's a site that has a lot of investigative work. And if you go to, like, for instance, a story that they reported today, here's what the story says at the top. 404 Media is an independent website whose work is written, reported, and owned by human journalists. And then it asks people to subscribe. We're used to that. This is what we know. But then it says, or send us a one-time donation via our tip jar. Fascinating. Do I want journalists working for tips? No, I want them working for like salaries with health benefits and like, you know, in 401ks. That's what I want. But the work continues.

51:15Vinson Cunningham:And so here's where I'm coming out on all of this. Watch the paper if you want. You know, hopefully you'll enjoy it a bit like I did. And then subscribe to a paper. Yeah.

51:24Alexandra Schwartz:I don't know.

51:26Vinson Cunningham:Yes. Yes.

51:39Alexandra Schwartz:This has been Critics at Large. This week's episode was produced by Michelle O 'Brien. Alex Barish is our consulting editor. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Condé Nast's head of global audio is Chris Bannon. Alexis Quadrato composed our theme music, and we had engineering help today from James Yost with mixing by Mike Kutchman. You can find every episode of Critics at Large at newyorker.com slash critics.

52:20Vinson Cunningham:This week on the political scene from The New Yorker, Trump's rupture in the world order.

52:26Naomi Fry:Europe caught between two adversarial great powers. That's basically dialing back the clock to not only pre-World War II, but really it's a pre-20th century view of the world. And I would say it's a world of permanent insecurity that we're looking at.

52:45Vinson Cunningham:Join me, Evan Osnos, and my colleagues Jane Mayer and Susan Glasser every Friday on The Political Scene, available wherever you get your podcasts.