What’s the journalism we can make for people who don’t trust journalism?

Glass: No, I do think about it…I feel like, oh, everybody thinks about that more than I do. But when I think about where things are failing, I feel like there’s no…There’s nobody attempting to give fact-based information to the people who are watching Fox News, to the people like — you know, like I have relatives who are like Fox News watchers — the people you meet in a MAGA crowd. And the people who I met at the Glenn Beck rally years ago, people who are just believing stuff that’s not true.

I feel like nobody in mainstream media is trying to create a product that will pierce through to the people who don’t believe mainstream media. And I think it’s a really interesting project and when you think about who could do it, it’s like you would want a Daily Show that’s hosted by a kind of right wing-ish comedian like a Bill Burr or like, you know, [someone from the] whole world of right wing guys.

Glass: I mean as a producer, when I think about it, I think that would be the easiest way to cut through. Because you need somebody who defies categories so people don’t see, you know what I mean? Like if you had a regular NPR person, a regular Times person — you can just smell it on them. You know what I mean? Like, you need somebody who chemically feels right. And then you might have a chance.

I feel like what’s happening is in the war of facts versus non-facts, facts are losing — or they’re not winning. They’re losing ground. I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands of people died because they didn’t believe factual information about the COVID vaccine. I feel like, why aren’t we always talking about that? There’s like a death count on this. I’m just going on. I’m feeling corny now.

Glass: I don’t know if my answer to this is so interesting. I came into journalism feeling like, oh, if you sort of lay out a case, with information that’s true, that you could persuade people, and that would change something.

I feel like what I’ve seen is, that’s not true. I just want to believe that people can understand each other. I think that if you make stories for a living…part of the reason why you do it is because it’s really interesting to go out in the world and talk to people, and it just makes everything seem bigger, to discover stuff that you didn’t know and connect to people in that way.

Glass: No, no, no. I feel like every day there’s incredible reporting giving fact-based accounts of how to see the world. The problem isn’t that that doesn’t exist. The problem is that, like, half the population has no interest in that at all, maybe more.

We live in this country that’s so divided, and what can you possibly do? That’s why I think about: what could the product be? That’s the way I think about a problem, it’s like, how would I do it as a radio producer? I feel like that’s the one tiny opening that I see. You just need somebody with enough charisma that they would carry people over the line. And it wouldn’t be a traditional journalist.

Jonathan Eig: But let’s take an issue that’s not political, like cellphones. This new book, Anxiety Nation, I think it’s called. [Ed: I believe he’s referring to The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt.] I think people have really been discussing that, and I think it’s been really informing people. Change the world? I don’t know.

Julie Jargon at the Wall Street Journal had a story about a teacher who quit his job at the age of 35 because he couldn’t get his kids to put down their cell phones. And it just drove him to the point where he couldn’t, he lost his passion for his work anymore. It was a thousand-word article. This is the best kind of daily newspaper that I love because she probably wrote this story in two days. This is a teacher who really tried, you know? He took his kids on hikes and he offered them incentives on their grades if they put down their phones and he taught them about meditation and he gave it his best shot. And he lost to the cell phone and he said it was like they were addicted to the bottle. They just couldn’t, if he tried to take it out of their hands, they wouldn’t let go of it. And that kind of story, I think, you know, gives me, you know, is the kind of thing that…

Herndon: Maybe this is a consequence of political reporting only in post-Trump. But I think that for me, changing minds has never been a big priority.

For me, it’s been, like: I want an honest accounting of this time. I remember the night of the 2016 election as a local reporter covering crime at the [Boston] Globe. I felt like an ingester of that election; I was not prepared to understand the country in that way. I remember that being the thing that most upset me about media. My anger wasn’t to a specific side or whatever. I’m saying as a journalist, I felt like the people following that election or writing about that election were tasked with helping me understand the state of America via that election. That in the Democratic primary, the Republican primary, and the general election, did not prepare me to do that. I feel like that feeling has bottled up in me. I try to make sense of it for other people so that they don’t feel like that. But it’s not as if that means…

Herndon: It wasn’t my job, to be honest. I only knew via what I was reading in political journalism. But if I was reading the things in front of me, and trusting the people who I had trusted to talk through elections, they had let me down for a year and a half. That feeling was really clear to me. And so I remember, the Globe didn’t have a plan — a lot of people didn’t — for Trump to win. I ended up getting moved that next morning — as the young 22-, 23-year-old who had no life and kids — it was like, oh do you want to go to D.C. and help us out for a while?

And I was like, I don’t know. I feel really weird about journalism right now. I said this really millennial answer about, like, I don’t know if I wanna be [that]. I remember the Globe editor saying you have complained too much about how people do this to not try to do it. I really held on to that. It’s like, okay, maybe that’s my goal for the next time…Not to like change minds or impact in a traditional journalism way, but just stop more people from having the same feeling I felt, which is like, what, wait, how was I not prepared for this?

Glass: It’s funny because when John said, I felt like it’s such a defensive position. It’s sort of like all is lost. We’re barely holding on by our fingernails. And so the one thing that’s left is let’s just like, please just write this down.

Glass: Make a record of it. I just want the truth to exist. It’s simultaneously so purely idealistic but it’s also like a bunch of monks in the last monastery who know how to write being surrounded by people who are about to destroy them or something. I don’t know. There’s something about this.