State of Media w/ Pulitzer-Nominated Journalist Rose Horowitz

Pulitzer-nominated journalist Rose Horowitz joins us to unravel the complex tapestry of today's media ecosystem, marked by the vanishing act of local newspapers and the challenges crippling journalism's traditional revenue streams. Buckle up as we navigate through the tempestuous decline of editorial oversight, the rise of digital-first content, and the shadow of hedge funds over media integrity.

Rose's career is a testament to the resilience and impact of quality journalism, from her investigative triumphs triggering Senate hearings to her passion project amplifying women's voices in media. She shares heart-pounding tales from the frontlines of international trade reporting to the creation of viral hashtags, stitching together a narrative of a profession that demands relentless dedication amidst rapid transformation. 

About Rose Horowitz:
Rose Horowitz is a Pulitzer-nominated journalist who founded #WomentoFollow, which became a global hashtag trend that reached 12 million views in its first two weeks. 

She also hosted a new initiative – a #WomenToFollow global, virtual summit with 10 speakers to kick off Women’s History Month. 

Rose has been published in The New York Times, Forbes, The Los Angeles Times, and many others. She has created content for Intel, Citi, and Morgan Stanley. 

RoseHorowitz31 and #WomenToFollow on Social Media: 

YouTube channel: 
https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/womentofollow

Website: 
women-to-follow.com

Twitter
https://twitter.com/RoseHorowitz31 

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:50

Hi and welcome to Citizen Journalists. I'm the host, jomon Isis, and I am very excited about today's episode because I have the incredible Pulitzer-nominated journalist, rose Horowitz, with us today. Rose, thank you so much for joining Citizen Journalists to talk about the state of media.

Speaker 2 1:05

Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. I've been listening to some of your Citizen Journalism and it's really interesting what you're doing.

Speaker 1 1:13

Thank you, Rose. Well, I have to say that the news on the state of media has been pretty crazy lately. Just from my own personal experience, I've watched a huge shift in media over recent 15 years. It's probably a good estimate. It's been a big change and I know you and I touched on this the other day have you been seeing what you call some pretty dramatic changes in the media landscape recently?

Speaker 2 1:38

Yes, it's huge, and it's not that it's really new, but, as a headline today pointed out, is media in danger of extinction. There was a headline in the New Yorker just this week by a staff writer. So extinction is that is a really extreme word and I don't as what I'm observing. I went to a conference, an all day conference, through the Tau Center at the Columbia Journalism School, and some of the things I heard and what you are alarming. So two newspapers a week are closing. These are usually local papers. Wow, in the last like 3,000 have closed since 2005. I think 40 or 50, I don't know something like that percents of journalists have lost their jobs.

Speaker 1 2:32

Oh, that is a wild statistic.

Speaker 2 2:34

Right, and it's not just newspapers but what arose in the time of the internet. So places like BuzzFeed went under and this new venture called the Messenger, which was started by a journalist who had this idea of doing this a new way, it didn't even last. It lasted nine months.

Speaker 1 2:59

Wow.

Speaker 2 3:01

So it's a huge. So you just wonder, well, and the other thing I'm reading is, as they talk about streaming, that if people have Netflix and Hulu and so they're paying for seven, eight subscriptions. I saw a quote that somebody said, well, yeah, we don't need the news, like I'm gonna cancel my subscription to the Washington Post. Wow.

Speaker 1 3:28

What do you attribute? I mean, I know I can guesstimate, but what do you attribute some of the biggest factors to this massive shift in media?

Speaker 2 3:36

I think it started with the advent of Craig Newmark's Craig's list, because what happened suddenly is that, instead of there being newspapers, having let's just make a mic having this ready supply of advertisers. Like that's how it worked we cover the news, we get advertising, that's how we pay, and newspapers were profitable and had a big profit margin. But then, once we had the internet and people could, instead of looking for a job or a piece of furniture in the paper, they could go to Craig's list. And this was like in 96, that everything just totally changed. Because there was no, the business model for journalism, which was ad revenue, went out the window.

Speaker 1 4:37

Wow, I actually think that's interesting. I think most of our listeners probably wouldn't have considered. I think they probably would have thought oh, I meant the internet probably had something to do with it. But I don't think they would have ever thought. You know, it really started with Craig's list because it took out so many pages from the newspaper of advertising.

Speaker 2 4:53

What would you-? And the funny thing is just to mention, I've met Craig Newmark, heard him speak, lives in New York City and he has become the biggest champion of journalism.

Speaker 1 5:05

Yeah, that's wonderful to hear, actually, as I think that that may have been the publication or whatever one of our website that started the change, but it was gonna probably happen regardless, simply because of the way the internet functions. What are some? Are there anything else that comes to mind in terms of what really caused this massive shift in media where we're losing a lot of? You know, journalism to me is a hugely respectful career and I take journalism very seriously, but there's a big difference between journalism and, you know, pop culture, mass media, if you will. What are some of the other factors that you can think of?

Speaker 2 5:46

Some of the other factors are well, as the budget's shrinked, you know, as papers lost revenue, the ones that were owned by families who could support this level of journalism. They couldn't support it anymore, and so you have companies like Sinclair and Alden Media, you know, hedge funds taking over news outlets. Or, in case of the LA Times, a big billionaire investor took it over solo entrepreneur and they didn't necessarily have the same standards or the same respect. So they came in, like you know, like you could say, mckinsey came, you know, would come into a company and say, well, how can we cut this?

Speaker 2 6:45

Okay let's you know. So, like what happened, I was at a local paper five, six years ago and there were almost no copy editors, so copy editors went and so and then everything became digital first. So I became a assistant managing editor at this local paper in Connecticut and it was always digital first. So, for a reporter was on the way to work and saw a fire. Their job was to take a picture, send in something for and put it online for Twitter or wherever, and there wasn't an editor reading that first. Yeah, because this put you know, because digital, you know, and the internet made everything instantaneous. You know there wasn't the same balance and you know and boundaries in what was getting out there.

Speaker 1 7:46

Yeah, something I noticed. So I love what you're saying because I think it's very insightful. So the Craigslist type things came along.

Speaker 1 7:53

They ate up the advertising dollars, the hours that had to make cuts, you know, when the ones that cared about journalism tried and the other ones went the way of, you know, quick and easy and cheap, and a lot of jobs ended up going away From my end. As somebody who worked in marketing and PR, I noticed that I stopped getting. I used to get tons of fact checking phone calls all the time and suddenly I wasn't getting fact checking calls from anybody. You know it was happening very rarely and I was like this is actually a big deal, you guys. And they're like what do you mean? Isn't it great? I was like no, this is not great.

Speaker 1 8:28

It's like keep reading articles and they have inaccuracies in them.

Speaker 2 8:32

Yeah, I mean, I wrote a few articles for Forbes and if I said a ship was white, they would you know whatever it would show us where you know. Beside that, where did you get that? You know, just a color, whatever it was, you know, and it had to be at that moment. You know, because they were in the midst of you know putting it out. And a difference is I went to hear a business editor at the New York Times who said that at the New York Times at least two editors are seeing anything before it goes out.

Speaker 1 9:07

Yeah.

Speaker 2 9:08

So when you shrink, you know when copy editing barely exists or you know they're so. If it's a chain, like in that or or Hearst, you know if they let rid of the copy editors and they let rid, you know, reporters, then who's reporting?

Speaker 1 9:30

Yes.

Speaker 2 9:31

And who's checking.

Speaker 1 9:32

Yes, I think they're regurgitating. A lot of them are just regurgitating stuff. They're scraping, you know.

Speaker 2 9:38

But I mean there are very dedicated journalists, you know, still In these weekly papers, like you know, there might be one person who's responsible for weddings you know school of, you know high school sports and they're they're they're assembling that with maybe one story. But the other thing that started happening is that, as reporters had less, as newspapers had less reporters and news outlets digital too, instead of having each paper or each outlet like the Huffington Post having a reporter in Washington, their own reporter, they would use a newswire copy. So there are some local papers that you could pick up and you don't even really barely see a byline. There might be one story by and the rest is filled by. You know wire copy. You know copy. They get elsewhere but they still say it's this local paper. And even when you watch the news, like I watch Rachel Maddow and she'll put up you know headline Now here's, here's the headlines today and you'll see Lexington.

Speaker 2 10:45

You know what's going on in the Tribune in Chicago and the Dallas, you know. But those papers now have so few reporters. They are all mirroring each other in a lot of ways because the number of local you know people they have in Washington, locally you know around the country is so you know it's so it's so scarce and bare.

Speaker 1 11:13

Yeah, you know the I think a lot of people are listeners may not really understand the difference between real journalism and how real journalism has actually been affected, versus kind of the mantra of how everyone hates mass media. Yeah, everyone hates mass media. When I think what they hate is what they hate is, you know, unfact, checked, non journalistic based content that's designed to get attention versus well researched, well written, insightful pieces, and I think we have to maintain respect for journalism and do what we can to fix media.

Challenges Facing Local Journalism

Speaker 2 11:58

Yes, and part of that, I think, is that with the Internet, anybody could become a writer, right? Anybody could say I just, you know, went to this meeting and here's what I say, you know, here's, here's what I report. But you know? So, instead of being you know so it made it more democratic, which is a good thing, but at the same time, people didn't understand, maybe, that it wasn't, as you know well, reported as if you read it in a weekly paper, or you read it in Buzzfeed, or you read it on slate, or you read it in puck news. So people don't distinguish. But people who I know, who are still in journalism, I mean, they're there, you don't go like the New Yorker piece counted, you know. Somebody said if you're going to go into journalism, marry well.

Speaker 1 12:53

That's so true For all the changes.

Speaker 2 12:55

They should say that about fashion.

Speaker 2 12:57

Yeah, I can get it. Yeah, I mean, for all the changes. When I started out, you know, years ago, at the AP, I started out the AP but the AP paid better than if I had gone to the York Herald, the York Daily Record. I mean you couldn't barely, you know, subsist. It was like less than you know, like 20,000 or 18,000 a year or 15,000. And that hasn't changed. I have a friend who has a son who went to Syracuse University to study journalism, First job, Lexington, Kentucky, Kentucky. His parents are still helping him to live.

Speaker 2 13:41

Yeah, because they have to and it's not the smallest market you could go to. So that really you know, for all the change, like you know there's, there's, the constants are it's you need to work really hard. You know it's really competitive and it's low paying.

Speaker 1 14:01

Yeah, I think one of the things a lot of people don't understand about what we're talking about which I am, and I'm not trying to insult people's intelligence is just really like it's a complex issue that gets, that gets soundbited, instead of really, you know, unique conversations really addressing the issues.

Speaker 1 14:15

But one of the problems with this whole thing isn't just about the demise of journalism, things that are fact checked. It's the fact that the lack of reporting and the lack of support for real journalism in cities around the country affects community, because the local newspaper, the local magazines are and, you know, were a tremendously important and vital tool for keeping community together. And community is really, really important. It gets treated almost like it's, like some you know, like kind of, oh, look at the town's doing something. But in fact community is what helps, it keeps, it ties Americans together, you know, as it bonds people together and it helps us to celebrate as human, you know, as human beings, and without community things get destabilized. And so I think there's there's a real important conversation to be had there about how do we support community when, when our such an important tool for community is disappearing.

Speaker 2 15:43

I think there are some things that have risen. You know that have like, I saw that now there's some outlet that is paying ordinary people to like cover local school board, school board meetings or P and you know, planning and zoning meetings, p and Z meetings. Because what you know that when we say journalism is more polarized right, the media is more polarized Part of that is because there isn't this common, you know, denominator of what we're all learning about in our community. So, for example, in the small town where we raised our kids, there was a local paper every week. You know there was a paper every week.

Journalism Career and Influential Investigations

Speaker 2 16:21

They I would see them at the, you know, every school board meeting I went to, they would send at least a photographer to cover the school, you know musical and people knew what was going on and when that paper closed in 2018, I think there was nothing. So, if there are people who want to get something passed in the school board meeting, like banning books or cutting, you know, certain staff or the budget, there isn't that debate about it, because no one's reading that story. And what some towns have done is made their webpage. You know the, the information source, and that's what this small town did. And then some entrepreneur, somebody came I don't know if he's making money out of it, but came up with this idea of Weston today, and so they do cover certain things, but it's selective.

Speaker 1 17:22

Yeah.

Speaker 2 17:23

So it's different from what you would read in the local paper. So it might be a feature on somebody who did something amazing, a charity project or but, but there's no consistency.

Speaker 1 17:35

And I think that the distribution of information and having the presence of the local community paper there communicated so much. Even if the person didn't read the whole thing, they saw the cover.

Speaker 2 17:45

It just creates bonds and it's a watchdog because if you go to as a parent, you go to a school board meeting. You see the paper is covering it. Well, you better watch what you're saying. And anybody who's on the school board that could say something you know derogatory about somebody or whatever it is you know somebody's a witness to that right.

Speaker 1 18:08

Yeah, yeah, it's really huge. Before we get to talking about some of the big national media changes that are going on, or scandal if you will some of the things that are going on. It's been a little crazy in the media lately. You bet Share with our listeners a little bit about your journey to to Pulitzer nominated journalists, which I think is so cool.

Speaker 2 18:28

Thank you very much. I started, I went to graduate school at the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs and within that I sort of majored in media. So we got to cover, like the New Hampshire primary. That year my first story was in the New Amsterdam Post, the New Amsterdam News, about the New York primary. And then I went to the AP as what they called a vacation relief staffer. I'd taken the AP test and write.

Speaker 2 18:58

You know, two weeks before I was graduating, you know, pete Matisse called me in the phone hey Rose, what's up, where are you? You know I come to Pittsburgh. I was like, okay, you know, and so my job was at six in the morning to get there and open up all the local papers and write, basically, you know, like radio briefs for what was up and for noon. So, and I did others, you know so, and that was very collaborative because you know there was a reporter who who had covered, you know, pulitzer, nominated for journalism in covering the Vietnam, you know.

Speaker 2 19:35

And then I went on to go to Charleston, west Virginia, for a while with the AP and then I worked for a daily paper called the Journal of Commerce, which was owned by Knight Ritter and it covered international trade and shipping and so, but it was, it was quite influential, you know, and and I had studied international, so I would go as a young reporter to hear the president of Argentina at the Plaza Hotel, and you know, really, you called in the book, you called in you know your.

Speaker 1 20:12

I love that. I love that about old school journalism.

Speaker 2 20:17

And then when I went to LA, I went to LA with the paper, but I used to use a radio shack. I had an hour just to transmit your story, you know, on this radio shack machine and then I went on to cover it. So when I was at this paper, one of the, you know, as a woman, I was one of the few woman reporters and I was kept getting scoops and one day, you know, the editor called me in and said hey, you know, like what's up with this? Like why are you always on the front page? That's my job, right?

Speaker 1 20:51

Like because I'm Rose Horowitz.

Speaker 2 20:54

Like is that what I'm supposed to be?

Speaker 1 20:56

doing. Is that why?

Speaker 2 20:57

you hired me. But another editor who had been at the Pulitzer, at the Philadelphia Inquirer, you know, got a tip that was sent, you know, anonymously, under the door of the paper, in an envelope.

Speaker 1 21:10

And it was somebody. Oh, so awesome.

Speaker 2 21:14

And it was a business saying that these other businessmen are competing for US to ship US cargo to Africa, which is, you know, us the Food for Peace program we have through USAID and it had to be carried in US ships. So I spent three months tracing and tracing these ships and who was shipping them and came out with this story. You know this three month investigation that said that a certain carrier was getting all the business and it was sort of that classic story where, as we were going to press, you know, this shipping company, you know emailed us like we're going to sue you. But because I was at a big paper, you know I wasn't worried. You know this big paper was backing whatever I wrote on my editors but you know, behind that was my ridder. So that was a terrific experience and that led that piece that I wrote about how the money was going in the hands of some, you know, middlemen for this cargo resulted in the Congress holding hearings. The Senate Committee, foreign Relations Committee, held hearings and changed the law.

Speaker 1 22:36

Wow, what a Wow. So, from an envelope shoved under a door to three months of hardcore investigating, to developing all your sources, to writing a big piece, to getting Congress to hold hearings and change the cost, and I had a deep throat.

Speaker 2 22:52

I had somebody I would call by another name in an agency who wanted to see change, and I would go to Washington and meet with him, you know, and I thought he was okay, but I learned later he was out of a job.

Speaker 1 23:06

Oh, it's so cloak and dagger, rose, you need a new headshot where you've got your French coat on and everything. I love that. So that was my start.

Speaker 2 23:18

You know I covered breaking news but you know I was the first to report this a long time ago. But the captain, hazel Wood, who was the captain of the Exxon Valdez, had a drunk driving record and part of the reason I could do that is because I had a beak, you know, which was shipping, so I had sources. If something broke, like the Exxon Valdez, I knew where to go for that information, you know, or where to where to zigzag. And then I covered aerospace in LA for the LA Daily News, which is like the competitor to the LA Times, and aerospace was a very, you know, huge industry, especially you know California.

Speaker 1 23:59

Oh yeah, especially in California.

Media Coverage and Political Narratives

Speaker 2 24:00

Yeah, and then I continued to write for some trade publications so I've always been and then I went freelance and been freelance a long time. So I've written for the New York Times and Forbes and other places and many you know trade magazines and also online. And then during the pandemic, I sort of shifted gears because I became a producer on a on a daily show about all aspects of COVID. So we streamed it, you know, on LinkedIn and Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and my job, mine and another producer was to get guests you know every you know think of topics, get guests and we so that was huge like another side of the business to see.

Speaker 1 24:59

Did you print it all?

Speaker 2 25:00

I created this hashtag that went viral and once I had this broadcast experience, people started saying well, you know you should do your own show, because I had been doing Woman to Follow, but as as sort of threat, as threads, and then I put them as blog posts on my Medium account. So two years ago I started with my first Woman to Follow show and I guess I've had I don't know 500,000 views on them and I did a summit in February last year with 10 speakers, a virtual summit with 10 speakers. That you know got a lot of attention and had great you know contributors to that.

Speaker 1 25:43

Yeah, congratulations on that. That was a big deal and I think you know to the whole idea of of using all of your experience to highlight and honor women who are blazing a trail was such a brilliant use of your, of your expertise and it was really well done. Thank you, congratulations on that. Thank you, were you surprised when you found out about the Pulitzer nomination?

Speaker 2 26:09

Yeah, I, you know well, I knew that I guess at the same, this same year I associated press has managing editor award and so I was nominated for that. I mean, I was recommended, you know I got the award for that and also as a group world world hunger year that give out annual journals and prizes, and I won for best you know, the investigative reporting, and Valerie Harper gave me my award in Washington.

Speaker 1 26:35

Love that.

Speaker 2 26:36

I love that. But I didn't know I had nothing to do as a reporter with what the paper, the editors, you know decide to to turn into the Pulitzer committee, exciting. But, it was really exciting and it was really exciting that the law changed. You know you want to make. If you're going to go into the Pulitzer committee, you know, like, if you're going to go into journalism, one of the things if you're reporting is you want to. You know you want to do something that's impactful.

Speaker 1 27:05

Change the world. Yeah, I don't think most people don't get the experience of seeing the impact they have on the world in a moment like that. That's a really extraordinary moment. Yeah, thank you. Wouldn't it be great if we could give everybody one of those times where they could actually see their impact on the world?

Speaker 2 27:23

Yeah, it's true. You know in local papers, like there's a publication in Mississippi that's online and they were breaking stories about you know the way the prisons were run and how. You know how terrible they were. So those stories, whether they get nominated for Pulitzer or not, you know in the communities where they appear they make an impact.

Speaker 1 27:48

Yeah, so true. So there's been a lot in recent months, certainly in recent days, on media. What do you think are some of the kind of standout stories and moments that are happening right now that are really sort of shaking the landscape up?

Speaker 2 28:07

Well, I guess I have to say that you know, for like days on, like five days this weekend, you know when this report came out about Biden's testimony on the papers you know the papers that he had, that he wasn't aware that he had. You know, there was like the lead story and I think the Sunday Times was. You know about his memory. But at the same time that weekend Trump went on TV after Tucker Carlson had interviewed Vladimir Putin and said wait, which was first the Tucker Carlson or the?

Speaker 1 28:55

I think it was Biden, yeah, the.

Speaker 2 28:57

Biden story was first, so everybody was focusing on is he too old? And of course there's only three years difference or four years different. Four years. Trump is 77, trump is 77, biden is 81. Like that is not a big difference.

Speaker 1 29:14

No, it's not. I will say frankly. Honestly, I do, as you know, I do. Billy Dee's a co-host for Billy Dee's and we've talked about this. I have actually been concerned for a couple of years now about his health. I mean, it's a lot to bear at that age they're both older. You know, for running a country, the terms are all. Are presidents gray in?

Speaker 2 29:34

the first place, right. But if you look at the record, like people have said, you know Biden is going to go down as a great president because of all the changes he did that happened under his reign and many, for you know working class and making things fairer. And if you look at Trump and he get, you know the GOP is focused on this whole. You know border issue. But if you look at Trump's record, people who've looked at Trump's record say he didn't succeed, but Obama had stricter laws on the border. So it becomes this you know circus of what's really true and what happens in a presidential race. What I think is happening is there's this both sideism, okay, so you know, if you cover, you know how do you cover Trump.

Speaker 2 30:28

And one of the big things that happened in 2016 is that they said the media failed to cover Trump. You know what he was really saying and focused like at the last you know few months about Hillary's emails versus the things Trump was saying he was going to do. And now we know more what he's saying he's going to do. So Tucker Carlson goes and does this interview with Putin. One of my, you know, recent tweets was about how Rachel Maddow last night was talking about that interview where Putin basically said that Poland was responsible for starting World War II, and he mentioned Poland 30 times.

Speaker 1 31:14

Oh, my God. You know, as recorded by just a little bit of a red flag.

Speaker 2 31:18

Yeah, and 48 hours later, trump was saying you know, we can't rely on the NATO. The NATOs, they don't give their money that they should to NATO, and if any country doesn't, I encourage Russia to invade them.

Speaker 1 31:38

Can I just tell you at this point, the whole between Tucker going to Russia and people talking about not letting him back in, and it's like, well, he's not the only journalist he's ever in, whether you want to call him a journalist or not, is that to everybody?

Speaker 1 31:52

He's not the only journalist that's ever interviewed Putin.

Speaker 1 31:54

We didn't talk about not letting those folks back in, but it just brings me to mind.

Speaker 1 31:59

I'm doing a panel series with some women in film and called Soundbites to Solutions, because we feel like things have gotten to the point where it's like so many of the media just go to that same drum, that they beat to the point where people can't hear the truth and they're not getting into the details or actually asking a lot of the questions.

Speaker 1 32:19

I'm not referring to journalists, because I think I really do classify the talking heads, people who get on there and read the screen in front of them, that usually have nothing to do with writing the stuff that they're actually reading, as different. Do you feel like there's sort of these kind of narratives that people tend to stick to and they're not getting into? Because that's what the Soundbites Solutions panel series is about is about like, how do we get to solutions? Like we can keep beating these same. I'm over here, I'm red, I'm blue, but we have problems that need to be solved and oftentimes the answer can be found somewhere in the middle. Do you feel like some of the media are kind of feeding that situation with the way that they're covering things.

Speaker 2 33:00

Yeah, I mean, I think that covering the elections which is nothing new, because covering it as a horse race and this poll says this, and this poll says this and this poll says this without looking at the positions, the content of where, what the candidates are saying, I mean. So if you hear Trump, he said, well, I could be dictator for a day, right? So he's saying it out loud and we should be covering that. But there's this, I guess, the main poll Washington Post, new York Times. There's still this hesitancy of what do we focus on? So, if it's going to grab a lot of headlines that we're going to talk about Biden's age and the answers he gave in this testimony, well, you're like, where's this? Where are all the headlines about what Trump said about inviting Russia to invade a NATO country?

Speaker 1 34:03

Yeah, it's almost like they're picking. They're just picking things that it's not really the most relevant questions that should be asked.

Speaker 2 34:10

And so that's where the job. I just read a column by Margaret Sullivan some of you who used to be a public editor at the New York Times.

Speaker 1 34:18

Oh, yeah, mad respect.

Speaker 2 34:20

Yeah, I met her at this conference. I went to it at the J School, the Columbia School of Journalism, and she said it's nothing new that papers and publications are partisan.

Speaker 1 34:33

Yeah, that I agree with. Yeah.

Speaker 2 34:36

And that all for this weekend. The Salzburger at the Times needed to do was go to his assignment editor and his opinion editor and say, hey, are we spending too much coverage on this question versus other things? So that's where I think. And on TV you do get. Sometimes the same people, the same commentators are on TV and you don't get necessarily a broad spectrum. One of the things that I do, and one of the things I did when we did this podcast on COVID, was to make sure to make rules about who could be guests. So if it was two men, that was okay. If it was three men, that was not okay because you needed to get women on it. And then if we did four, you know, if we had four women as guests, well, some of them had to be. You know, people of color. And unless you make those rules, that you set those standards, you're going to be in danger of seeing the same people on all these. You know for broadcast media.

Speaker 1 35:57

Yeah, no, I agree with that. You do get a lot of the same. It kind of reminds me I was thinking about this because, as somebody who's a philosopher I'm always it always makes me cringe when I look up philosophers on social media not social media on, say, a search engine, and it's always an entire page of men. There are no female philosophers like the Google search engines of the world.

Speaker 2 36:23

Don't consider them to be female philosophers, Hannah Arendt and what was her name? I mean there are a few, but you have to. So what I did? You?

Speaker 1 36:33

did like a hunt for them.

Speaker 2 36:34

Yeah, you have to hunt for them, but that's the idea of women to follow that I am saying you know, here's a list. You know I've started out. You know came a hashtag and then I put together lists of women that we should follow. And so when I you know, one of the things that really bothered me when the Ukraine war broke out is that when I'd see cable news, they had all these commanders, generals. You know millic for national and international. You know military news.

Media Evolution and Ethics

Speaker 2 37:05

You tell me where there was a woman, you know right. So I did a show on about two weeks after Ukraine was invaded, with three women. So one was a reporter in Ukraine, one was, you know, a Kremlin watcher in New York and one was, like a Kremlin watcher, professor in Italy, because I wanted to show that there are women experts who can talk about this.

Speaker 1 37:28

Yeah, yeah, no, I agree with that. It's still pretty. It still leans pretty heavily towards men and you know that's a whole issue for another episode. So do you mind answering what you thought of Tucker's interview?

Speaker 2 37:49

I didn't watch the two hours, but I've read stories and so they said like I think he spent at least an hour, you know, expounding on Russian imperialism and this idea that it was really, you know, Poland to start with World War II. And if you mentioned Poland 30 times, I have to believe Masha Gessen with New Yorker.

Speaker 1 38:09

That's so weird.

Speaker 2 38:11

So it was very weird Because, yes, other many, many generals have interviewed Putin. There was even a documentary I watched about him, you know where he said they watched him like over the course of a few weeks and he got they got you know this kind of crazy access. But the thing that Mada was saying is that the way Putin is talking now, it's like he sees himself as some kind of other, you know, some kind of Hitler. That's interesting.

Speaker 1 38:47

Yeah, I mean, I've always had an amount of reserved amount of respect for him, just from a, just from a, the way he approaches his leadership. I'm not saying about his decision making or choices, but I always thought he knew at least he carries himself in a dignified manner and he's you know, I don't know, but but I don't believe everything.

Speaker 2 39:06

I hear You're also not soft, you know.

Speaker 1 39:07

yeah, I was about to say and Poland 30 times in one one hour interview.

Speaker 2 39:14

So that's synchronistic to the point of kind of creepy that sounds like planting seeds, you know already in Ukraine and wants to take over Ukraine? Well, poland's right next door, oh yeah, oh yeah. So so the interview wasn't. I don't consider that real journalism. I mean, one Tucker is a disgraced journalist. He was fired by Fox, you know. So you have to have some questions and who can? Who on the world stage? Can Putin give his message to? You know? Sort of unread, you know understanding, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 39:50

And so in that interview, from what I read, and I will say I'll read it, I'll watch it, but but Carson didn't, didn't push back. So when Putin went on for an hour about Russian you know imperialism and you know Peter the Great, I mean he didn't say, oh well, what about this and what about that? And that's what you need a journalist to do.

Speaker 1 40:14

Yeah, I wondered if he wasn't lost at certain points because he's speaking because Putin was speaking in Russian. I know there was a translator, but I wondered about that, so, so interesting.

Speaker 2 40:26

I covered Borbachev years ago and everything was translated. So you just had to be more mindful, you know, as you're listening, and careful in your you know in your quotes. But I mean it happens at the UN all the time, right, yeah?

Speaker 1 40:44

Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, you have to be able to do that. So you know, one of the things I try really hard to do on the show is so you know, I think it's fascinating the landscape of the media. It's changing dramatically. I love that you brought up the story about the New Yorker. I think it was saying that they're ready for what was the word apocalypse?

Speaker 2 41:02

extinction extinction?

Speaker 1 41:04

Yeah, do you. I did want to ask really quick because I know when I saw a I and I experimented with it like about two years ago, I started using different things and I could see, as somebody who spent 20 years doing communications, I was like, oh boy, this is good, going to turn things on its on their head. Do you think AI has had a lot to do with, with what the apocalypse apocalypse like extinction, that they're talking about.

Speaker 2 41:30

I don't think it's. No, I think not, not at this point. I think that you know for a local paper, the things that like gathering what events to say. You know, like here, here's what to do this weekend. So that job might be taken up by AI. Partially right, but you still have. You still need a person looking over the that. But I don't think it's. It's at least in media. Yes, maybe in communications and public relations. In other fields it's being used in ways we don't really understand yet, but in journalism, I mean the the economist, I think around the maybe six months ago or maybe when chat GPT first came out, they put on their cover an AI generated cover and they didn't acknowledge it.

Speaker 1 42:24

Oh, interesting. I wonder if they did that on purpose. I don't believe anything anybody does anymore. Honestly, if it's because, if it's like a little lawsuit here or there to get international headlines, I think it is one of the things I try to tell my students as a professor. I try to tell them you know to be very careful about what you believe, because it's so easy. It's so easy to fall for what are really PR stunts and most controversy is engineered is that if someone's not going to prison or jail, you have to be very careful of believing believing it.

Speaker 2 42:57

Well, I mean, the New York Times filed this huge lawsuit, right oh?

Speaker 1 43:01

I was going to ask about that. Thank you for bringing that up. What did you think of that? Oh, you guys listeners, she's talking about the. The New York Times found a lawsuit about AI. Let's hear it.

Speaker 2 43:11

I think it's great that they did that. Yes, you know, because they're going to speak. This is going to be so important because there aren't these, you know, there are not laws, you know it. This whole field is so new that what constitutes stealing, what constitute intellectual property?

Speaker 1 43:27

in.

Speaker 2 43:28

AI. And so if AI, you know, if open AI is is taking all the stories from the New York Times on, let's say, new York City politics, and so when you type in, you know on chat, tell me you know who's in charge or what, what happened in the last 10 years, and it doesn't tell you where they're getting that information.

Speaker 1 43:50

Yeah.

Speaker 2 43:52

Then you run the risk, you know, then you're increasingly running the risk of being a misinformation, yeah, disinformation.

Speaker 1 44:01

I thought this was interesting because when I first used AI, I knew I could see immediately between the artwork and what I was running through copy wise to see. I was testing different things to see what you could do with it. I was really like, whoa, this is not good. I recognize the art. I could see that it was being lifted. Now I've seen it change because it's had so much input put into it and so much created now that I no longer see that with the art.

Speaker 1 44:26

But one of the things that I found interesting and I had at one point considered opening up a new kind of PR and marketing agency to help people get into the AI systems so the algorithms would speak to them in a proper way. But then I realized, oh, I don't want to lay the ground work for that, because what I understood when I was really paying attention was that because AI was using media to inform what it was saying about companies, that you could literally craft a reputation through AI and erase history. And when I realized that, I was like, oh, this is a problem, it's a real potential problem and I stopped pitching the idea to start another business just helping people get in it, because all it takes is having. You can buy You're way into media A lot of media these days. It's just the truth.

Importance of Local Journalism in Communities

Speaker 2 45:15

Yeah, and I think that for me, if I want to do a business plan or marketing plan, I might go to AI, but if I'm going to Google how many reporters were laid off in the last 15 years? I go to Google because at least you know, you know where that source is, and what I think Google and the other companies I hope will work on is that there'll be attribution. Yes, and I think they are working on that at Google because they have so much at stake, right, everybody's working. It's become a verb Googling, right. So I think it will evolve and I think that the New York Times lawsuit will help that evolve in terms of setting standards and rules.

Speaker 1 46:04

Yeah, I think that's huge. I'm really, I am really glad that you brought that up, because I think that the New York Times taking that on was so necessary and I think it will push through the change. Even you know, that might drag on for a while, but it will cause them to have to go. We need to fix this now. We don't want more lawsuits. What do you think are? As our last question for you about the media landscape, what do you think are? Do any solutions come to mind in terms of kind of helping media evolve into a better place?

Speaker 2 46:40

Yeah, I think that there are. There's something called solutions journalism, and which is about you know, instead of just saying what's wrong, let's give people some guidance in how to fix this and let's write stories on how this is being fixed and what people can do about it. And there's also collaborative journalism. So I met Mitra Kalita, who been a journalist at her last. Her last job was at CNN and while she was there she started creating something, a newsletter called Epicenter, about what was going on in Jackson Heights during the pandemic To give people, the community where you go to get your shot, you know latest information on what vaccine was available. So this idea that you know that and now this. She's grown that and I think 27,. She has 27, like local news participants as part of URL media. And when she talked about the elections, she said her job as an editor is to answer the basic questions. You know, how do I vote? Why do I vote? Am I, is it safe for me to vote?

Speaker 1 48:06

Yeah.

Speaker 2 48:07

And bring that to the community to inform them. So you're not telling them necessarily who to vote, but you're providing that useful information and you're really serving the community. And I think the way local journalism, you know, can keep alive is if you find these small, smaller outfits that are focused on the community.

Speaker 1 48:31

Yeah.

Speaker 2 48:32

In new ways. So there needs to be. You know, I mean, I was at this conference and Nelson, who teaches at Columbia, said there needs to be a Marshall plan for journalism.

Speaker 1 48:43

I agree Wow.

Speaker 2 48:45

So if we fund public highways, why not? You know, public? And there is some movement on that, but not to the scale that makes up for the news deserts that we're experiencing.

Speaker 1 48:57

Yeah, I think that's such an interesting for our listeners. There are large swaths of the country that no longer have a local newspaper which is affecting community, when people already have their heads buried in their phones listening. You know people are all listening to the same like I don't know. Seems like the same two ends of topics and not really getting into the middle of it, to the meat of it, and on top of that their community media is going away, which is a few parts of the world, but there is very very strong Christian media like this one that Nelson has pointed out, which, like you know, she grew up in Oklahoma.

Speaker 2 49:33

So, she's got an idea of what's going on, but I you know, on the East Coast, like who listens to the radio? For that you know the Christian news network very few you know, but it's huge. And the money that's going to those networks, I mean the Super Bowl this week, oh see that oh Did. Jesus add $100 million a budget.

Speaker 1 49:55

Jesus, you know well what are we actually selling, cause you know ads are for selling things Right.

Speaker 2 50:03

And I immediately like, looked it up, found you know it was funded a lot of it by Hobby Lobby and other rights groups. Well you know people. My husband said oh, like Jesus, you know. But I mean, you know it's like Jesus. What is this Jesus?

Speaker 1 50:18

I know why they. I know why they did that Because in the social, if they're paying attention to younger audiences, younger audiences are very much into the teachings of Jesus as just a human being, not as a, you know, the son of God. Specifically nothing. They tapped into the popularity of him as a teacher, if you will.

Speaker 2 50:39

Right Washing feet and you know, showing him in ways even though they are tend to be anti. You know LGBTQ, but they're showing Jesus as the man of the people.

Speaker 1 50:51

And so there.

Speaker 2 50:52

So the other thing I think to be aware of as we approach elections and the state of journalism, is that the campaigns are also gonna use, are using, tiktok because they want to reach younger audiences. So radio three things to look out for radio TikTok and you know how that's growing and how they're using it and you know whatever local journalism you can find.

Speaker 1 51:20

Right, yeah, I think you highlighted something that I think is actually what, ultimately, a lot of the media lost their footing in being of service to the community and got gobbled up by you know the headline creating because it created clicks and it sold new. You know newspapers, I mean headlines do. That's just the truth, and I was always baffled by how many headlines didn't actually match the article. I would read them like I'm confused.

Speaker 2 51:50

But that's sort of a different enders. I think it's more that they lost the revenue to be able to report the stories. It wasn't a matter of, you know, click baits, I mean yes or no.

Speaker 1 52:02

I think I refer specifically. There was a time there when they had headline editors that were new to doing headlines for digital media and they were.

Speaker 2 52:13

Their jobs really depended on how many clicks they got, and so there was like a spell there where Buzzfeed you know 10 ways to you know everything was a list, yeah, yeah, you know. And they, I think Buzzfeed, was it, buzzfeed, that I think you know. Each reporter was told you know there was a running tally of how many, of how much traffic you generated with your story.

Speaker 1 52:35

No pressure there to actually do journalism. Click bait is the answer. I think there are a lot of people out there in the journalism field that really care and are working to change things, like you, rose, thank you. Thank you for being a voice for women, for creating women to follow I think it's extraordinary and for your continued efforts to hold up the pillars of journalism, because we need, we need journalism. We really do. I have a lot of respect for it.

Speaker 2 53:05

We do, we do so, thank you. Thank you, cynthia, for having me as a guest. It really a pleasure I enjoy. I enjoyed our conversation very much.

Speaker 1 53:15

Oh, thank you, Rose Horowitz. Rose Horowitz, pulitzer, pulitzer, pulitzer. Nominated journalist. Rose Horowitz. Thank you so much. Thank you so much to our listeners for joining us for this episode. I really appreciate your support. If you are not already subscribed, what are you thinking? Subscribe?

Speaker 1 53:33

so you can get the latest episodes of Citizen Journalist. If you've not already checked out my book Memory Mansion, it did hit number one, which I'm very excited to say, considering I did it all myself. Thank you so much If you did buy it. I really appreciate the support. It shares my journey, the self love. So go check it out and stay tuned for more from Citizen Journalist. Thanks you guys and have a beautiful, beautiful week. Bye.