Welcome on behalf of the National Press club and the National PressClub Journalism institute we are so happy you are joining us tonight for this program. Im julie ms. Diane executive director of the national Journalism Institute where we are working to close the gap between journalism and civic engagement. Todays program really meets that mission head on. The most important journalism that happens in the city is done by regional reporters. Should i say again. The most important journalism that happens in the city is done by regional reporters. [applause] regional reporters are washington washington so that the people of the United States can make informed decisions about their lives and about their democracy. In this type of journalism and the selfgovernment that it enables is one of the most Important Reasons that we have a First Amendment protection for freedom of the press. So on this 30th anniversary of the Regional Reporters Association youre going to hear about the challenges reporters face and you already know what they are. Shrinking resources diminishing public trust and growing fake news. Youre also going to hear about the impact of regional reporting from some of those very very best in the business. On this panel and in this room. They are going to look ahead to the future of regional reporting it as we look at the future of journalism, it will rest in the hands of people like two nights moderator, who is the washington correspondent for the atlanta journalism. President of the Regional Reporters Association and a very valued member of the skull. Thank you for the conversation we are about to have. And thank you for being here. Thanks julia thanks everyone. [applause] thank you for coming as julie mentioned i am the president of the Regional Reporters Association. Rra is a professional Development Group where prince tv and radio reporters will cover is cooked outside the beltway. We formed 30 years ago under the idea that we can offer tips and pointers to one another without compromising competition. We also found that we can consider here more highprofile newsmakers if we actually work together. We had good opportunities over the last three years. As we are facing the pressures as every other reporters in dc from white house and capitol hill media access is typing. The president regularly seeks to undermine our credibility. Public trust is been on the decline and doctor videos and sprouting up online are not making our lives any easier. We also face our own unique challenges. Free online news sites have taken bites out of our business. A lot of our Parent Companies are tightening their belts. Many of closed or consolidated their washington bureaus and laid off some really wellconnected reporters in the process. I would know. My newspaper that was Cox Media Group which to get decades of cow had two dozen reports. With a cell that is expected to go through by the end of the year. We all know the work that regional reporters do is vitally important to but democracy. No one else keeps good taps on delegations like we do. The local impact of federal policy like we do. Small medium newspaper closings our work is as essential as ever. That leads me to today and are great panel that we have. I want to look at how the landscaper regional reporting has changed since rra was created 30 years ago. How can we rebuild trust and best inform our readers at a time when civil distresses creating. Then i would like to introduce our panel. I have marked from Peer Research centers work focuses on the public news journalism and social media. Washington chief of the exactly as long as rra is been around. He has had some amazing work lately. And i also have to distinguish farmers members of congress who have been kind enough to join us. I really hope they can give a standard use and what its like to be covered by us. We have congregants a democrat who represented north virginia for 24 years before retiring in 2015. Before getting elected to congress he is at the firm mcdermott will and emery. Next family and former congressman ryan costello, republican representative philadelphia area for two terms. After leaving congress, he started his own public policy. Thank you so much for being here. Just some housekeeping before we begin occupant i had in case anybody has questions and we do want this to be a conversation in the room. Im also going to say same time at the end for questions. I want to hear about peoples experiences being regional reporters and help people have adopted into this environment. Lets begin. I want to start with you jerry. You fitted regional reporters since 1989, i was wondering if you could paint a picture for us about how your job has changed over the years. Im sure youre spending a lot los time the fax and [laughter] a lot more time on twitter. Things have really changed when i got here ive covered i got so many faxes from him. Things have changed. The changes that the regional reporters face are what reporters face generally. First of all, we are filing all the time now. If something is breaking, i file it right away. Rightwing it right away. I kind of feel like my job never ends. Yet at the same time, there are certain types of coverage than a pullback from. When i got here, it was part of a twoperson bureau and we really tried to cover everything. We had a number of congress who shared a committee and we would try to go to all of the hearings and cover those hearings. Over time, we cut back and i am the only reporter doubt and i do mostly enterprise work that is he going to end up on the front page or get a ton of his. Ton of his own mind. Is this a good change or not i can change, i am uncertain. It really would be great to still be able to be the newspaper of record. In washington for buffalo new york. But at the same time, i think regional reporters can also and ive seen this happen, get to much into the weeds. That leads into a really good back story but about what is really happening to the readers and with the delegation is really doing. The way regional reporting estate for me is i am gone much more into that direction and away from processed stories. Does social media make your job easier or harder. In a way you know the second someone has tweeted. We can get that instantly. It has made it both easier and harder. It is made of such that i have to be alert to social media and i have to follow it all day long and i have to use it when appropriate. So thats made it more complicated. Like i said i feel like im never not working. The good thing about it is i feel much more interconnected. A lot of reporters say dont read the comments. Well, i read the comments. Believe it or not, i get stories from the comments and i give you an example. A couple of weeks ago, i did a story about the delays in the construction of the new veteran suffering. In western new york, and there was like this big comment from a guy who said im a veteran and i own a business and it was a government would stop trying to help me. I figure i should reach out to the sky. And i do and it turns out that he tells me all about the rules that i didnt know about legislation in 2006 that required that the cemetery be built by a Company Owned by a veteran with a Service Connected disability. Theyre having a hard time finding a company that qualifies. I got a really good frontpage story only because of social milieu media and only because i could react with a reader that i was not probably even heard from. Thirty years ago. I want to hear from the two former congressman now. Im interested because both of you served in local government before you made it to capitol hill. Youve dealt with local reporters and youve gotten to washington you both have regional reporters covering for hometown audiences. I am curious what that is like and what particularly how your relationship might have differed from some of those reporters. Its an excellent question. One thing i want to lay out preliminary is for as frustrating as it might be, as a regional reporter to deal with the changes in the industry, i had a very frustrating as an elected official. The rules of the game of change. By that, i mean, the cultivation of relationship with reporter, i am looking to earn your trust that when i am saying is actually true. I am looking to earn your trust that when a working on is newsworthy. The generation of stories for your consideration so that every 88 period of years, your local electorate who is reading your independently verified re citation of what i am doing to validate me as an elected official someone is working hard, is really the nutrition that a politician needs in order to withstand a wave Election Year ending goodwill in the community. Soccer practice kids in School Professional life. People dont Pay Attention to what we are doing. Very often. So decades and i threw my Public Service starting when i was 25 and 42 now, i was kind of school in that era. And i would submit that because the rules of the game have changed, there are some elected officials who saw it coming and ill get into this a little later. Some politicians saw that coming and got in front of it with click bait that creates sensationalism and some who i would argue are better at doing what the constitution for strides that they actually do. Dont know what the new rules are and they suffer. And i would argue that our democracy suffers as a consequence of the breakdown in elected officials accountability by print media and consumption of print media by citizens and elected official constituency. For as much as a business challenge for your industry, i think its a real credibility challenge for elected officials. The breakthrough constituency for a way you dont have citizens relying on the service that you provide as a part of the Business Model and under the First Amendment of what was contemplated in an open society. You are in washington for a very long time and social media came about in the last couple of years. Did you find your changing what you are talking to your constituents about or what people wanted from you in the inquiries youre getting with you becoming more nationalized. There were fewer regionals around to talk to customer. The problem with social media, i dont mean this in a way which is to be perceived. There is no way to regulate it. You dont know what youre getting. You dont know who is sending it. You dont know how representative it is it is unreliable and untrustworthy and i dont they get really informative and verbally is superficial. In the tweets and the emails that you get now. They are overwhelmed with people that we have snarky comments to make. Is not a substitution for anything. Its people thats often planned disgruntled people and there was a time when people would write a letter to you and it was really off based and we would send informative back and we regret to inform you that someone is using your name and sending misguided letters. And if we find out who it is we will refer them to the Mental Health institute. But you cannot do that anymore. It is just too much. I just do not find that social media for the most part is terribly informative. I represent Northern Virginia which is part of the metro area so most people get the Washington Post. In the communities and fortunate these local people are still surviving. We would still have local papers in the local paper is extraordinarily important purpose. For the post, it is better than most brinker. So dont want to single out the post and a negative way. That in the New York Times. Im concerned the two best papers and most reliable papers in the world. It is tough to get space even on the natural section unless theres a scandal. If there is a scandal or very controversial policy issue you will get space. If your well run government thats responsive and competent in taking issues as they come and deliberating on them and acting responsibly you will never get your name mentioned. Forget about it. Your only hope is to have a network of personal friends and go to every possible reception, that is not a bad thing but youll never get any press. And it makes you bondable because when you do mess up and everybody is human people do not know all the good things that you have done and that is a function of the fact in the order of 7 million people, but in a community theres maybe 100,000 at most, a small fraction that would get the paper. Unless you have a go mass, you cannot even get advertising revenue. And so the cohesiveness of the community itself and the motivation for elected representatives to work hard and serve the people and get some amount of credit to doing so is lost in some communities it is probably gone forever and i do think that you wrote with the whole concept that is built upon that you have to have local coverage. On that note i want to bring in mike, you brought in a lot of local and regional trends. Recently did a cool thing where you can search by metropolitan area and see the local deserts everywhere. So can you talk to me a little bit about the trends you see in local and Regional News around the country. If you want to punch in your local area and see the results, people can give their source of news in d. C. From the local fox station because it was named the number one news force. So local news and the d. C. Region they capitalize on that and put it up. We do find, the transfer in the newspapers especially over the last 30 years have been a downward trend in governors fall by half and newsroom staffing has fallen by half over the last ten years and today more people get news from social media. And thats even taking into account the websites and apps Online Sources have started arrival tv and number one. The good news for local news is that they are morally and have a have a lot of trust in social media. But those numbers highlight the challenges to a certain extent. Because a lot of people dont trust it and we asked folks what you like about getting it on social media and they say convenience. People like that they can pick up the phone and opened it up and theres a stream of news there for them whenever they have a free moment. And those that have a transition better the audience is about halfandhalf, digital versus legacy products for tv and radio is more like 75 25 for the dependents. But the internet is something from behind. We have seen a decline in the number of regional reporters covered in congress from newspapers over a fiveyear period and we did see a rise but it was from trade publications as well as a slight rise in Digital Media sites. We did this in 2015 and its even higher now. By having the regional correspondent really does make a difference. Where story was written by regional correspondent there much likely to Cover Congress and a member of congress. If that continues and applications for the coverage back home. The trends you mentioned are reflected in the members that we have an alright. 20 years ago we had 230 members an hour down to 65. That is hard to hear. Were still getting people and thats wonderful but i want to talk a little bit about what this downward trend, the repercussions of all of that. You have done some Pretty Amazing work in some of the financial stock trades that he was making that maybe werent so kosher story like that maybe might not be covered but if you could talk about that and i want to talk to the congressman as well about local news and how that changed the way that folks have interacted with you with fewer local news source. We will start with you jerry. I do think that basically, you have a situation where congress is very couple kitted and a lot of things are happening in congress all the time in all these numbers are out there raising money to get reelected. So there is potential and im not reporter that believes people come here to congress to make money or make it for themselves. I think there are a lot of good Public Servants but, there are those that do things that are on course. Is there not regional reporters covering them, i think the things being recorded are probably much lower. I dont take its a good thing for democracy. I think there is a good thing to have checks mlss in every way and well resourced can provide that. I dont know where itll go eventually but i wonder if theyll be more scandal over time. In some communities people are not watching. I want to talk to congressman really briefly. You mentioned in your district you had Something Like five local newspapers and four out of five were bought by hedge fund in the fifth Delaware County pennsylvania and Montgomery County in the daily local news and Chester County are all now owned by the hedge fund and the writing eagle which i thought was going to make it has now been gobbled up by the same one and what you have is rather each one of those papers leading on the front page with their municipal news, local stories, whether made all the typical stuff. Now 80 of the stories in each one of those papers is identical to whats in the other. There is a local reporter doing some municipal news for all purposes is the same paper. Growing up that was something i enjoyed the Public Service where he always wanted to do it and you learn about your local officials of that paper and you see the ones that move up the ladder and how they go about making sure there is a local paper. There is an art to make sure youre in the local paper. If i know you are covering the pretty puppy competition every single year i will go to the pretty puppy competition. It can drive a little bit of what your district work schedule is. One other point i want to make. I dont know if you did it or someone else, if you look in terms of local government that are in areas where theres news deserts tend to borrow more money. You start to see these trends related to government behavior that are not necessarily good or at least without the accountability and not knowing why certain decisions are being made, it introduces more potential for wrongdoing to happen also, it needs to be mentioned. All five of them within the last ten years in a couple within the last two years. Im wondering you talk about social media but i wonder if you notice the difference over time and the way the constituents were interacting or the kind of questions or issues that they really cared about given the decline in local news over the years . As part of a broader trend. Politics has been nationalized. And i spent most of my 24 years of congress on the Appropriations Committee and i guess i was very proud of that because it is one of the two that the constitution grants for legislative branch. We have obviously advocated the responsibility to declare war. The other is the power of occurs. And the reason why the congress had that is so they can serve their individual communities as best they could and recognize and represent the diversity of those communities. And they would know best what was most needed whether it be schools or roads or bridges or human infrastructure kinds of things. Whatever it be and then they go and fight for it and about 200 years, members were largely judged on how well they serve the interest of the community. Then, i think it started to come in when they came in and 94, there was a nationalization of congressional politics and it became much more partisan. And both sides engaged in the lot of politics and then to show we eliminated earmarks so the procreation process was advocated to the leadership and president obama was responsible as any of the republican presidency. He said any bill that has a procreation of a near market albedo. So he never got a regular application bill in eight years. We would shut down the government, have resolutions, we would kick the can down the road and then the leadership on both sides, the housesenate republican we get together and be about eight of them and they would work out the spending bills. And there would be virtually nothing for individual members to cut ribbons and i remember being so stunned after the economic recession of 2018 when president obama put 980 billion stimulus in the economy but he decided not to work with the congress in deciding how that should be spent, he went to the governors it was a little surprising, two thirds were republicans. But the members got no credit for anything. And they knew best what was most important for the district. So that combined with gerrymandering where the elections are made up and determined by the process, elections are nationalized on cultural issues largely. And so this divide has widened, its the most liberal of republican or conservative than the most conservative democrat and every year the gulf widens. It is relevant to these local newspapers. If you cannot bring anything home now does not matter if theres nobody to cover it anyway. [laughter] what is the point. I think this falls into the same trend that would nationalizing issues as the economy becomes concentrated and more acquisitions and concentration of corporate concentration of personal wealth and concentration of political issues at the National Level instead of what i think is a proper role for the house of representatives. To serve the interests of the individual district. And issues like the cultural issues are irrelevant. Most members spend their time serving their district and they were almost improbable, now they can get defeated on one cultural issue if theyre on the wrong side. I will give you an example in terms of altered behavior. So probably about five months in to president trumps term he comes in past the republican Conference Meeting and we were getting ripped in the freedom caucuses trying to do something. [laughter] was a the president comes in and says you know, we will need to do this and ill tie you what this twitter thing, i just go zoom zoom zoom is like an explosion. And what he is saying, he has twitter and if you do not get in line he is going to tweet and it causes a big huge explosion. And if youre a republican it does it does for everybody these days. But at the time, that is a whole hell of a lot more compelling, not necessarily for me but many republicans in districts that if you want to be held accountable president will hold you accountable. That is instantaneous. Tens of thousands over voters in five minutes or an hour have been told, wheres my congress on this. That when you think about it with the regional reporter which comes out the next day with declining leadership. And if you ask and people say why dont republicans stand up to the president or what will it take to get republicans . Who are the voters, where are they getting information and who influences how they think . And those who influence how they think perceptive enough to know how to push the red button . In the flip side of that, very competitive district, healthcare to be. There are more, and all will be no probably drives you is crazy, theres more roadsides that pretend to be new sites that are not new sites. But they look like it. Everything looks like it but then you read it and this is a joke this is inaccurate. But a reader does not know fact from fiction. In the Cottage Industry of ideological laughs and ideological rights new sites jekyll not hard news, their ability to influence readers who arguably want to be informed but seek to be informed with the previous positions 30 have is a real difficult thing to overcome and then you have folks calling the office or messaging you or writing emails that are reall really sometimes the past article and say how dare you do this, thats what the news said. That is not the news. Or though use a lot of the same talking point and that is what drives congressional attitude and behaviors and responses is where their constituents are getting their news. With that in mind did you find that made sense to message on local issues where you can get more attention on twitter . It is a multimedia in the communication structure in this day and age is different that it was ten years ago. I was there for years and it was different for years ago to my last year. Twitter has taken off or so and you have to be on twitter, is not the endall, beall but you have to be everywhere. You need to do the good government, we have funding for this, you do need to get this statement done, he have to do it all and you have to be everywhere on everything because your voters particularly in a competitive district, you have to worry about the 500 the care about this and care about that. If youre in a really republican or democratic district is defined by one thing. Do support the president or not you. We have really simple fight to the detriment of a wellinformed citizen and we have simple fight how we go about measuring congress. At the moment thats why think we are. I will open it up to questions. Before i do that, one last question for the panel. We would not be here if we did not think all of our big boxes, the people who make millions of dollars and figured out how to make news possible, assuming we are not going to get a bunch of resources to be able to get back to where we were, how do we adopt . How do we do smart work and rebuild trust especially given the state of our Public Discourse right now. I want to start with mike because he has done research and looking at what people want. It is very practical stuff. They want the news to be accurate and they want the news to cover stories thoroughly. And they wanted to be fair and there is a consideration that they want to provide information useful to you. We have people in a weather team, traffic is breadandbutter and local issue, government was in the middle. To a certain extent they want news thats useful to the lives and people sometimes talk about positive and negative on things. But you know it is tough because a lot of the smaller are going away and mostly weekly papers this bar that we see in the daily papers as well and we do see that global tv is the number one source for local news in america but those markets are huge in philadelphia people will say they get a lot of local news from tv but it allentown online does dominate. The news especially local news is unevenly disturbed it in america and so they want to step up and do Digital Media site but when you look at directories, they are very concentrated and there is not a ton or even slightly into the country like midatlantic. So theres a question of economics and will be asked people to get local news from these outlets, very few people said so. As were commonly found with the disoriented stuff like facebook groups, newsletters, emails, local churches amputated. People are self organizing a news to certain extent which is goes been part of local news. But there does not seem to be a ton of outlets to replace what was lost. Anything that youve seen that has worked for you and your editors and readers . Basically i think we all as reporters have had to balance what we think our readers need to know with what we think they would like to read. And what struck me over time as i look at my stories and how they perform online and a lot of times the stories that you would think might not resume online because are complicated and if the written in a way that this is how its going to affect you. It does resonate. For example one of my best read stories this past month is about Climate Change. And the effect the Climate Change would have on the great lakes. It was a panel discussion, and it turned in to a very wellwritten story. I think as long as youre taking government and relating it to the public there will be an audience for that. I think its also important not to make presumptions with your audience that degrades them or disrespect them. Ill give you a quick example of that. I did a story a couple of months ago and i thought everybody is going to read this. This is a guy from buffalo who is the easter bunny at the white house. Nobody read it. Nobody cared. It was the worst read story of the month. That is a lesson to me that sometimes you think things are being done back to people like that. Not in my expense. My experience the really good stories that are written in a way that people can relate to them and they still work at least at the buffalo news. Any thoughts on what we can do to improve civil discourse or anything like that . It is just getting worse. It starts at the top in this country and the standard it is far worse than anything that i ever couldve imagined. There is no civil discourse, it is uncivil. But even the democrats uncivil in their discourse because of the political environment and ego and selfishness and so on. I think it takes leadership and it takes professionalism in various fields. We used to have i dont mean that we dont have very Good Television anchors but it used to be that there was people that would set the standard and the president would set a standard, we would have three or four nightly newscasters who would set a standard in a certain amount of gravitates, they would be balanced, you could trust them and i dont mean we dont have enough but there would be opinion writers that will consistently read to be informed and to help shape your judgment. We had people who saw the broad issue and respect. We have lost some of that. One of the things that i worry about particular because i do believe the journalism is an integral element of community. I would love to find out what is happening in the schools of journalism and whether this is a profession that bright young people want to get into. To follow your lead you know. Because it seems to me that they look around and think not much respect, not much opportunity and maybe i want to look a different profession. I do think that erodes the kind of logic community that i think most of us would like to think that defined the United States. Can i help and on that for one Second Period i teach at the university of maryland and one interesting thing that is happened since trumps election is opposite of what you might be thinking is happening. Weve had a bump of enrollment at the university of maryland and we had to hire more admin to teach classes. A certain number of young people have become very energized just the way i was reading about watergate in 1974. That is very interesting. Do they get jobs . I worry about that. I certainly do. But the ones i have thought in the last year have been very engaged in excited about the profession. That is terrific. I am not about to say thank god for president trump. [laughter] but thats encouraging news. I would like to open it up for questions. We have a microphone going around in the back. If you can please identify who you are. Hi im a Communications Member of the National Press club. Ive enjoyed the perspective of the politicians and i think theres another perspective not considered as a public appear professional because when we do grassroots throughout the nation we have less local papers and its hard to justify the enduring and be covered for their efforts and becomes more consolidated in big cities and also more difficult as you no to get good coverage and a large paper like the near times and Washington Post. I wanted to bring the additional perspective to this issue to the panel. Hi, im maria i write for the Austin American statesman and a contribute to the Texas Monthly and i wanted to give an example of the congressman. Not that he remembers this but in an area that we have covered the nazi judiciary. There are many court cases that are truly important and almost always generated from any other regional areas. In the big one i think of covered bush before. The bigwigs are covered but theres lots of very important critical cases that are not. And i can give an example of an extremely local at the risk of dating myself. When congress maria was there i interviewed him because there was a court case i was writing at the start television at the time. It was involving the city manager who had been the city manager of alexander who became the city manager of fort worth. And as it happened, this is way before the meter era but Sexual Harassment type issue and his commission case. And, i am pretty sure he won that case after all. He was a good city manager. He continued for many years in fort worth. But anyway, it is good to see you again. It is great to see you. Thank you. I had forgotten about that. [laughter] may be to think back and realize back in the day when i had someone working with me and the bureau i covered a lot of Supreme Court cases. A covert Supreme Court cases like a covered bills in congress and how does this affect. That is something i really have cut back on being the only person here, i feel bad because i think youre right its very important but you have to cut somewhere and thats one place where i felt like i had to do it. Any other questions . Thomas with the tribune. I want to get to a point that maybe would be positive. What is the future for regional reporting like ben post of the Texas Tribune or online only, is there a positive future can be found out there to generate . [laughter] all try and i hope others will try. I dont think we know what the economic model is going to be for local journalism. I think it is going to depend on different factors in different areas. I think frankly Regional Newspapers like mine are somewhat advantaged in that we have enough people, professional sports teams, people subscribe just for sports coverage. And smaller communities are the ones that are really going to suffer and there are places like watertown new york, who covered the watertown paper is really a company town thats military base. And he had a ton of stuff to do and it was still be something for watertown reported to do but there is not that person anymore because of the economics. The economics will take itself out somehow and i think regional reporting will survive and continue to shrink some but may up be a major marketing unfortunately. I dont know if ivan answer but one thing i find my own insecurity for my own job security sake, i am spending my time hyper local, what is the thing that the ap will not have and what is the wire not going to have. Ill do the unique stories i could prove to my bosses incorporate that its worth having severe. I mean, there is a lot of very local media that is not making a ton of money and a lot is at the neighborhood level. It is offering a smaller geographic level than the local paper but it brings in local stories and also again like the facebook groups are posting. I saw this on my window what is going on. Or the police scanner. None of this is making money for them. But the news is out there just in different standards. Today is the first of the month, to your online articles wisely. [laughter] do you know what i mean. You get ten free ones. And i chuckled and at the same point time i buy newspapers. Because i believe in it. Im sure everybody in this room does and a lot of people do. But consumers are fleeting. Some of the other piece of information is going to come along five minutes later and the ability i think of the regional reporting to weave the national and local in a way that only you can do, that is a sweet spot. We have National Reporters to do national and people can find that information elsewhere but that is a Value Proposition and the question is how do you sustain and create a moat around the Business Model so the consumer cannot get away with getting it for free over and over again. The thing that makes me nervous as the millennial a lot of my friends since trump has been elected have subscribe to the post in the times for the first time which is great, that is really good but i dont see the same enthusiasm for local news. It is not been ingrained maybe because their young and settling down in one city. [laughter] but thats something i tell people, please subscribe to the local paper not just the post in time to. Only about 14 of u. S. Adults had done so. We also the question how well do you think you local news is doing financially and about 70 said local news is doing well financially and they were talking about a local paper in michigan a few months before the toilet that it printed a whole issue with the front page was blank and it said this is what itll look like if you do not support the paper. Thats something to be aware of. I would guess were going to wind up with two variants and this is not this is not going to settle the discussion anymore. Im trying to think of positive things but we need to be honest. One might be the patch, very local, online and we had good reporters, they came with a lot of good stuff but it was not a Business Model that was sustainable economically but i think it might come back. It makes sense. But the other variance is just like ryan was talking about, the hedge funds or whatever capital comes in, they buy them up and create a monopoly and they do it across the country and then they operate somewhat like sinclair, that is not a sinclair camera. [laughter] but some of the stations that you have a conscience of news in the sinclairs case and is not as bad locally, there is a political give up or content of news and then maybe 20 of the paper is local seeking claim at the local paper but its really just an iteration of the same stuff that theyre putting in every paper that they own. And it is not a positive development but it seems from an economic standpoint that maybe one of the only things with that would be economically sustainable. We have another question. Im a reporter with science magazine. Question for michael or any other panelist. I am curious about why the digital only publications you said seemed to thrive on the coast and can you connect the dots on that and why that is and what we might learn from that . I am not quite sure, i think that is a good question, theres lots of cities on the coast that have digital enabled folks and certainly a lot of times it is nonprofit online so maybe to a certain extent of the funding is going and where theyre interested but you know, the local news is great to study because everyplace has its own story, philadelphia the local News Organization decided to become a nonprofit and they are trying that as well so im not quite sure about the answer. I think one factor is the demographics of the metro areas in a place like buffalo which has much older demographics. In the circulation is held up better in the house and other places because older people are in the leadership that have it. That is obviously when you change overtime that is not a model for the future but it might explain why the coastal areas where you have people turning out population and they are different than other cities. Im trying to give tommy what he wants which is noise a good idea. [laughter] and call upon somebody in the room who i know to be one of the very best regional reporters and that is leslie clark. [applause] i worked with leslie and she has covered washington for the herald, lexington and more. I just wanted to ask to talk a little bit about what she sees working and what gives her hope for the future. Thank you julie. A lot of what i see as tamara mentioned it, that we are still super proud of having regional reporters were one of the biggest ones in d. C. And we have a number of regional reporters, i worked for kentucky and covering Mitch Mcconnell which is a fun beat and a really important one as well. And what we tried to do as well with my colleagues a number of people are here and we try to get Something Different that not everybody else is going to do. If we know the story of the day is going to be its not what we will try to achieve we will go somewhere else and give people what they cannot get anywhere else. And they see a lot of hope in regional reporting, they have a compass project theyre doing and people mightve heard about it with google in which we are going into three news desert that dont have any news operations in the first one is in Youngstown Ohio which just lost its newspaper and they will try something new and be brave and try to get readers and people talking to them and reading, a lot of what we do is knowing your community that is a really important thing like jerry knows buffalo. I knew miami really well when i reported for them and i kind of knew always for a regional reporter in the front of my mind what would land on the front page. Now thats like what will land on the homepage and stay there. And keep the sticky stories that people will go back to you. Youre always thinking what the people in the Community Want to read. Now that a cover for lexington, Mitch Mcconnell, the nice thing about him, hes not of interest in the National Audience and we get a lot from that. How we would change that into subscriptions, i am not entirely sure on that ive had to work well the political reporters on the innkeeper going. We also focus on bourbon and courshorseracing. We have time for one more. We can end with mark. Hi i am mark, i am with any news but im a washington correspondent for watertown for 14 and a half years. I overlapped with jerry. I wanted to tell a quick story and then maybe make an observation, one of the beauties about regional reporting you are tied back to your community and that your focus and when watertown hired me i had worked at the paper and had been in the newsroom for three and half years and they sent me down in my editor said, if we were looking for somebody who really knows what we can find somebody in d. C. To do that, theres people we can hire for that but thats not what were looking for were looking for somebody who knows the North Country and who knows people appear to have lived in the community who know and understand the publisher quirks and that sort of thing. That was the beauty of it. So i came down here and as the regional i dont care about the resources because of the house. But i do care about local congressman if you going to get the top spot. That is just what regional reporting is all about. The observation that i would make is that even though regional reporters have been decimated here, you go into the press galleries and they are more of reporters than any time since i started in december of 1997 and its all people who are writing for any news and politico which did not exist when i started here and that was like that. The way the capital is being covered is different than what it used to be. This is great reporters and great at cheeses. But the focus is different. Id be curious about any observations from people on the stage or elsewhere of how coverage of d. C. Has changed because of. I will take a crack at that. There is no question the conversation in the newsroom has changed. In the subject matter industry oriented newsletters and they are paid for by corporations. They need to be on top of everything that is happening that can affect the bottom line. That is obvious. I think political is a new went just happen in the lobby in business. That works because the consumers although theres not a high quantity, the high quality in terms of capacity to pay and they pay big money and energy newsletters and this affects their investment in the really to write big checks to make sure there at least as much as their competitors. Its very different than the kind of coverage used to have of individual members and how well they were serving their district. This is how well they served the industry. What are they doing that will affect the bottom line. There is a different pruning for which they are reviewing the work of congress. And this is a better question for the journalist but coupled with the intrigue of how to us minions deal with, what is happening at the white house and how do we fit into that and not drive stocks and indomethacin and all the others, where the commonweal for the broader nationalized narrative. That is what a lot of those reporters who teacher around and if you want to engage in the you can be good buddies with a lot of them because they need to close to phillips article. But if that is not your thing and you do not want to play in that space. And you dont they have much reason as a member of congress to talk to reporters in the press gallery except regional. Youre better off having your director get the press releases. [laughter] try to hit the deadline for the next money, yet i voted for eight or 12 and heres my four speech. [laughter] i found that the commonweal a lot of my time unless a congressman is out there saying outfront, most of the time i find that our leaders dont really click on that story of the day, heres what trump said and heres what our guys think. In general i find going off what leslie said is having an essential step that no one else has. When i write about the water case, those stories do really well because nobody else is covering it. There is a silverlining and that. Is a look at the numbers i cover today, while there are exceptions, there are some temperamentally similar to the one i covered 30 years ago. I cover a guy named tom reed who i know you your know pretty well who temperamentally would be a district type of congressman but without appropriations hes taken a different path and worked with a bunch of other more centrist members that energize this group called the problem solvers so i end up writing stories about the Problem Solvers Caucus rather than appropriations because that is what hes doing and it goes into what youre saying about congress being nationalized. Perfect example of it. Marine, ill give you the final words. [inaudible] [inaudible] [laughter] referring to george w. Bush. I want to thank our panelists for taking the time to chat with us. Want to thank our crowd for coming out. There are a ton of current and former reporters including a bunch of ra president though thank you all for coming. For those who paid we have a reception upstairs and i love to see you all. Thank you. Thank you, julie. Cut back thank you to the panelist. Thank you to andy whos been running around with my phone and helped make this program happen and thank you to the press club team that always makes the experience here so welcoming and comfortable. Thank you to cspan for being here my recording as an airing it and before people leave for the reception i do want to talk about someone who is not here. You may have noticed some of us wearing pins that say, free austin tice. Austin is the only american journalist who is being held abroad and been detained in syria for 200544 days now in taken while reporting for the Washington Post and the u. S. Government believes he is alive and is working hard to bring him home. Austin family have been fighting for his freedom for seven years of this month. We hope that you will, too. Restarting a new campaign this month on austins birthday which is august 11 and you will learn more about it at asked about austin. Org starting on august 11 and meanwhile you can see austins fear photography in the lobby and learned more about him at austin tice family. Com. Thank you for supporting him and thank you again for supporting programs like this and thank you for being here. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] cspans washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up wednesday morning we will ask residents from major cities around the country about their top concerns. We also asked columnist and editorial writers one of the most important issues facing their cities. Be sure to watch cspans washington journal, live at 7 0y morning, joined the discussion. Starting now it is book tv on cspan2. Coming up on the tv chris derose recounts the murder of princess scott ski, by congressman in the book star spangled scandal. After that historian brenda takes a look at the impeachment of president andrew johnson. And then pulitzer prizewinning historian, david mcauliffe, tells the story of the early pioneers. A little bit about our speaker, or excited to have chris derose. Chris was i believe in a sweden last week and we just got the call last week that he was coming. Were thrilled he took time away to reach out to us and confirm his appearance. Hes a New York Times bestselling author of the star spangled scandal which is the topic for today. The president he was formally