The internet is our guest today, marvin olasky, were proud to welcome him back to its heritage where hes a visiting fellow in somebody whos a close friend of our organization. The author of 25 books including his latest, reforming journalism which he will talk about today. Marvin, his political journey is quite unique. As he became an atheistand a marxist in high school and went on to join the communist party in the 1970s. It was at the university of michigan when he had his phd when hehad a spiritual awakening and was baptized into the Presbyterian Church in 76. He later became the founder of the redeemer Presbyterian Church in austin texas in 1992. After college he taught journalism for 25 years at the university of texas at austin and became a regular yale daily news at the boston globe. Is for both garnered him significant attention the eye of the Bradley Foundation which supported his visiting fellowship right here at the Heritage Foundation for 2 years. One of his most wellknown works is the tragedy of american compassion which transformed him into a leader in the Christian Conservative political thought movement. Newt gingrich distributed to every republican member of the house at the time. Its also what inspiredphrase compassionate conservatism. Marvin was instrumental in the success of the World Journalism Institute of which he is now the dean and the institute ceased to recruit and written trained christian journalists and inject them into the Mainstream Media and we need that. Hes the editorinchief of world which is a multimedia News Organization that reports from a christian worldview. Follow him on twitter at marvin olasky. His most recent book is titled reforming journalism and has been described as a history of journalism including tips on newswriting and advice, advocating conservative convictions in mediums thatare traditionally dominated by the left. As somebody who went to Journalism School and spent time in washington i have enjoyed reading it and i highly recommend it to you. We have copies for sale as you leave the auditorium in the lobby. Now to tell us more about reforming journalism i like to welcome marvin olasky. [applause] thank you rob, thank you all for coming today. Its great to be back atharry. Really ive spent the most Productive Research life ofmy life in 1989, 1990. This building was the base of the library of congress five blocks away and it was fun literally blowing the dust off 19thcentury records in the library. My research turned into the tragedy of american compassion. People say it made a difference in the drive for welfare reform in the 1990s and i like to think that change several Million People move beyond their roles into Productive Work so im grateful to heritage for that contribution to fighting poverty in america. A friend of mine is the head of aei and once said he got Barack Obamas job to drop when arthur told him im a conservative because i care about helping the poor. And id say president k james could say the same. Im grateful to americans heritage for the year hereand the background that rob referred to. Back in the 1970s i thought i was pretty smart. I had high sat scores, a yale diploma, a bigtime journalism, i was basically a leftwing protester invited into the halls of power and i was so smart that i did one of the stupidest things anyone could do, i joined the communist party and really purely through gods grace i came out of it and in retrospect it was a beneficial experience for me. Im not sure for others but for me it was because itmade me understand how stupid i was and thats an important thing for all of us to come to mind. It helped meunderstand that many people also considered smart are stupid. I started to wonder how i where i could go to find true wisdom and i became skeptical of existential subjectivity and the lack of humility that typifies journalism and typified me as well if im not careful and that brings me to todays subject. In september, the former trump aide spoke to a conservative group in st. Louis and asked do you think its been unpleasant and nasty to date . You havent seen anything. The 20 20 campaign will go down as the most vitriolic and nasty in american history. Its simple. We win, we save the country. No, we do not. We do not win, we do not save the country if we win by escalating anger. Everyone who wins by that sword will eventually die by it and just a little history since this is what was studied a lot, the United States has been exceptional, i know theres debate about that but through all the revelations ive studied the americanrevolution is the only one that did not become disastrous. Revolutions in france, russia which i became familiar with, china, cambodia, cuba , they always started with ideals that quickly became idols and thatcould happen here, not next year , probably not in the next decade but it could happen. I visited argentina last month with its inflation, that could happen here and we could become like venezuela where class warfare has all classes and journalism made in vitriol is part of the problem so if we keep escalating our cultural dk, our eventual debt driven nationalbankruptcy, we will lead more people to go from fierce words to sticks and stones. The old objectivity never was all that good, it certainly doesnt work now. Are there alternatives . Id like to lay out my suggestions based on biblical teaching that might help us make journalism part of the solution rather than part of the problem and i want to stress that these suggestions grow out of my work at world. When i was at heritage 30 years ago, i walked over to the new station and met with joel bell who found the world in 1986, joined the board of directors in 1990 and started editing in 1992 and i did that because that was the way that they wouldnt take me off the board and just be more active perhaps in other types of mischief but we had that at a time when other journalistic enterprises were shrinking of these suggestions are not just theoretical constructs, we road tested them over the years and were convinced that they work so number one, doing journalism at street level, not sweet level. Everyone has opinions. Its easy to sit at our computers airconditioned offices and pontificate. We tried to emphasize, consuming streetlevel reporting. We like being flies on the wall, watching and listening. We dont want to make ourselves the center of attention and dont want to make ourselves the font of wisdom. We like to go out and report and reporting is falling into rare circumstances these days. Theres so muchopinion journalism, theres very little reporting. People paying attention, watching, describing, thats number one. Number two, sprinkle salt, not sugar. Some of you may work in Corporate Public relations departments, i did that for five years. Some of you are nonprofit officers or congressional suites, ive had some experience there and i know the job for people in that situation is to make your organization or your boss look good. I did some of that. I worked at dupont for five years and it was great educationally and financially area but the task really was a handout sugar. Wheat statements that sometimes covered up the truth and thats not Good Journalism. Sometimes people are forgetting the divide to journalism and actually going out and trying to honestly report whats going on without doing it in a way thats designed to popularize, publicize particular groups or organizations or individuals. And sugar is very helpful either, just because sugar fixes,these sweet statements cover up the truth. If not Good Journalism and in a world we try to add salt. Salt and case, its also a preservative, thats our goal and that makes us unpopular in certain quarters including conservative quarters because number three, we try to avoid entangling, we can resolve not sugar because we dont have distract the backs of other organizations. Even when they scratch hours. World, i am a christian first, conservative second. World can be the same way but its not art of the conservative movement. We are not part of the evangelical movement either. We can and you decide other groups, more than 23 years ago, world was a member of the evangelical press association, we learned that epa code of ethics prohibited criticism of other epa members that made it a neutral Protection Society and sometimes organizations, our organizations, conservative or christian are area we resigned from the epa and have tried to inboard entitlements ever since independence is important. Number four, wed like to publish facts but we tried to use understated prose. Much of journalism is has become like the movie franchise. Frame one, screen two, screen three and so forth. People who get paid by cliques create click base. Thats not healthy for consumers or producers area we do have sensational news and we tried to tell it, screen it and thats also very different from a lot of journalism these days. Number five, we try to remember the theological reason for not screaming. The sky is not falling. Because god holds up the sky. We had a flood along timeago, god promised not to send another one. This year theres the 75th year since we invented Nuclear Bombs and released two of them on japan. It is absolutely miraculous that during decades of cold war we did not have a nuclear war. There were times we came close. Im not aware of any time in Human History that a massive three effective new weapon hasnt been used for such a long time. Thats amazing. Its not natural, its almost supernatural and when i think of this i really am filled withthanksgiving and you should be to. God is so great we cant get our arms around him but hes clearly had his arms around us. John calvin wrote about how we ought to gaze around gods works that we may be restored byhis goodness. And with all the rotten stuff that goes on, still, amazingly we havent had the disaster that i think anyone would have predicted we would have had by now. I looked at predictions back in the first decade of this century and people were predicting that there would be Nuclear Bombs smuggled in and people even giving odds better than 50 percent that we would have a Nuclear Incident in this country in the next five or 10 years. That hasnt happened and i guess we keeppraying that it hasnt happened. God has worked keeping us from killing each other and the death toll in the billions is a miracle of mercy. My apologies forpreaching, do i get an amen . So now that ive moved into theology let me waitinto deeper water. You may know the truth by bob dylan, youre going to have to serve somebody. World views direct all reporting and writing. Sometimes in a very implicit way, sometimes explicitly but theres not even the simplest story is without some degree of position on something. When firefighters fight fire, wecheer for the firefighters, not the fire. When we have discoveries that help people fight cancer, we are proud proud to build discoveries, were not cheering for cancer and a lot of people think that stuff that used to be popular is actually a cancer of some kind but were not cheering for the cancer either. Allreporting in some ways is directly recorded. And in the 20th century, some journalists pushed back against what used to be called out objectivity. And some still argue that an objective reporting the reporter comedy function like a camera people increasingly understood we certainly, people in journalism did camera shows depends on the kind of lens and film you have and so on. So to update the metaphor, you are more than your smartphone. Your smartphone reports, depends on where youre standing, when you turn on and off and you decide which sounds to keep or show or playback. In covering stories, reporters decide overtime is most important to present and what to ignore beliefs, judgments, ideologies direct thosedecisions. Direct the reporting area so what does that mean, does that mean its hopeless, everythings opinion . Not exactly. In future stories particularly the choice of a protagonist and antagonist, we call this camel when were running out of old journalism institutes in all stories. Those feature stories have protagonist, antagonist, mission obstacles. The basic structure is someone does something because , but and then you have the tension that comes in. And reporters decide who someone is, what it represents and worldviews are important and that again, i stress that because this leads to all five people throwing up their hands. We dont getconventional objectivity doesnt work then its all subjective. This brings us to what number seven and World Mission statement that we try to provide biblically objective journalism that informs, educates and inspires. The biblical objectivity, its so different from the conventional version of objectivity some people have a hard timegetting their eyes around ill try to explain. For 23 years now, i loaned and mostly work in a trial house on a hillside in texas. Accepting texas its cold and working mountain. The hill. The house sways slightly when heavy winds hit and that initially made me nervous. We had the top floor and you felt some movement but the builder of the house lived next door so i couldask them about theconstruction and certainly itwas pretty solid and it hasnt fallen down yet. You know how the house was made. Because he had made it. Journalists conventionally throughout the 20th century instilled these days sometimes described objectivity is getting opinions a bnc and putting them equally. But say my neighbor down the street says my house will fall down if the wind goes 10 miles an hour and maybe a neighbor across the street says well, its made of kryptonite and it would reject an attack even by superman. And it may be a third the other side that says my house is made of cheese or calls a hurricane but dont worry because i can my way out. If i quote all their opinions equally, will i have an objective story in mark know. Even if they were all experts and not slightly nutty. Im speaking generically, not of my particular neighbors, i still would not have an objectively accurate story but they dont know my house late the builder knows the house. Balancing subjectivity is does not give us an objective answer. What does . Well, god is the builder of the house we all live in. He gave us the bible. Which explains how the house was made and what its made out of. I believe that only god knows the true objective nature of things and i always didnt believe this, i had to learn it through hard thingsthat were hard useful. I believe in this book the bible is the only completely objective and accurate view of the world. Which means the only true objectivity is biblical objectivity. Do i expect others to believe that . Probably not unless god impresses that upon them unless he impresses it on me the way he did all these years ago and happily he does that formost people. Why he doesnt do it for everyone i dont know but there it is. Many of you have seen the weird but wonderful movie field of dreams, if people could not see the Baseball Players they are still there so how do we sort out whats real and whats not and whats true and whats not. This is our technique here, its a metaphor for white water rapids, our business offices and National North carolina so there are white water rapids 40 or so miles west of it when we had a world journalism classes there, we would sometimes take our students out to its and we would go down the rapids and about 25 students at a time, maybe in six rubber boats and when i captained one of the riverboats goes i was the only one who had experience i was such a poor captain i was running under bushes and trees and so forth and everyone ended up in the water at some point and one potential reporter ended up in the middle saying let me out, let me out which we eventually did and she did not really make it as a reporter. White water rapids, thats typical objectivity. Thats the shorthand and we have reporters all over the country and in africa and asia and so we get together in a couple of weeks and as were discussing stories and how to approach them, whos going to be our protagonist, antagonist and so forth we use this rapids as a shorthand. Because people who know white water rapids talk about six kinds of rapids. Number one is gently down the stream, i am capable of doing number three. Number six is going over waterfalls and im not sure real expert is going to die. Class i, class i is where the bible takes an explicit position so its easy to follow along area for example adultery is wrong story say about Sexual Practices we would not make an adult or a hero area i want to emphasize that taking a strong position where god takes one does not give us the way to misquote our opponents or mischaracterized them or ridiculed them, it does not require publicrelations health. But nevertheless, there is a clear position that will influence the way we tell the story. Class ii of the bible takes an implicit position for example, parents are responsible for the education of their children so we support biblebased schooling at home. But we dont think those schools should pretend god doesnt exist area is not neutral, saying god doesnt exist is taking a definite position so im class to, we will take a position we may not be as strongly, we will certainly acknowledge as we always do alternatives but we will still say theres something bible shows us is right and something wrong in this. Class iii, partisans on both sides scripture verses so only careful study through the vital those two biblical conclusions. One of the things we talk about that world is showing concern for the unborn, the uneducated, theuncle employed, the unchurched, the unfashionable. Whats most important is not whether we feel righteous, is whether we are helping or hurting area since all people are made in gods image, with the capacity to be creative and productive, to a greater or lesser extent, i think we find from both biblical teaching and experience that fame and encouraging people not to work are often harmful rather than helpful area and will come at it that way. We will knowledge is a hard day. What we do when theres a person at Union Station asking for money to give to not to give, this is hard and to inquire experience in a sermon, we probably get still get it wrong a lot of times but we would still say theres biblical teaching that are useful. And then we come toclass for where theres no clear biblical task , we can bear significant historical experience and a biblical understanding of human nature and for example we should not trust tyrants to honor these treaties. And we teach from the bible about things in those circumstances and history shows that as well and certainly from my own communist party. Ilearned that personally. Five, there is no clear historical or psychological trail, but theres some experience that leads us to be wary, i can choose one particular example because were sitting here on capitol hill, we should not expect efficiency from the bureaucracies. Thats something we learn from history and human nature something to gain but something is lost thats a new process and we should not be surprised when we have big plans and big projects and they actually turn out to be harmful rather than helpful and in class vi, this is like going over the waterfall rapids, we are on our own and for example specific Foreign Policy matters or foreign tradeagreements. We classic rabbits, we will balance perspectives and our coverage might be similar to that of a traditional ap story before the ap became politicized but a generation ago you would see that balance of subjectivities in an Associated Press story and we will do that also, we wont be that different from the traditional model. We try hard not to overuse or underused scripture. Ill tell you, when i first became a christian in 1976, one of the first things i saw went into the church i was trying to go to and there was a group that was waiting members of congress on their votes and whether they were good people based on the bible or evil people. One of the questions was should the us relinquish control of the panama canal and if you are against that you were on gods side, if you were for that you are on satans side or something and even i could see that was silly, there is no book of the panama canal in the bible and it doesnt tell us what to do when some situations like that as necessary and we wont pretend to say we know what to do. We may sometimes say we dont know, were not experts. So classification in the way we use it, weve been using it for 20 years and it helps us not to overuse the bible which is the tendency among some theological conservatives or under using it which is a tendency among some theological liberals so we tried to take strong stands with the bible, avoid doing so when the bible isnt and we have the opportunity to get things right by trying to practice biblical objectivity but christians are not immune to the temptations and pressures that affect other journalists and that leads to my last point, number nine. Ji packer a great theologian summed up the bibles teaching, god saves sinners and thats important. God is not saving good people or wonderful people or holy people, god saves sinners. And really all worlds reporting and writing is based on the assumption that god is holy, we are sinners. Christs sacrifice bridges the gap. The streets plug came the sympathies of man so biblical journalism emphasizes gods simple list and we try to do this. Again, being careful not to mischaracterized or abuse or think of our opponents as our enemies because this is the week of the prolife march here, people who are formally abortionists, so god saves sinners and we try to show this in our reporting in world and we have a podcast. The world and everything in it we would recommend to you all if youre walking your dog or doing stuff like that. We have actually were starting some podcast series right now and since rob mentioned my writing on compassion and poverty, we have a series of podcast is called compassion thats going on 12 episodes and i think episode 4 deals with changes in washingtonback in the 90s so if you want to get a little bit of history , take a listen to that. At 20 or 25 minutes each episode and you can just put in act of compassion, the world and everything in it and you can listen to the podcast and wealso have our word World Journalism Institute for College Students and people up to age 30 or so. Thenthe thing that i enormously enjoyed , i enjoyed my teaching at the university of texas for all these years but when you see people for three hours a week for 15 weeks it doesnt have the intensity and you dont get to know the people in classrooms so we have done it 11 times now, we have our midcareer course that i teach in our living room in austin. Just 10 people each time and we have a very intensive week. Thursday, friday, saturday from 8 30 in the morning until late at night and sunday people do get a day of rest and we go again on monday, tuesday and wednesday. And its been really the best teaching experience of my life because we get to know the people in our house and so forth and whole bunch of them become correspondence for world and some of them go on to become reporters. These are usually people in the 40s who are very successful in their occupations but our board and either or they just want to serve god in a different way so if any of you are interested, you can look on our website at World Journalism Institute or w ji, world ji. Org. And with that i will now ostentatiously share my humility by stopping and listening to your questions. Thank you all very much. [applause] marvin, thank you so much. I encourage you to pick up a copy of the book. In the lobby. Were going to take questions and i have a couple i wanted to ask you and i want to pick up rightwhere you left off their at the end. Specifically when it comes to the next generation of journalists. You obviously have devoted yourself to this particular endeavor, to make sure that they are better prepared as they enter the world and we also live in a time where institutions, trust has reached historic lows and journalism is no exception to that so twopart question, do you see that everchanging . Do you see trust in journalism ever increasing back to the levels they have been in the past and what is your message as you send people out into the world whether they are in their mid40s or whether they are coming out of college to do a better job in their own careers . You ask if the world will ever change, everett is a very long time. Will a change in any relatively short period of time . Im hopeful. Im hopeful because weve had other situations where journalists, trust in journalists was almost nonexistent and journalism talk back. Ill give you one example and ive written a couple books on early journalism history. Journalists back in the 1600 and 1700s were, they were really ask, completely. They were basically, their Job Description was basically to do Public Relations for the king or the world governor in the colonies. No one expected that they would actually read anything truthful. It was Public Relations, pure and simple and in the 1730s in new york there was a fellow named john singer who decided to tell the truth and he wasin the dutch reformed churches there. On sunday , he learned, he heard about telling the truth and he didnt want to Say Something different the next day so he started telling the truth and norm cosby from new york, who stole land from the indians, stole from various sellers, he told the truth about this guy and of course was thrown into jail. Because he was breaking the law. It was custom and law at that point for journalists to make the king look good and not tell the truth. He stuck with it, he spent abouteight months or so in prison. Then there was a trial and at the trials lawyer , a fellow named Andrew Hamilton from philadelphia proclaimed that the jury should become a runaway jury. Hamilton talked about how elijah in the bible spoke truth to power and ahab and other people did the same and john peers angle was doing the same to this vile governor. And that should not be in prison. The jury became a runaway jury. They took their own liberty in their hands saying not guilty and then when asked by the chief justice, the justice who was presiding how can you say that they just kept saying not guilty, not guilty because if they gave a reason they would be in direct opposition of the law. That changed , that started to change journalistic practice. After that there were no journalists in the colonies food for libel by the governor or others that way. 40 years later you had an American Revolution led by a journalist, a failed brewer, a very good journalist named samuel adams and he had total trust by the people in boston because they saw him not as the hack but as someone who told the truth. There was an enormous change, journalism was in very high repute from the colonial period for the next few decades. It started to change back in the 1850s,popped back in the 19 , early 1900s when there were muckrakers who nevertheless were looked upon as honest people and generally there were so youve seen this roller coaster of how they cant predict how this will pop back but there are more journalists telling the truth and sprinkling salt rather than sugar and i think that could happen. Lets see whats on your mind with other questions. We will start in the back with jill. Introduce yourself and any organizations. I am joe stars from the fund for american studies, we run our Journalism Program there and marvin, i wanted to get your opinion on what you think of undergraduate journalismschool. And what advice you would give to students who want to study journalism but also im just curious , successful publications out there, are there any you admire or do you think theyre doing a decent job now . Let me deal with that last question first. We have at world, lots of fans and sometimes they will write me or come up and say to me oh, i love world, i love your podcast, its the only thing i read or listen to and my response to that is a little bit ofhorror. Im glad they like it , but i suggest no, im glad you read it but you should read some other things to and my recommendation, i use to say you should read the new york times, the Washington Post. I dont do that anymore because its become so propagandistic. It was in a mild way, now its just overthetop but the liberal publication i recommend is the atlantic because its coming from certainly a different worldview and political philosophy but they are good writers, good reporters. And i know some of them and they are good people. Even though we disagree on this. So thats my usual thing we say. And its also you can read it on the website and so forth. As far as the Journalism School, i started teaching journalism at the university of texas in 1983 and even though i was very explicit on this, coming from a christian perspective , they thought that was okay. Because they actually, i had been a reporter. I could speak their language and understand and iwas on the side of journalism. I wasnt calling them enemies. What happened over the years and at that point, the university of texas Journalism School, the professors were mainly old liberal reporters. Texas liberal reporters which always makes them interesting and cranky but i enjoyed them and they tolerated me. But that changed over the years so that when i left there in 2008, and relinquished my tenure which amazed and horrified some people but it was a really good decision over the past dozen years, teaching at the journalisminstitute is much better but by the time i left , a lot of the professors were marxist, either hard or soft marxists who had no journalism experience, they had phds and masking indications and they had theory and in kind of a twisted way but they didnt know journalism. There were still a couple who actually had been reporters and really believed in writing and reporting and getting out and not sucking our thumbs and printing out our great propagandistic pieces but mostly it was just pretty bad. So it was no fun anymore. I dont know if thats why i dont know intimately any other secular Journalism Program, i wouldnt be surprised if similar things have happened elsewhere. So what would i recommend for journalism is again, these are christian places i know which is not everyones cup of tea but Emory College in virginia, an hour west of here. They have Good Journalism classes, my one student whose dissertation i supervised , North College in iowa has Good Journalism teaching by a Washington Bureau chief who has journalists tend to do you get tired of for a while and you go teach. And i could recommend a couple of othersbut those are the two. Its hard for students. So here and we will come over there. Reverend michael anger, i represent ministry of the state, the eight the Denominational Ministry in dc so two questions interconnected, you came up with a book talking about the institutions and how theyve moved to platforms. And you know, the negative impact that has had on peoples perceptions of benefits. Of an institution being formative and now preformative. So id loveto hear your thoughts on that. But then when you mentioned the fact that you came to christianity through communism , i was thinking about how douglas hyde eventually left christianity because he became disillusioned with its ability to affect the change that he wanted and how do you fight against that at a christian publication . Its interesting, i read hydes book which he wrote when he was a christian and im not familiar with his later experience. Did he write something about this . [inaudible] when i believe it was scheduled to be republished, he declined allowing it to be republished saying i no longer adhere to that because its wrote in dedicating and dedication to leadership he feltchristianity was the way to affect the change you wanted in the world and just didnt see it coming. Thats sad to hear. And we do have lots of biblical admonition to not become weary in doing good and so forth. But sometimes when i tell my reporters, we have again, we are conservative, but we differ from the conservative movement in some ways. We tend to be proimmigration and prorefugee and one of our brilliant young reporters has been covering this a lot and she gets weary. And you know, just got to keep at it. I could go on a lot about the book, about the platform question and its hard by the way these days in publishing books. You see publishers including christian publishers no longer interested in the quality of the book but the platform and perhaps the quality. Thats a mess in some ways but no, the, things take a long time. I could tell you, i flew in last night and just as coming from reagan airport and you all have this currency and you see it bridled up, the same thing all the time, big things. The lincoln memorial, washington monument, the capital and so forth. But people change so last night, i grew up in boston basically in Montgomery Park and spent so much time there that these days when i go back there , i feel im hopping along through the tunnels and so forth and i feel like im going around the corner and i could see myself when im 10 years old, its a strange sort of sensation when i was 15 years old. Washington here , and the first time i ever spent more than just a day here was in 1970 when i was 20 years old and this was a big, big antivietnam war demonstration and the most memorable thing there was that we had a demonstration one day and on monday we were all supposed to go and lobby our members in congress so my roommates and i at the end of the day, we hadnt had much success but we went over to the house of the speaker, the office of the speaker at the house that time John Mccormack from massachusetts and low andbehold this was about 5 15, 5 30 and the secretary let us see him so we had a very enjoyable after our. He just enjoyed hearing these kids are coming and i guess trying to give them some rest but at the end of that experience he took us into the House Chamber and said there were four of us there and he said heres my chair that i sit in. I have to go now and have the dinner of my life because i never miss dinner with my wife but take this chair and youcan spin around in a little bit and we all did. So we thought of ourselves as revolutionaries but we were little kids there in a chair. And thats the way i think we all tend to be. We get tired of things, we might may not have as long and Attention Span as needed and i wrote a book on the history of abortion back in 1992 and im updating that now so ive just been reading about some of the people in the prolife Life Movement for 40 years and on march my wife and i will be walking with a couple of people who are there all the time and do something for our podcast. That takes incredible patience and resolve an enormous frustration just speaking about year after year. It is a the grace of god to be able to do that. Back when, i could go on this way. Im just impressed as a journalist, i tend to pay have a mediumsized Attention Span which i dont want to spend my whole life on one issue but im impressed with that movement, and impressed with bob rector here who is been well impressed for decades, thats incredible perseverance and requires that type of patients as opposed to the idea of well, were going to find aplatform and sell some books. And then go on with my life. I admire the people with their realistic view. Lets go to the second row. Michael leaser with the Charlemagne Institute and former world correspondent. Several years ago you developed several periodicals for younger leaders, could you explain the rationale behind that . Periodicals for younger readers. Actually, that preceded world. That started in about 1980 by joel bells because how many of you when youre in Elementary School saw a publication called the weekly reader . A bunch of people. Joel wanted to set up something that was a christian alternative to the weekly reader. He was hoping for something more and thats what he set up to serve that purpose and we still go in after all these years and we will doing some videos this fall in Christian School classrooms so yes, its still there. When worlds started out it was losing money like crazy and the kids papers were making money so that worked out and now its the other way around. World is not making money like crazy but we do have one or two dollars left at the end of the year, half a dollar and half a dollar and we try to get them to breed but thats part of the enterprise to. Trying to help kids develop a new set. Greg piper with politics. I interviewed 20 years ago as a College Journalist and its nice to see you again. I want to ask you about Business Models because it seems like a lot of the problem in journalism is the way that you make money on it. It does not produce the journalism, what do you see as the path forward and was something people think as much about. Journalism in the us has many different models. Originally you would see newspapers in the 1700s, early 1800s ended by a board of, they didnt call them some private subscribers. Then it became an advertising based model with circulation to be able to sell those at but its returning right now to the roving model of donors, funders, nonprofit organizations very often and the publications that dont have, that dont even have one big sugar daddy or lots of small ones are in trouble and the big sugar daddy asits own sense of problems. Jeff bezos and the Washington Post for example, its better to have a wide group of donors and thats what world isdoing. We have more money coming in from donations and from subscriptions or advertising area and thats what im recommending to people. There are 2 people who have graduated from our World Journalism Institute who are now set up their own publications. One in a small city in california and one trying to make it in the big city in austin , providing alternatives and i believe they are either in or will be moving towards the nonprofit model with donors. And if you have lots of donors and you are free from having to be entangled in and the lines of having to follow what one particular person or small group of people say so that our entire goal is to have diversity but that means you have to show people and communities its worth doing, its worth supporting and you now here on our worldview, youll hear listener supported. World radio. And in a way, npr is the model that, npr is mostly money sale and they do such a firstclass job, but they do from there worldview, we tried the world and everything in it, if you listen to it , its npr as opposed to john a. M. Or kind of christian radio such area. If i can ask a followup to that and we will go down here. Daily signal as a similar model, so if the Heritage Foundation, our broadbased support allows us to have Financial Independence but also recording. My question for you is, you have been editorinchief long enough to see the changes in terms of distribution of the content, social mediaobviously plays a much bigger role , significant role today. How have you been able to that as you said in your talk, grow world in this time whenit seems that many legacy News Organizations are struggling . Question and yes, im not very good at it. Im thinking of when i came to washington as a young guy, im an old guy now and im behind the curve area i was yesterday, i was talking with one of our world journalists Ministry People and say i look at facebook and we really need to refresh that really is a little old with stuff we have their and you have people applying for this College Students. And then you see on facebook, you say number we still have our facebook. Thats not what we do and again, in the names of couple other things. Some things i have heard of like instagram. Then theres one i hadnt heard of but what we do is we have some people who know stuff i still tend to like email which is the way god made it as opposed to something else. So im just an old email for me at this point. Theres another part of your bid. I wondered, at that. Biblically and as a christian, how have you viewed and covered the impeachment of William Jefferson clinton and now the impeachment of donald johnson. Thats a really interesting question and a question of enormous interest to about 2000 of our readers who in 2016 that the complainingletters. We said in 2016, that we considered both our current president and Hillary Clinton unfit to be president. And in saying that about donald trump, we were basically saying that he just had not shown the character that we hope president would show. In his previous, also he did not seem to be a person in careful control of his emotions. Which also is useful to have in a leader. And the other thing at that point, im actually surprised that the trump has been as conservative as he has been. I didnt expect that either so we said they are both unfit area we had one cover with Hillary Clinton with the grim reaper appearing before above him, not her and we had another cover concerning trump and we had a smaller inset picture of a cover we had done 20 years before on bill clinton and basically , we had thought that clinton should resign,. We were all kept on impeaching him as such because depending on what the definition of impeachment, but we hope he would do an honorable thing and resign from office. We figured that since we did that with the democrats, we should try to apply the same standard to donald trump. He did not show the character either. That was then and as i can imagine it got about 2000 angry letters we lost some subscription, we lost advertising this is something everyone in oustaff, we all discussed this a lot, agreed with it and we have a wonderful publisher who knew the cost and said yes, go for it. And we did. I still feel that at a micro level, donald trump is unfit to be president or it just in terms of, not so much character questions but just the way he reacts to things and you know, from smart people who know some things, know about just his decisionmaking process. But thats in a micro level. And i attempted my mind, i havent written about this but im still thinking of who but heres where im going. Theres the distinction betweenmicroeconomics and macroeconomics which is a useful distinction. In talking about something likeevolution , people make a distinction between microevolution and macro evolution thats a useful distinction. My, my feet from his micro unfit but macro, again, there are some differences we have with him seeking i think for others at world as well as myself but overall is doing a pretty decent job in a very tough environment. So this leads me in a certain pit of difficulty. What were doing is were not making any cosmic pronouncements, were going the issue by issue andwhere weve probably been about 5050. On top , were not part of the cheerleading, were also not part of the ravens and vicious attack that goes on. Its a hard job, hes the president of all of us, we respect him as president. And insofar as the president job, hes in some ways to be nominated and she. Hes done a good job of that. Not only in Thesupreme Court throughout the judicial system. So hes achieved a lot area of the regulations, hes gotten rid of our wonderful and there one that deserved to be buried so were just, we want to continue reporting actions, primarily, not just words. Praising a lot of the good actions he had and whether we will make any, whether i will make a general statements in terms of who they are but its a tough situation. Im certainly not, never was and still part of the never trumpers because never is a long time and the people who think that, the people who theres one christian leader who referred to donald trump as the greatest christian president ever, i disagree with that. I also disagree with people who say hes the worst president ever written without a lot of far worse once you and i kind of enjoy in the way, one of the things you have in washington, you had a circus which is funding journalism and the kind of majority that trump is reading. So im not giving you a good answer. You can see im scattered around here what you asked the question, im curious to see what your thoughts are western. I was a never trumpers who now things i agree with much of what hes done but i also believe he really isnt morally or temperamentally for the presidency. The problem is that. [inaudible] basically we just felt that world, we felt and are other people at world felt that as a magazine, we needto be evenhanded. So we can tell people who to vote for. And i certainly did not tell anyone who voted for trump, i did not say youre wrong to do that area if its a mistake to be again, calling him the greatest christian president but it was a very hard decision for people to make and it will be maybe not as hard a decision besides the Democratic Party has moved so far to the left but depending on who they nominate, i think its quite likely that they will not make a person who is certainly macro unfit to be president and perhaps micro as well. The problem really is the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has just taken so much power unto itself that the nominator Energy Position is a really crucial position. So im troubled by that, as a number of you in this room are troubled by it. Life is full of troubles and is part of realizing that this is a world that is a wonderful place, it looks in and we have to try to walk our way through. We will take one final question and marvin just want to say. Virginia. My name is maggie and i worked at heritage area with social media, twitter, read it, it seems like everybodys become a journalist. You see that asa boon a threat to dig traditional journalism . Its a good question in the sense of the careful what you wish for. I grew at a time when there was very little competition in journalism. Typically one newspaper, you have the free networks, pretty much the same in there. And theres soft liberalism and so forth. It was there. So i initially was very glad, still am glad to see this diversity and its wonderful to see someone go through the comments, he wants to not selfreported but the publisher and editor and thats terrific and never before have we had the opportunity in american journalism. The problem comes as there really is so much fake news out there. And at least in the old days with the sluggish liberalism, at least there was some check on just putting out stuff that was absolutely, totally factually untrue and that check no longer exists because so many people are no longer reporters but just people who take other stuff and retreated and so forth. All sorts of lies get passed around like crazy so something lost, something gained. Overall i still like it. But there are problems and problems among reporters and thats why we really tried to stress that, and this is why i can enjoy reading the atlantic. Because its a different worldview but i see them as reporters and trying to tell the truth and not just be propagandists. Marvin, thanks for sharing with us your wisdom and advice on journalism. A really thoughtful book and your remarks today, we appreciate it. We appreciate your leadership of world and we thank you, we hope you will come back in the future. Please join me in thanking marvin olasky. [applause] if youd like to purchase a copy of the bookthey are available outside and marvin will stay up here on the state for signing them. Book tv continues now on cspan2
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