Done by regional reporters. Should i say again . I really believe it. The most important journalism that happens in the city is done by regional reporters. [applause] regional reporters are watching washington for americas hometowns, so the people of the United States can make informed decisions about their lives, and about their democracy. And 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. Anniversary ofh the regional reporters association, youre going to hear about the challenges reporters face. You already know what they are, shrinking resources, diminished public trust, and growing fake news, but youre also going to hear about the impact of regional reporting from some of the very best in the business on this panel, and in this room. And were going to look ahead to the future of regional reporting. And as we look at the future of journalism, it will rest in the hands of people like tonights Tamar Hallerman a very valued member of the National Press club, the atlanta journalconstitutions washington correspondent. Your hallerman thank julie. And thanks all. Thank you for coming, i am tomorrow holloman from the atlanta journalconstitution. And in the president of the regional reporters association. Rra is a professional developing group for print, tv and radio reporters. D. C. For organizations based outside the beltway. We formed 30 years ago on the idea that we could offer tips and pointers to each other without comprising competition. They also found we could severe care or interviews with highprofile secure more interviews with highprofile newsmakers if we work together. And we have had successes in the last 30 years. As regional reporters were facing the same challenges as every other partner in d. C. , media access is tightening. The president readily seek to undermine our credibility. Media hasst in the been on the client. And doctored videos spreading up online are not making our lives easier. But we regional reporters face unique challenges. Craig list, facebook, and free online news sites have taken massive bites out of the local news business. A lot of our parent comedies are tightening their belts. Many have closed or columns holiday did their Washington Bureaus, and laid off closed or consolidated their Washington Bureaus. I would know. My newspaper had about two dozen reporters covering politics and policy in the Washington Bureau. Its sale is expected to go through at the end of the year. I will soon be the sole cox reporter based in d. C. We all know the work that regional reporters do is vital or important important to democracy. Tabs on stateeps congressional delegations as we do, and the local impact of federal policy like we do. With a closing a small and mediumsize newspapers across the country, i work is as essential as ever. That leads me to today and are great panel. I want to look at how the landscape for regional reporting has changed since rra was created 30 years ago. And how we can rebuild trust and best inform our readers at a time when civil discourse seems to be cratering. On that note, i would like to introduce our panel. From the pew Research Mark barthel, who spoke works on whose work focuses on u. S. Public committing of the news media, jury mill is him and social media. We have Jerry Zremski who serves as a Washington Bureau chief a buffalo news. Congressman jim who is elected to congress and mayor of alexandra, virginia. Next to him we have former collison congressman ryan a. Costello who represented philadelphia and retired last year. He has his own Committee Case and firm. Mutations firm. I will keep an eye out communications firm. I will keep an eye out in case of questions. I will also save time at the end for questions and would like to hear about peoples experiences being regional reporters, and how people of adopted in this original reporting environment. Would like to start with you. You have been original reporter in d. C. Since 1989. Can you paint a picture for us of how your job has changed over the years . Im sure youre spending a lot less time with facts machine a lot more time on twitter. Yes things have changed. When i got here i covered bill paxton and i called him faxing paxton because i got some of the faxes. The changes i think regional arerters change face similar to what reporters face generally. First of all, we are filing all the time now. If something is breaking, i file it right away. Or i tweeted right away. So i kinda feel like my job never ends now. Yet at the same time, there certain kinds of coverage that i have pulled back from. When i got here i was part of a twoperson bureau. We try to cover everything. We had a member of Commerce Congress who chaired a committee. We would try to go to all the hearings and cover those hearings. Over time, we cut back on the only reporter i am the only reporter now. And im tasked with doing mostly enterprise work. Work that is going to end up on the front page of the paper or get a ton of hits online. This a good is change or not a good chain . I am uncertain. It would be great to still be able to be the newspaper of record in washington for buffalo new york. At the same time, regional reporters can also get too much into the weeds. And ive seen this happen. And not write the really good important impact stories about what is really happening for the readers. And what the delegation is really doing. So the way regional reporting has changed for me is that i have gone much more into that direction, much more away from process. Process stories. Tamar hallerman the social media maker job easier or harder . Made itemski it has both easier and harder. It is made it 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 that has made it more complicated. I ami said, i feel like never not working. The good thing about it is that 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. I will give you an example. A couple of weeks ago i did a story about the delays in the construction of a new Veterans Cemetery in western new york. There was this vague comment from a guy who said, im a veteran. And i own a business. I wish the government would stop trying to help me. So i figured, im going to reach out to the sky. So i do. He tells me all about these rules that i did not know about, Legislation Congress passed in 2006, the required that the cemetery be built by a Company Owned by a veteran with a serviceconnected disability. While there having a hard time finding a company that qualifies. So i got a really good frontpage story, only because of social media, only because i could interact with a reader that i would not otherwise have even heard from 30 years ago. Tamar hallerman so 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. Congress meant costello, you are on the board of commissioners. And mr. Costello, youre on the city council . You both have regional reporters covering you for hometown audiences. He also National Reporters interested in you. Im curious what that is like, particularly how your relationships with the Regional Press might have differed from some of those other reporters. Its an excellent question. As frustrating as it might be as a regional reporter to deal with the changes in the industry, i found it very frustrating as an elected official. Because the rules of the game have changed. Theby that i mean cultivation of a relationship with the reporter. I am looking to earn your trust that what im saying is actually true. Im looking to earn your trust that what im working on is something that might be newsworthy. Stories toion of feed for your consideration, so that over a. Of years, your local electorate is reading your independently verified recitation of what im doing to validate me as an elected official. Someone was working hard. Mean, that is the nutrition that a politician needs in order to withstand a wave, in a wave election year. And to engender goodwill in the community. Soccer practice, kids in school, professional life. People do not Pay Attention to what we are doing. Very often. And so, for decades, and up through my, i was in Public Service starting when i was public 25, im 42 now. I was schooled in that era, and then twitter. 2015, 2016. Where it really seems that the way to get your message out has changed. Are buying aple newspaper, or relying on and in myeporters case the Philadelphia Inquirer and the more local papers which have been bought up by one of the three or four hedge funds out there. Ryan costello it becomes a real challenge. And i would submit that because the rules of the game have changed, there are some elected officials who saw it coming. And i will get into this later because i do not talk too much at the inception of this. Comingliticians saw that and got in front of it with stuff that clicked, bait and stuff that creates sensationalism. And some who i would argue are theer at doing what constitution prescribes that they actually do, do not know what the new rules of the game are. And they suffer. And i would argue that our democracy suffers as a insequence of the breakdown accountabilityls by print media, consumption of print media by citizens in elected officialsconstituency. For as much as it is a business challenge for your industry, i think it is a real credibility challenge for elected officials to breakthrough to their youtituency in a way, when do not have citizens relying on the service that you provide is a part of a Business Model, and frankly under the First Amendment as this what it was contemplated that a free press would do an open society. ,sr hallerman memorandum, you are in washington a very long time and social media came about in your last couple of years. Did you find you are changing what you were talking to your constituents about, or what people wanted from you, the inquiries youre getting from your constituents, where they becoming more nationalized, as there were fewer regionals around to talk to . Jim moran yes. The problem with social media, and i do not mean this in the way it will be perceived, is that there is no way to regulate it. As a result, you do not know what youre getting. You do not know who is sending it. You do not know how representative it is. Whether reallyw is a person. It could be a bot. So, it is unreliable. It is untrustworthy. And i do not think it is particular informative. And invariably it is superficial. The tweets, the emails that you overwhelmedy are with people who just have snarky comments to make. Part. Tless for the most so it is not a substitution for anything. T. And often it is disgruntled people. There was a time when people would write a letter to you, and it was really offbase, and we would send a form letter back. Thatgret to inform you someone is using your name sending misguided letters. If we find out who it is, we will refer them to the Mental Health institution. [laughter] but you cannot do that anymore. Because it is just too much. Find that social isia, for the most part terribly informative. I represent Northern Virginia which is part of the washington metro area. Most people get the washington post. Though, andnities, fortunately these local papers are still surviving, we would still have local papers. The local papers serve an extraordinarily important purpose, particularly from the perspective of a politician for the post, and the post is better than most, frankly. So i did not single them out in any negative way. It of erica paper. That and that it is a very good paper. That in the New York Times are two of the best papers and as far as im concerned two of the more reliable papers most reliable papers in the world during but it is tough to get space in the metro section unless there is a scandal. If there is a scandal or a controversial policy issue, youll get space. But if you are a wellrun government doing the right thing , that is responsive, that is competent, that is taking issues as they come, deliberating on responsibly, you are never going to get your name mentioned. Forget about it. Their only hope is to only have a network of personal friends and go to every possible reception and every soccer game and so on. That is not a bad thing. But youre never going to get any press. And it make you vulnerable, because when you do mess up, and everybody is human, people do not know all the good things that you have done. That is just a function of the fact that there are what, 7 Million People in the washington metro area. There may benity, a hundred thousand at most, a small fraction of that would ask to get the paper. Mass, you have a critical you cannot even get advertising revenue. So the cohesiveness of community itself, and the motivation for electric reps intent elected representatives to work hard, serve the people and get some amount of credit for doing so, is lost. In some communities it may be gone forever. Erodes the whole etoqueville, that we are country built on local democracy. You have to have coverage. Tamar hallerman i want to bring haveke because at pew you done a lot of research into local, last national national, and regional trends. You had a really cool thing where you could see the local news ecosystem of different towns and you could see all of these news deserts everywhere. Can you talk with me about some of the trends you have seen in local and National News around the country. Michael barthel sure and that tool is available at journa lism. Org, if you want to punch in an area you can see the results. The local fox station was named thehe number one source in bestie region. So they have capitalized on that and put on buses. In thed. C. Reason d. C. Region. There have been kind of a downward trend. Ad revenue fallen by half. Circulation fallen by half. Newsroom staffing followed by half in the last 10 years. Today more people get news from social media than from print. It has risen that much. That is not even taking into account websites and apps. Taken together, Online Sources have started to rival tv, as americas number one source of news. Local news isfor that local news organizations are more highly trusted the National News organizations. And much more highly trusted then social media. Only 4 of americans say they have a lot of trust for social media. But those numbers highlight the challenges as well to a certain extent. Because lots of people get news from social media but do not trust it. We ask folks what you like about getting news from social media and what we heard was convenience. People like that they can pick up their phone and opened up and there is a stream of news. There to sample from whenever they have a free moment. To a certain are, extent, making the Digital Transition at her than some other sectors. Their audiences about halfandhalf digital versus their legacy products. Radio is more like 7525. There still more dependent on broadcast. 7525. The internet is definitely coming up from behind. We have seen a decline in the number of regional reporters covering congress. That are coming from daily newspapers. The number from daily newspapers fell over a fiveyear. Does he arise from what we called niche outlets, bloomberg , as wellpublications as eight truck slight rise in digital native news sites. As well as a slight rise in digital native news sites. Having that correspondence seems to make a difference. Aere story was written by regional correspondent, they are more likely to Cover Congress from a member of congress. If that trend continues, that would have application for the coverage folks are seeing back home. Tamar hallerman those trends you mentioned are reflective of the members we have in rra. 20 years ago we had 230 members and now we are down to 65. We are still getting new people and that is wonderful. But i do want to talk a little bit about what this downward trend, the repercussions of all of that. Jerry, you have done amazing work digging into commerce mike collins and some of his financial stock trades that he was making that maybe were not so kosher. Stories like that maybe would not be covered, but could you talk a little bit about that. That i want to talk to the congressman as well about how, because of the decline of local news, how that has changed the way folks have interacted with you. Even with fewer local news sources. So lets start with you jerry and govern there. Go from there. Jerry zremski i do think that basically you have a situation where congress is a very complicated animal. A lot of things are happening in congress all the time. All of these members are out there raising money to get reelected. Andre is potential im not one of those reporters who believes that people come here to congress to make money, or to make for themselves, i really think there are a lot of very good Public Servants but there are those who do things therere untoward. And if are not regional reporters covering them, i think that the odds of those untoward things been reported are probably much lower. So i do not think it is a good thing for democracy. I think that is good thing to have checks and balances in every way. And i think an independent press can is well resourced provide that kind of a check. And i do not know where well go eventually. I wonder if there would be more scandal over time, simply because in some communities, people are not watching the store. Tamar hallerman i want to talk to congress and costello briefly. When we were chatting, you mentioned how in your district you had five local newspapers. And four out of five were bought by hedge fund. Then the fifth just closed its doors. Ryan costello yes delco tim