Latest / The Dave Allen Show / 06/08/2023 580 Live with Dale Cooper - Senator Shelly Moore Capito, Steve Waldman

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06/08/2023 580 Live with Dale Cooper - Senator Shelly Moore Capito, Steve Waldman · The Dave Allen Show

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from the Palmar Stores studio seven minutes past nine o'clock. You're listening to Fight
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Love Sehs the voice of Charles and I'm Deel Cooper filling in for Dave Allen
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one more day. Dave will be back here for his Friday show tomorrow,
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and then I'm not giving him another day off for a while, So you're
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gonna be You're gonna have Dave Allen in the seat for the foreseeable future.
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But I'll be here today, have a good show for you, going to
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bring a lot of great information. Senator Shelley Moore, Capita's going to kick
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off the show here in just a moment, we're gonna talk about a lot
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of great news, not only the debt, the debt sailing deal being passed
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and we don't have to worry about that anymore, at least for a couple
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more years, but also some other great news economically speaking for West Virginia.
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That Senator Capita was involved West, So we're going to talk about that coming
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up here and just a couple of minutes. Also joining me a little bit
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later on in the program, Steve Walderman A Waldman is going to join me.
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He's the president of Rebuild Local News and co founder of Report for America.
1:32
He has a great perspective when it comes to bulwarking the local news,
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something that WCHS does pride itself one, but it takes local news is more
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than just you know, one single radio station or one single newspaper or anything
1:45
along those lines. There's there's a community issue that's involved with that. And
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Steve has been writing about this for a long time. Pointer publishes a lot
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of his articles on the media and I find his views very insightful. So
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we're gonna talk to Steve Waldman a little bit later on. Again. He
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is the president of rebuild local news and co founder of Report for America Plus.
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Throughout the show today, you are welcome to give us a call with
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any comments or questions that you have three zero four three four five fifty fifty
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eight three zero four, three four five fifty fifty eight. You can also
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send over your text questions to three zero four nine three five five zero zero
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eight three zero four nine three five five zero zero eight. Once again on
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Deal Coop. Probably filling in today, just one last day. Dave Alan
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will be back tomorrow. Let's go ahead and bring onto the phone line our
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first guest for this morning, Senator Shelleymore Capito, is joining me. After
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a very busy last couple of weeks, getting the debt sailing deal kind of
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put the bed finally with some provisions for the Mountain Valley pipeline. We're gonna
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talk about that just a little bit and other great economic news. But the
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Senator Capito, good morning, How you doing this morning? Good morning,
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Dale doing great. Thanks, Although I will say the smoke in DC is
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really bad from that fire, so I wish I was home. Yeah,
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we're starting to see a little bit of the haze throughout here. But heard
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from Morgantown not too bad yet, but you see the map of that thing
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that's that's traveling across especially the eastern United States, and it is growing and
3:07
there is some concern there. It's bad. I mean, there are a
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lot more people wearing masks, and it's the number that they calculated has it
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hazardous. So everybody be careful. I'm going to try to stay inside today.
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I think that's probably a pretty good, pretty good idea. Senator Capital,
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I appreciate you joining this morning and reaching out because there's a lot of
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stuff that we need to talk about, and we were going to kind of
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focus on the dental limit deal and the Mountain Valley Pipeline. I still want
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to get into that, but however, there's a couple of other great economic
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pieces that dropped in this week. But let's go ahead and kind of wrap
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up the conversation about the dead limit deal that was signed by the President after
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a lot of negotiation over time. But you played a role in that and
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you were looking out for the provisions for permitting for the Mountain Valley pipeline.
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Can you kind of summarize what went into that and then what came out the
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other end of that you are happy with. Well, I am happy that
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we don't have a default looming. I think that would be if a cult
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for our economy, where an uneasy economy as we see right now. So
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we've put that to rest, that we're not going to default on our debt,
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and I think that has global impacts. The other thing is it does
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rain in spending for the first time, and you know, it's not a
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huge amount, but it's it's something because we've got to get ourselves on the
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path of paying down this debt and having better control physical control. It's going
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to require us to do all of our appropriations bills, which we should be
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doing anyway, and I'm on appropriations, so I'm heavily impacted by that.
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Along with that came some other reforms, taking some unspent COVID dollars back,
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repurposing those saving those dollars, cutting the IRS budget for where in the IRA
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they just just blew the feeling off of that to hire more agents. And
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so we did, I think reach a good compromise the speaker Speaker cars he
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did. But I think the most impactful thing for our state in some ways
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could be the permitting reform we have a lot of projects on the on the
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books, whether they're roads, highways, bridges, broadband projects, water projects,
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that are stuck in a purgatory of regulation, and the timelines to get
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these things done are just ridiculous. So we did do some streamlining and that
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I think we'll have good effects. I'd like to see us do more.
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And along with that came the final okay of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which
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has been ping palmed through the courts, has been permitted by both the Trump
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and Biden administration in a lot of different ways. So you know, I
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think it's very impactful to us. We're going to see more jobs in the
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state, more tax revenues because of that pipeline. So that's the good news.
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So you see some pretty grand economic and energy benefits for the MVP.
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Do you think that's going to be significant for both for both West Virginia and
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generally for the country. I do. I think it's going to carry a
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lot of our product, and that's good news. The four thousand construction jobs
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that are probably being hired as we speak are impactful to all communities into a
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lot of families. The tax revenues to our counties and the and the royalties
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to the landowners is significant because if you can't get your product out, you're
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going to quit exploration. And while some people might think that's a good idea,
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I think the vast majority knows that if we're going to be energy independent
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and rely on ourselves, we've got to use our own resources and use them
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responsibly. And that's what you see I think with this Mountain Valley pipeline.
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One question I did want to circle back to just for a second. We'll
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talk about making sure that we cut back on some funds and some things that
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were retracted, and generally I agree with it that we need to do those
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things. One of the things that and understand the concern about the expansion of
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the RS budget that seemed to believe a little bit too quickly. Having a
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more sober conversation about that, that's that's not so politicized. Is there some
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room in there when we talk about, lookay, we don't want to raise
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taxes. Obviously, that's not something that we want to do. We don't
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want to restructure a whole lot of stuff. Is there something in there that
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maybe the enforcement of our current rules in bulworking that across the spectrum would be
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a way to generate revenue without raising taxes and without making a legislative decisions.
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Yeah, I do think the enforcement mechanisms at the hour. I mean,
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you know, we want fairness in this country. Fairness is we all pay
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our taxes and we think that those that oh taxes should pay their taxes.
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So a better enforcement mechanism, but not eighty seven thousand new IRS agents.
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We know that the IRS has been politicized in the past under certain administrations,
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and so I think, quite honestly, that is you know, looked at
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as a very invasive way to use the dollars to do the Inflation Reduction Act,
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which is not reducing inflation and is also I think bolling a hole in
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the budget in an enormous way. So I think there, yes, more
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enforcement, yes, but not eighty seven thousand new people. One of the
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interesting things, and we were talking about permitting reform just a moment ago,
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one of the interesting things that I think when we're talking about environmental environmentalists and
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we can have a realistic discussion about that, one of the things that I
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think that gets lost in this discussion is sometimes the overreliance on permitting regulation actually
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even affects environmental measures that's supposed to help environmentally. So as far as permitting
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across the country goes, what are some other modifications that you can see going
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into this that would help permitting with some of these large, these large infrastructure
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deals like the MVP and things like that. What are some other changes you'd
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like to see in there. Well, one of the things that was done
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in this permitting reform was to do something called one Federal Decision. That means
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that it places all of the federal agencies, whether it's Fish and Wildlife,
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EPA, euro of Land Management, whatever that might be, is going to
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feed into one agency. And you can see that that's going to eliminate a
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lot of time and effort in terms of going from agency to agency and have
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one federal agency be in charge of that permitting. So that's one of the
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streamline measures. The other one is to lessen the amount of time that is
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acceptable to do an environmental assessment or an environmental impact statement. These are very
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important aspects of any project to see how we are impacting the environment and whether
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you need to change the way you're going to do it or abandon the project
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altogether. But these things have been going on five and six years, so
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now we have a one and two year limit on that. I think the
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one thing we didn't do, which we need to do in this permitting reform
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is to say, look, you cannot keep suing suing, suing suing into
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eight nine years in hopes that people will abandon projects. You're going to have
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a certain window. I think you should have a certain window to follow your
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lawsuits and have your voices heard at the judicial review And so i'd like to
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see us in our permitting reform pull in that judicial review piece so it has
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some sort of common sense approach to satisfying public input judicial review, but also
10:11
moving projects along that meet meet the standards that we've established. So there's still
10:16
a lot that we could do, but I think we have taken a good
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swat at the ball so to speak, to hope to move these projects along.
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I mean I voted for the BI part as an infrastructure package. There
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are a lot of projects in there that are stuck in this bureaucratic regulatory purgatory
10:35
and can't get out. So hopefully that's what we've sort of let the air
10:39
out of the balloon there and made it possible for these projects to move forward.
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Let's talk about some infrastructure investments and some fun things, because I know
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that that seeing jobs created, seeing industry come to the state and things like
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that has to be from your perspective, one of the if there's fun,
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there has to be one of the more fun things. I know. Recently
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there was the pure Watercraft. They're going to be manufacturing electrir pontoon boats in
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West Virginia. I think you took a ride on one, if I'm not
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mistaken, did What was that? Tell me a little bit about that.
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It was the quietest boat ride I've ever been on in my life. I
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mean, it's smooth on the Ohio. You know, the Ohio can be
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pretty rough water quiet, you could have a conversation very easily. It costs
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eight dollars to run it, you know, because you're just charging it no.
11:22
One hundred and fifty dollars for fuel. And what's really neat about the
11:26
whole project is it's at Beach Bottom, which is a small village which used
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to have up in Brook County, which used to have wheeling pit steel,
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big huge industrial manufacturing in there. They're repurposing that and you know what they're
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doing is taking the skills of the path of our manufacturing sector and repurposing them
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for the skills of the future. And so I think it's really exciting as
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part of the green economy. It's a great idea. But I was overwhelmed
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with how what a great ride I had. I mean, I'm not basically
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a boat person. You know, boat people are really into it. I
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love boats, but this was just really really great. Yeah, it's kind
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of a cool thing. And with all the things you were talking about with
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like different green tech and stuff like that, so much of the problem with
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a lot of these things when the Grand Scheme our scale. You know,
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it's impossible to scale these things up on a large when we talk about our
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vehicle infrastructure and things like something like this is perfect. It's a perfect because
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you don't need a massive scale to get a pontoon to work. And anybody
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that does go boating, like what you were talking about, it's a beautiful
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time out there. But one of the drawbacks is oftentimes the little engine is
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a little loud and you're sitting there and you're screaming to talk, or if
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there's more in one of those things, have an electric one is actually a
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really nice solution to that, to having a nice time out on the water.
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It doesn't it really makes you really sort of emphasizes the taking in of
12:46
nature that a boat provides for you. And so anyway I thought it was.
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I mean, they're not cheap, I will say that, but the
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first one is going to roll out at the end of the year, so
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they are right on it. People are thrilled up in the northern pain Handle.
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So it was a fun visit and a fun ride on the on the
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Ohio And finally one last thing. I want to go out there because this
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is important. A lot of folks here in Charleston care about this. There's
13:07
been a lot of news about amtracting the Cardinal Line in the past. You
13:09
have some news about that as well well. Really please that Amtrak is going
13:16
to be expanding the Cardinal service. We don't have it every day, and
13:18
we'd love to have it every day. More people, I think, are
13:22
traveling by train for a lot of different reasons. We have a beautiful new
13:26
ramp that's been put into place there in the Charleston area. There's a nice
13:31
one out at Montgomery as well, So we're hoping more Cardinal service, more
13:33
frequent service, faster train, and more reliability. That's that's all good.
13:39
And man, there's a lot of there's like a little cult of railroad here
13:41
in Charleston for folks that love Amtrak and love the Cardinal Line and things like
13:45
that. So this is great news for it for those folks because there there
13:48
is a decent amount of people that use that to springboard. They're vacations that
13:52
do long term commutes where they'll go somewhere, you know, they need to
13:54
go to DC here or Philadelphia or something for weeks and then they come back
13:56
where they use that train. It's nice to have expand services. It is,
14:01
it really is, and so hopefully we'll see that come online rather quickly.
14:05
That's great stuff. Senator Shelley more Capital joining us this morning, talking
14:09
a little bit about all things that are going on right now. Of course,
14:11
the Senator is very busy, and we appreciate your time on coming on
14:13
the air with us here in Charleston to share some of these things with us
14:16
and to keep your constituents notified. I really appreciate that, Senator. All
14:20
right, Dale, everybody, enjoy the weekend, and thank you very much.
14:22
Thank you very much, appreciate your time that Senator Shelley Moore Capital or
14:26
in the air with us here on WCHS on five eighty love. Well,
14:28
we're gonna now, we're gonna take a break. When we come back,
14:31
I'm gonna talk a little bit Jeff and I did it yesterday. I'm gonna
14:33
talk a little bit more because we carry all the games here, a little
14:37
bit more about the Cincinnati Reds and and some news about that. We have
14:41
a contest going on right now where you can win some tickets. They're debuting
14:43
a lot of their new players. They're getting thousands of people on to say,
14:48
tens of thousands of people are in the Great American Ballpark now because of
14:50
some of these young guys that are coming up for the Reds. We're going
14:54
to pivot off of that tell you of what's coming up this weekend for the
14:56
red So if you want to catch any of that action that you can,
14:58
then we'll take another break and we'll come back in just a just a little
15:01
bit longer at the bottom of the hour with Steve Waldman, the president of
15:05
Rebuild Local News and the co founder of Report for America. So right now
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we're going to take a break from the Palmar Store studios. I'm Dale Cooper
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the Star Registry eight hundred two eight two thirty three thirty three or visit Star
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Registry dot com for the hottest gift. You're listening to eighty Live WCHS the
18:07
Voice of Charleston. I'm del Cooper. Thanks a ton for joining us today,
18:12
having a really great have a great time, good time talking to shellymore
18:15
Capital. I haven't talked to the Senator in a while, probably been a
18:18
year or so. So it's nice talking to shelleymore Capital getting an update on
18:22
what's going on around the state of West Virginia from the senator's perspective. Good
18:26
news really about the the the electric pontoons, and the cardinal service being expanded
18:30
here in Charleston and in the Mountain state. That's all good stuff. Coming
18:33
on just a little bit. Steve Walden is going to join me and we're
18:37
gonna talk about rebuild local news. He had a great perspective on how to
18:38
use things like high school sports. I thought that was very relevant considering the
18:42
conclusion of our successful high school baseball tournament. I thought that went very well
18:47
and that we do a lot of that here on WCHS. And and Steve
18:49
talks about a nice way to use the community and how everybody likes local sports,
18:55
everybody likes certain there are certain things in the community that everyone to regardless
18:59
of political disc physician, can agree on. And so there's some building blocks
19:02
there that you can come from common ground to start talking about community news and
19:06
reporting. So I think that a lot of that stuff is important. Steve
19:07
has some pretty good insights as far as that goes. He's gonna be joining
19:11
us here in about five minutes. But I thought i'd take just a moment
19:12
to remind folks at number one, we're having a contest going on in the
19:17
afternoons right now. We have a couple contest going on. Actually, you
19:18
can listen between nine and noon and between three and six for a Pappy's Cool
19:23
Word of the Day. Now, that's a contest that we have where you
19:26
listen for a word, you go to the website, which is WCHS network
19:30
dot com slash cool Word. You enter the word into the entry box there
19:36
and that puts you in the hopper for a drawing for a fifteen thousand dollar
19:41
HVAC upgrade. So it's not an all new system, but if you have
19:44
an existing dot work and things like that, you get an all new HVAC
19:47
to put in there tweaking and tuning and so forth from pappy Solo Improvement.
19:52
So that is a very cool thing that we'll be doing. That we've been
19:56
doing and it's wrapping up this week. This is the final week of that
19:57
contest. But also hearing the hotline from three to six all this week we're
20:03
giving away tickets to see Ringo Star again, So you can get tickets to
20:07
see Ringo Star and you're also getting entered into a hopper for a drawing for
20:11
four Reds tickets on Friday, so you can get four tickets to go see
20:14
the Cincinnati Reds. And the reason I bring that up in the last few
20:17
years, you know, the Reds had a pretty good team just before the
20:18
COVID year hit and then the abbreviated COVID year. They actually made the playoffs
20:23
and we're bounced out very early. But they've really been not great for the
20:29
last few years. But last year they made a lot of moves, brought
20:30
over a lot of The Reds made a lot of moves, brought over a
20:33
lot of young talent, and they've been They've been very active in the international
20:37
market, including to the Dominican Republican. One of the guys that they signed
20:41
a few years ago was Elie Deli Crude, Eli Day La Cruz, who
20:44
is ESPN's overall number one prospect in baseball. Jeff and I talked about him
20:47
a little bit last night. I'm a huge baseball for hand, So in
20:49
these transitionary segments, you're gonna have to bear with me here, but I
20:52
thought I would share a couple of highlights and then tell you what the schedule
20:55
was going to look like for the Reds, just in case you want to
20:56
catch this, because this could be the beginning of something long term for the
21:00
Reds. When you think about some of these guys that have come up recently
21:03
in Major League Baseball, like a Kunya for the Braves, or you might
21:07
think about somebody like Tatis or Vlad Junior, this guy is in that same
21:12
realm and maybe even as far as ceiling goes a little bit higher. So
21:15
first of all, I wanted to play the radio highlight. This is,
21:18
of course what you heard on the year last night. This is Tommy Thraw
21:21
on the call on WCHS and Seminar w W last night. This is Ala
21:25
dela Cruz's first ever major league home run. He didn't get robbed, which
21:30
happened to be the hardest sitball by a Red this year. One hundred and
21:33
twelve mile an hour double off the right center field wall, and he hammers
21:37
this high and very deep to right and way out of here, so the
21:44
back of the sun deck. Allie de la Cruz's first big league homer.
21:49
Oh, it's a monster blast and it ties this game at two. The
21:53
Reds. Of course, last night, Dela Cruz tie the game at two.
21:56
There the Dodgers took another big lead, and then the Reds heard their
22:00
way back in and then Benson had a home run to two run home run
22:03
to win the game for the Reds last night. It was just something else.
22:07
As far as as the experience for the Reds bringing up these these hot
22:11
prospects, you know, you always want to be part of that. If
22:14
you have a hot prospect that comes up, you hate seeing them come up
22:15
and scuff. Matt McClean another great prospect for the Reds. I think eleven
22:18
of his or twelve now of his twenty two major league games, he's had
22:22
multi hit games. That's insane. So that young man is very good and
22:26
so is day La Cruz. And I wanted to share this too because a
22:29
lot of people heard the radio call last night. Of course, listening to
22:32
WCHS, I encourage everyone to listen to it on the radio Hub or John
22:34
Sadeks call on Valley Sports was also very good. I wanted to share that
22:38
with you as well. That ball had a family tennis match, golf tournament,
22:44
silence, anticipation level goodness. So hopefully that is what we have a
23:08
lot in store of as US Reds fans and baseball fans and the Canal Valley
23:12
and Charleston. We've been, of course the Reds affiliate for parts of six
23:15
decades here. I've seen a lot of players come up. This guy's very
23:18
exciting. Just some biographical information over the last few games, not just the
23:23
highlights here, but he set the Reds record for the hardest hit ball the
23:27
night before last for this season, at one hundred and twelve miles per hour.
23:30
That record lasted one day. He broke it yesterday with that home run
23:33
that he had at one hundred and fourteen miles an hour. He had a
23:36
triple yesterday as well. Da La Cruz had a triple. His time from
23:41
home to third base fastest in Major League Baseball. It's kind of talent that
23:45
we're dealing with, and I'm pretty excited, as you can tell. I
23:48
featured it for two days straight. Rad You want to play this afternoon over
23:51
on our sister station, ESPN fourteen ninety and one of six point seven.
23:55
That pregame will start at twelve o five with the twelve thirty five first pitch,
23:57
and then the Reds will be on the road. That's going to end
24:02
their current homestand and then they're going to be on the road for for the
24:06
rest of the foreseeable. For the rest of this weekend anyway, they open
24:08
up a series against the Cardinals, So day La Cruz goes to Saint Louis
24:14
and the Reds and the Cardinals starting tomorrow night. Those are eight that's an
24:18
evening game. It's going to be at eight fifteen for the first pitch.
24:21
Two afternoon games over the weekends against the Cardinals. So it's going to be
24:23
a three game weekend series with the Reds versus the Cardinals. So you can
24:26
check that all out right here on five ad W c HS one to four
24:30
point five and ninety six point five on the FMDL. So we're gonna take
24:33
a break right now. When we come back, Steve Waldman's going to join
24:36
me from Rebuild Local News and Report America. We're gonna talk about the role
24:38
of local news and informing the public, something that we feel very strongly about
24:42
here. So we're gonna take a break and be back right after this brought
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zero two fifty five sixty six three Z four two zero two fifty five sixty
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minutes at the top of y Are you listening to FIVEHS the Voice of Charleston.
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Edward Jones Member SI pc'd like to welcome onto the airwaves now. It is
29:45
Steve Waldman. He is the president of Rebuild Local News and co founder of
29:48
Report for America and right across a very interesting article that Steve wrote. I've
29:52
I've read a lot of Steve stuff and I want to talk about the context
29:56
of local news and how important that is to our communities. Welcome him onto
30:00
our airwaves here in Charles and now, Steve, good morning, how you
30:02
doing this morning? Good? Thanks so much for having me. We really
30:06
appreciate your time, appreciate you coming on. And I'm I'm a massive fan.
30:08
I've actually read a lot of the work that you've been doing with if
30:12
you call it fan, but with Rebuild Local News and Report for America,
30:17
Pointer republishes a lot of you, a lot of your articles, and I
30:19
get those in my feed pretty often, and uh so I thought it just
30:23
for a moment here if you could take take some time to introduce yourself to
30:26
our audience, tell us a little bit about who you are and what your
30:30
mission is with your outlook on local media. Well, thank you, that's
30:34
very kind. Um. Well, I was the co founder of something called
30:38
Report for America, which was trying to address a collapse in local news through
30:45
some new innovative approaches. It's kind of like a Teach for America, but
30:51
for journalists. They recruit newsrooms and reporters small of country and then place them
30:56
into local newsrooms for year two or three. Actually the very first of the
31:04
very first three reporters at RFA, one was at the Charleston Gazette. Another,
31:11
I think was that West Virginia Public Radio. And now since then there
31:18
about six hundred reporters have been put into newsrooms around the country. And then
31:22
Report for America pays half the salary. But I became convinced that that sort
31:32
of philanthropically based approach we got a lot of our money from foundations, was
31:37
not going to be enough to solve this local news crisis. And maybe I
31:42
should stop for a second talk about the nature of the loop. Well,
31:45
we'll come back to that. Yeah, So I decided that in addition to
31:52
this kind of direct service approach, that public policy was also going to need
31:56
to be part of the discussion. So we created a new organization called Rebuild
32:00
Local News, which is kind of a coalition thirty five different national and state
32:07
groups and including West Virginia Press Association to look at whether there are public policies
32:14
laws that on the state level or the federal level that could help with us.
32:20
You bring up so many good points and the scope of your writing in
32:22
specifically the most recent article that I ran across, you're you're kind of using
32:25
the coverage of community events like high school sports as a springboard to talk about
32:30
the way that local news UH interacts within the community. At WHS, we
32:35
we do news, and we do local news. We're more of a ball
32:37
and strikes type of place where not much of an investigative outfit. I mean
32:42
we will when there's when there's an all this story to to follow, but
32:45
it's not something we don't have an investigative division of things like that. We
32:49
try to call things there are basically just the news and reports as it happens.
32:52
Things like the UH we had a state trooper that was ambushed and killed
32:57
had a he had a memorial service, as surely that's something we cover.
33:00
We we we provide this type of coverage. And one of the things that
33:02
I noticed in the most recent article that I read from you. You you,
33:07
you know, we all know what the watchdog function is for local news.
33:10
Recently we had UH for example, the UH there was the Supreme Court
33:15
and the we had account that there was too much money. Kinny Bass famously
33:20
one awards and broke that that that that crucial piece of watchdog reporting is something
33:24
that's definitely needed. But you highlight something else. Not only is that needed,
33:28
but there's a certain amount of community cohesion that is that is brought forth
33:32
about proper local reporting on news and things like that, And I wonder if
33:36
you could talk about that a little bit more. Yeah, it's really true.
33:38
I agree with you that the accountability reporting is really crucial. It's declining,
33:44
it's got to be strengthened. It's really important. But we journal on
33:49
us any way off and tend to only talk about that. And the community
33:53
cohesion role is really about stories that tell people about their community, about people
34:00
in their community, about the issues that are important. It could be obituaries
34:06
that are telling really, you know, the story of some interesting, inspiring
34:09
life. It could be coverage of high school sports or the theater production or
34:15
small you know, new business openings, or just the basic information of like
34:20
there's an important new economic development plan here it is, here's what it says,
34:24
Here's what they would do to help you know, you know, basic
34:30
information on your community and how to solve it. And I think it relates
34:35
to cohesion in a couple ways. One is, we all know that we're
34:37
living in a moment where there's this natural tendency for people to demonize each other.
34:44
And I think that's because of social media, it's because of the national
34:46
media, and oftentimes and local media can be a counterbalance to that because we
34:57
kind of understand each other as human beings instead of as cartoon characters. We
35:01
are reminded of things that we have in common with people, even that we
35:06
might disagree with on national politics. Um. It generally has been proven through
35:12
you know, academic research that when the when local news declines, that people
35:20
actually feel less connected to their communities and more also less more alienated, less
35:27
likely to feel um like they can be effective in their communities. They're more
35:31
likely to say you know, the government doesn't understand when I, you know,
35:37
my needs the government, I have no idea how to you know,
35:40
bring about change. So this kind of alienation from the community also results.
35:47
Um And I think on some well, this is a bit harder to prove,
35:51
but that the polarization that we experience in our lives now, you know,
35:58
the greater levels of anger about everything, it seeps into It seeps into
36:02
everything in our lives. You know, it just makes being in a community
36:07
less less pleasant and more difficult. Um. And at the same time just
36:14
makes it quite hard for communities to solve their problems because they get paralyzed with
36:20
you know, with division. Um. So that's kind of what we need
36:23
to mean about community cohesion. It's sort of it gives a sense of an
36:29
identity to a community. It gives people a sense of the actual human beings
36:32
who are part of the community. It creates pride about, you know,
36:39
some elements of what's going on in addition to the to the problems and and
36:44
all that. You know, it goes away when you don't have local media
36:47
because part of what happens is it gets that vacuum gets filled by other stuff,
36:52
and the other stuff tends to be national media, which is more partisan,
36:57
or social media, which is navised around anger. So you have these
37:04
different forces that are are emphasizing the more divisive topics and being in the position
37:10
that we're in here and with the news team that we have here, and
37:14
we have a fantastic news team that does this. What allows us to do,
37:16
or it allows me to do is I'm a program director, operations manager.
37:21
I'm not I'm not a journalist, So I'm able to watch these things
37:22
from the outside looking into some degree, and I've seen how you know,
37:25
we have to kind of follow the bouncing ball and where it goes. Um
37:30
our news director in our team that it's always hyperlocal, hyper look. We're
37:32
always trying to do things at our community and local based try to get rid
37:37
of the rest of the outside noise. But you can't help but to see
37:39
how what exactly you're talking about is what happens. Just to for our listeners
37:44
a little bit that may have not have read the article or be up on
37:46
some of these numbers. I did want to pull some of the things that
37:49
you referencing your article. Uh, there's been a fifty fifty seven percent dropping
37:53
the number of reporters in less than two days. The decades um, there's
37:57
now more local librarians than there are news reporters, which librarians are under some
38:01
problems now too, but we're some real interesting things come in. Residents and
38:05
communities where newspapers closed down are less likely to participate in communal activities, with
38:08
civic engagement dropping are proximately thirty percent fifty nine percent of those who closely follow
38:13
local news have a strong sense of community attachment compared to twenty seven percent who
38:16
don't. And seventy seventy four percent of the countries that have no news and
38:21
no news sources tend to vote more on national, national level and things like
38:28
that. What I've noticed here locally is just in the twelve years that I've
38:30
been back in West Virginia is the things that we address on the legislative level
38:37
has gotten much less specific and has gotten much more national in a lot of
38:42
ways. And the issues that we're tackling, it's like we're bringing in the
38:46
national issues instead of necessarily doubling down on the things that are local. And
38:52
I think that a lot of that has to do with we're assuming because there's
38:54
so much national news out there. We're just pulling that into our orbit here
38:59
locally, and I just don't know that that's the right way to go about
39:01
things. That's a great example. I think that we're seeing that all over
39:06
the country, and those national issues tend to be more partisan. And you
39:10
know, it's not like local issues aren't controversial. Sometimes there's all sorts of
39:15
controversial. Sometimes the local issues are more controversial. But it's an interesting thing
39:20
is that the local issues tend to be controversial in different ways.