Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - Trump Has No Good Options In Iran + The Importance Of Community-Based Journalism

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Full Episode - Trump Has No Good Options In Iran + The Importance Of Community-Based Journalism · The Chuck ToddCast

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Speaker 1: and rates may vary. Hello Aaron, Welcome to the Wednesday
1:47
Speaker 1: edition of the Chuck Podcast. We have a nice complete
1:51
Speaker 1: episode for you. As always, I will have a lot
1:55
Speaker 1: to say about all things having to do with the
1:57
Speaker 1: war in Iran and it's impact on the atomy and frankly,
2:02
Speaker 1: the I don't know what you call it. I'm not
2:06
Speaker 1: going to call it necessarily leadership from the president on
2:09
Speaker 1: this war, but he is a bit of a weather
2:11
Speaker 1: vane on this war, and I will get into that
2:14
Speaker 1: in a few minutes. My interview, my guest today is
2:18
Speaker 1: the essentially the head of a it's a I'm sticking
2:22
Speaker 1: to my theme every Wednesday, I've been dropping interviews between
2:24
Speaker 1: now and Local News Day with various editors and publishers
2:31
Speaker 1: and founders of sort of the new independent media that
2:35
Speaker 1: has popped up since the gutting and cratering of local
2:39
Speaker 1: news that of course all began with the advent of
2:43
Speaker 1: Craig's List. In particular, the focus today.
2:47
Speaker 2: Is on a.
2:49
Speaker 1: News organization out of Minnesota called the Sahan Journal. The guest,
2:54
Speaker 1: the publisher is Moor Jayson and what the san Journal.
3:00
Speaker 1: It is a local independent news source primarily focused in
3:06
Speaker 1: its audience is for the immigrant communities of Minnesota, so
3:09
Speaker 1: not just the smaller community, but the among community, first
3:13
Speaker 1: generation Hispanic community. It is an interesting business story as
3:20
Speaker 1: well as a sustainability story when it comes and it's
3:27
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot to learn. There's all different
3:29
Speaker 1: types of local news operations out there, and my goal
3:34
Speaker 1: was to do profiles of sort of the different types
3:37
Speaker 1: of and this is one that is very much has
3:41
Speaker 1: a narrow cast in the audience that it is covering for,
3:44
Speaker 1: but an example of what can be an improvement in
3:49
Speaker 1: the vibrancy of the tapestry of local news. We will
3:54
Speaker 1: also do questions and of course a top five list,
3:58
Speaker 1: But I'm going to begin where it's understandable. Right if
4:03
Speaker 1: you're if it's early in the week since the start
4:06
Speaker 1: of this Iron War, you may be confused if you've
4:09
Speaker 1: been listening to Donald Trump's rhetoric, because if you listen
4:12
Speaker 1: to Donald trump'srhetoric, this war is going to come to
4:14
Speaker 1: an end any day now, maybe any week now, any
4:16
Speaker 1: day now, any hour now. It's close. It's close. They're
4:18
Speaker 1: dealing with the right people. They're doing this, and it
4:21
Speaker 1: you know, if you follow the military side of things,
4:28
Speaker 1: we're on the verge of escalating this conflict. We're on
4:30
Speaker 1: the verge of sending in ground troops at least at
4:34
Speaker 1: a minimum, to the shorelines or to the key islands
4:36
Speaker 1: in order to try to figure out how to how
4:41
Speaker 1: to open up the straight up more moves. And I
4:44
Speaker 1: think it's you know, it's obviously it's we know this
4:48
Speaker 1: is all due to Donald Trump kind of simultaneously. He's
4:53
Speaker 1: basically trying to manage two wars simultaneously, one in the
4:59
Speaker 1: Middle East and one on the trading floor of Wall Street.
5:05
Speaker 1: And I guess the question that's worth asking is which
5:08
Speaker 1: one is he trying to win? And I think this
5:11
Speaker 1: is the I think this is the open question because
5:17
Speaker 1: right now, in some ways the markets, he has had
5:20
Speaker 1: some success manipulating the markets. Right. We've noticed there is
5:26
Speaker 1: this pattern, right if you will, and five straight weeks
5:31
Speaker 1: somewhere between twelve and fifteen hours before the opening bell
5:34
Speaker 1: for that given week, since the start of the Iran war,
5:37
Speaker 1: there'll be a statement from Donald Trump which injects diplomatic
5:42
Speaker 1: hope one might call it into a deteriorating military situation, right,
5:47
Speaker 1: And each time he does it, it has the desired effect.
5:51
Speaker 1: It stabilizes the equities markets. It knocks oil back down
5:57
Speaker 1: closer to right around one hundred dollars range, maybe even
5:59
Speaker 1: below it until the news of the reality of the
6:04
Speaker 1: situation percolates back up, and then suddenly the energy markets respond.
6:10
Speaker 1: So you know, let's let's I'm going to go through
6:16
Speaker 1: each example week by week, So we'll start with this.
6:19
Speaker 1: Right in week one, he sort of had the pivot
6:26
Speaker 1: from the shock, and all right, and you heard so
6:30
Speaker 1: you had Operation Epic Fury launches on February twenty eighth,
6:34
Speaker 1: tomahawks hit cities in Iran. Global markets braced for what
6:37
Speaker 1: they thought was going to be a seventy style oil shock.
6:40
Speaker 1: Then what does Trump do on March second? That Monday,
6:44
Speaker 1: Trump ignores the smoke over Tehran and focuses on the
6:47
Speaker 1: ticker and he says, I thought oil prices were going
6:49
Speaker 1: to go up higher than they are now, and I
6:50
Speaker 1: thought we would see a bigger drop in stock it
6:52
Speaker 1: it hasn't been that bad.
6:54
Speaker 3: We're in control, all right.
6:57
Speaker 1: That's week one, and then he claims that the war
7:01
Speaker 1: would be a four to six week sprint. Remember he
7:03
Speaker 1: called it excursion. I think he meant incursion. He said
7:06
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be a forever war. So he stabilizes the
7:09
Speaker 1: initial panic sell off in week one. Week two, reports
7:15
Speaker 1: surface that the IRGC is leaderless and it's on its
7:18
Speaker 1: back foot after target it strikes. What does Trump do
7:22
Speaker 1: that Monday? And March ninth, at eight fifteen in the morning,
7:26
Speaker 1: before the stock market opens, he says there will be
7:28
Speaker 1: no deal with Iran except underconditional surrender. And after that,
7:32
Speaker 1: we will work tirelessly to make Iran economically bigger, better,
7:35
Speaker 1: and stronger than ever before. Iran will have a great future.
7:39
Speaker 1: So he's proposing essentially a Marshall Plan right, using rhetoric
7:43
Speaker 1: like it actually helps create a surge in the stock market,
7:48
Speaker 1: even as the Pentagon admits they had no day after plan.
7:52
Speaker 1: Week three, the sanctions carrot if you will carg Island right,
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Speaker 1: Iran's main oil terminal, ventually obliterated. Gas prices surge over
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Speaker 1: four dollars a gallon. So what does Trump do that Monday?
8:06
Speaker 1: In an interview with The New York Post released just
8:08
Speaker 1: before the opening of the stock market, he says, I
8:11
Speaker 1: have a plan for everything. I could waive certain oil
8:13
Speaker 1: related sanctions to reduce prices if they behave. They're begging
8:16
Speaker 1: to reach a deal. They're calling me constantly. I don't
8:18
Speaker 1: always pick up, but they're calling. Well. Oil drops four
8:22
Speaker 1: percent on the waving sanctions comment, despite the fact there
8:26
Speaker 1: was no functioning Iranian government left to actually negotiate with.
8:30
Speaker 1: Then there's the false pause that was Week four. This
8:33
Speaker 1: is March twenty second and twenty third. The military reality
8:37
Speaker 1: is domestic pressure mounts as three thousand casualties are reported.
8:41
Speaker 1: Israel pushes for strikes on some nuclear sites. So Trump
8:46
Speaker 1: on Monday, March twenty third, says, surprise press conference on
8:49
Speaker 1: the tarmac again before the market's open, We're having a
8:52
Speaker 1: little bit of a pause. I've decided to pause the
8:54
Speaker 1: threat to hit the energy sites for a few days
8:57
Speaker 1: because the talks are going very well. He claims, very
9:00
Speaker 1: very well. You'll be very happy. So while Trump claimed
9:04
Speaker 1: to pause, the Pentagon simultaneously was briefing that the operations
9:07
Speaker 1: are going to continue at pace. The market though heard
9:10
Speaker 1: the word pause. Maybe that's what they wanted to hear
9:13
Speaker 1: for seventy two hours before the Thursday extension revealed it
9:16
Speaker 1: was a tactical stall, not a peace deal. Then there's
9:21
Speaker 1: the threat from over this last weekend hitting the desalinization plants,
9:26
Speaker 1: are the energy markets. So the reality is the eighty
9:29
Speaker 1: second airborne shows up in the region for quote unquote stabilization.
9:34
Speaker 1: Iran HiT's a Q eighty oil tanker. But what does
9:39
Speaker 1: Trump do on Monday morning seven am truth social thread
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Speaker 1: quote The US is in serious discussions with a new
9:45
Speaker 1: and more reasonable regime. Great progress. However, if a deal
9:50
Speaker 1: is not reached shortly, we will have no choice but
9:52
Speaker 1: to completely obliterate their electric plants, oil wells, and possibly
9:55
Speaker 1: all desalinization plants. So this is his strait of orm
10:00
Speaker 1: moves play out's a new regime totally unverified to keep
10:04
Speaker 1: the dow steady, while the threat to obliterate water sources
10:08
Speaker 1: keeps oil traders from shorting the market. So the White
10:14
Speaker 1: House and the President keeps using his truth social to
10:17
Speaker 1: basically front run the official Pentagon briefings. Official Pentagon briefings
10:21
Speaker 1: simply create to me a drum beat of escalation, not
10:26
Speaker 1: de escalation. And there doesn't appear to be many off ramps,
10:30
Speaker 1: and we keep sending in more folks who would be
10:34
Speaker 1: part of any sort of ground troop operation if he
10:37
Speaker 1: orders it. See of that, then you have the fact
10:43
Speaker 1: that allies have no idea what we're up to. AP
10:45
Speaker 1: reported that Trump has been telling allies go get your
10:48
Speaker 1: own oil, and you go in the straight OHR moves
10:53
Speaker 1: and get it. We don't need it. Now, here's something
10:57
Speaker 1: to understand, right, And this goes to the question of
11:00
Speaker 1: which war is Trump really wanting to win? He sits
11:05
Speaker 1: here and he's clearly look, it is no doubt he
11:08
Speaker 1: knows he's boxed himself in. He's in an impossible situation, right,
11:13
Speaker 1: it is, you know, heads, he loses, tails, we lose.
11:16
Speaker 1: We all are going to lose here in the short term.
11:19
Speaker 1: And you know this, We now know why so many
11:22
Speaker 1: presidents before never did this, realizing the immassive economic global
11:27
Speaker 1: economic impact that this would have hasn't hit yet. But
11:30
Speaker 1: I'm gonna explain that. Frankly, it's about to come unfortunately.
11:35
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, he just just trying to He's just trying
11:37
Speaker 1: to win the day. Right, I'll gladly give you a
11:41
Speaker 1: quarter tomorrow for a hamburger today. Infamous those of you
11:45
Speaker 1: old enough to remember Popeye and the dude that always
11:49
Speaker 1: always always wanted a hamburger today, he would gladly pay
11:52
Speaker 1: you tomorrow for it. This is Donald Trump in a nutshell, right.
11:55
Speaker 1: He's just always putting off, just trying to put off,
11:58
Speaker 1: put off. It is just can he deal with today?
12:00
Speaker 1: Can he deal with today? And he's kind of he's
12:02
Speaker 1: basically a political day trader who's obsessive about the stock
12:06
Speaker 1: market itself on it now here is something that is
12:09
Speaker 1: an uncomfortable truth and it deserves scrutiny because there's no
12:12
Speaker 1: doubt there is grift and market manipulation going on. Since
12:17
Speaker 1: February twenty eighth, the S and P five hundred has
12:20
Speaker 1: declined overall. Not a surprise the war started on February
12:23
Speaker 1: twenty eighth. Of course it's down, but eighty five percent
12:27
Speaker 1: of the S and P five hundreds Green days as
12:29
Speaker 1: in days when a majority when the overall S and
12:31
Speaker 1: P five hundred was up, not down, have occurred on
12:33
Speaker 1: a Monday following a Trump piece is coming post. So
12:41
Speaker 1: the point is is here we go again, and he
12:44
Speaker 1: did it again, and he's been doing it again, and look,
12:50
Speaker 1: should this be investigated? Of course, is his sec going
12:53
Speaker 1: to do anything serious?
12:55
Speaker 3: Of course not right.
12:56
Speaker 1: All of this is happening in plain sight. And of
12:58
Speaker 1: course we have the other story about I love the
13:01
Speaker 1: weird denial by Sean Parnell, the spokesperson for Pete Haigseth,
13:04
Speaker 1: that Financial Times had this big story about that somebody
13:07
Speaker 1: representing Pete hag Seth was shopping around looking to make
13:10
Speaker 1: a big purchase of sort of investments in the defense industry,
13:14
Speaker 1: and it was it's clear the way And I got
13:18
Speaker 1: to read you the Parnell quote directly on this because parsing.
13:28
Speaker 1: It tells you everything you need to know about what
13:32
Speaker 1: is actually truthful in that financial time story. Sometimes the
13:35
Speaker 1: respokesperson's response actually confirms the story they're trying not to confirm.
13:42
Speaker 1: So Parnell on X says the following that neither Secretary
13:46
Speaker 1: Hegseth nor any of his representatives approached black Rock regarding
13:49
Speaker 1: an investment in the defense industrials Active ETF. So it's
13:55
Speaker 1: he's denying the black Rock portion of the story specifically, right,
14:00
Speaker 1: You see a denial of specific details, but sort of not.
14:04
Speaker 1: He never overall denied that any of the that the
14:08
Speaker 1: larger idea that he was looking for an investment in
14:10
Speaker 1: defense industries and that you know, before the start of
14:13
Speaker 1: the war, he didn't deny any of that. He just
14:15
Speaker 1: denied a specific part of the accusation. Anyway, the point
14:19
Speaker 1: is it's pretty clear that more of that report is
14:24
Speaker 1: true than not true. And then they as a as
14:27
Speaker 1: a clever spokesperson would do, not an honest and ethical one,
14:30
Speaker 1: but a clever one would do, is you find a
14:33
Speaker 1: keith a specific fact that you can deny and hang
14:37
Speaker 1: your hat on and then and hope that most people
14:42
Speaker 1: take it as a full denial of the whole story
14:45
Speaker 1: rather than what the denial actually it is. But the
14:48
Speaker 1: fact is, this is one of those stories where do
14:51
Speaker 1: the details even matter. I mean, the entire Trump administration
14:55
Speaker 1: has been behaving this way. I mean, and there's not
14:59
Speaker 1: really any doesn't seem to be any any negative blowback
15:05
Speaker 1: unless it looks like you're keeping Trump out from getting
15:08
Speaker 1: a cut, like you know, he'll over time get upset.
15:11
Speaker 1: If it looks like you're trying to pull one over
15:14
Speaker 1: on him financially, then he'll get upset. But if you're
15:19
Speaker 1: doing something like this, I mean, look the whole philosophy.
15:23
Speaker 1: I mean, we've seen there was a good study by
15:24
Speaker 1: Pro publica earlier this week about the cases that the
15:28
Speaker 1: Department of Justice, led by Pam Bonni has dropped in.
15:31
Speaker 1: How many white collar cases are just being dropped left
15:33
Speaker 1: and right right. If you look at Donald Trump's pardons, anybody,
15:38
Speaker 1: anybody that is hit with massive fines that have basically
15:42
Speaker 1: been convicted and sentenced to go to prison for what
15:48
Speaker 1: one would call white collar crimes, so financial crimes if
15:51
Speaker 1: you will, it's almost universally an easy pardon for him.
15:56
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess you can say he wants to
15:58
Speaker 1: do unto others as he wants to be treated. And
16:01
Speaker 1: you know, if he thinks financial crimes shouldn't be punishable
16:07
Speaker 1: as felonies then he's not going to let any of
16:09
Speaker 1: his friends see financial crimes punished as felonies here. So
16:15
Speaker 1: the point is is that, you know, it was amusing
16:18
Speaker 1: to me. That's why I love that. This is why
16:20
Speaker 1: as a reporter it's always really important to ask for
16:24
Speaker 1: a response, because the response can actually tell you more
16:28
Speaker 1: than the story itself. And Parnell's response, in a very
16:33
Speaker 1: specific denial about the black Rock portion of this, tells you, oh,
16:37
Speaker 1: there's a lot more truth to this. He just found
16:39
Speaker 1: the one thing that they thought they could hang their
16:41
Speaker 1: hat on that wasn't you know whatever the specifics was right.
16:46
Speaker 1: It's probably an affiliate of black Rock, some entity that's
16:48
Speaker 1: not technically black Rock but might be. By point is
16:51
Speaker 1: he's that we all know that there was all sorts
16:53
Speaker 1: of fuzzy natures of that fact. But you know what
16:57
Speaker 1: is disappointing is this idea that there was no denial
17:01
Speaker 1: that he was looking for investment opportunities in the defense
17:03
Speaker 1: industry before the start of this war.
17:07
Speaker 3: But again, the sun rose in the east and the
17:11
Speaker 3: sunsets in the west.
17:12
Speaker 1: Right.
17:13
Speaker 3: This is sort of par for the course for this administration.
17:21
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Speaker 1: am a customer. But the question is, and I think
18:59
Speaker 1: that this that's a fair question. What is about to
19:01
Speaker 1: happen in this war? Are we going to because now
19:05
Speaker 1: you've got the reports in the Wall Street Journal that
19:06
Speaker 1: indicate Trump is thinking about I mean, that's the other
19:10
Speaker 1: thing thinking about just Okay, he promised this was only
19:13
Speaker 1: going to be four to six weeks. We've seen the reports.
19:15
Speaker 1: He's kind of bored of the war. He'd probably much
19:17
Speaker 1: prefer to talk about his ballroom, his new plans for
19:21
Speaker 1: a presidential library to become a let's just say for
19:27
Speaker 1: some of us, too prominent of a position in the
19:29
Speaker 1: Miami skyline. I just it's a head scratcher to me
19:33
Speaker 1: that a guy who's never lived a day in his
19:34
Speaker 1: life in Miami, has really no serious connections to Miami
19:39
Speaker 1: is going to dot the skyline of Miami in a way.
19:42
Speaker 1: I mean, please go put it in New York, Go
19:44
Speaker 1: put it in Trump Tower, Go put it at Fifth Avenue.
19:47
Speaker 1: Hey Penn, how come you don't want the Donald Trump
19:50
Speaker 1: Presidential Library? But I will? But it is what it is.
19:54
Speaker 3: I will just tell you this.
19:57
Speaker 1: If the building, that building, that rendering that Eric Trump sent,
20:03
Speaker 1: I can't I assume Calshi or polymarket of it. Will
20:06
Speaker 1: this building ever be completed? And will it be as
20:10
Speaker 1: tall as they claim? Because you know, it's interesting about
20:13
Speaker 1: height issues in South Florida is there's only you can
20:16
Speaker 1: only go a certain height on buildings in Miami because
20:20
Speaker 1: you can't it doesn't support. Eventually, you can't dig a
20:24
Speaker 1: you can't dig too far deep to create a stable,
20:30
Speaker 1: a stability underground before you hit the ocean. So I
20:34
Speaker 1: think he's going to be limited in what they actually
20:36
Speaker 1: can do structurally there. So the idea that the actual
20:41
Speaker 1: library building will look remotely similar to the rendering that
20:46
Speaker 1: Eric Trump sent I think is quite small. But the
20:49
Speaker 1: point is is that the reports Donald Trump's board with
20:52
Speaker 1: the war, he realizes by the way, he's now at
20:55
Speaker 1: an all time low and his approval rating all time high,
20:57
Speaker 1: and is disapproval rating the consumer confidence index is now
21:02
Speaker 1: at the same horrible low that it was at the
21:06
Speaker 1: height of the inflationary period in twenty twenty two, which
21:09
Speaker 1: was dragging down the Biden presidency and arguably destroyed destroyed
21:13
Speaker 1: the Biden presidency politically right well, Donald Trump's consumer confidence
21:18
Speaker 1: numbers that the Michigan Index are now that low. His
21:21
Speaker 1: approval rating is lower than where Joe Biden was at
21:23
Speaker 1: this point in time. His disapproval rating is higher than
21:26
Speaker 1: it was. His approval rating is lower now than it
21:29
Speaker 1: ever was in his first term, and he already had
21:31
Speaker 1: a bad midterm that first term. Of course, he only
21:34
Speaker 1: lost the House, not the Senate, in that first midterm.
21:37
Speaker 1: And I think this time, I think it's fairly I
21:40
Speaker 1: think it's fair to say, and that's going to be
21:42
Speaker 1: my top five this week. I think it's fair to
21:44
Speaker 1: say that at this point in time, I think Democrats
21:50
Speaker 1: are favorite to win them both. It would be they
21:54
Speaker 1: have to make mistakes now, they have to have bad
21:57
Speaker 1: candidates do bad things in general election sort of below
22:01
Speaker 1: an opportunity because the environment and the national wins and
22:06
Speaker 1: all of that. Right this is we are now in
22:09
Speaker 1: blue wave territory, pure and simple. It is there. You're
22:13
Speaker 1: looking at twenty. I mean, the House is done. The
22:17
Speaker 1: question really is how much. And some of it will
22:20
Speaker 1: have to do with the with the various redistricting efforts.
22:24
Speaker 1: I kind of think, you know, the irony just on
22:27
Speaker 1: a quick aside here before you get back to a run.
22:30
Speaker 1: This environment is so good for Democrats at the moment
22:33
Speaker 1: that I think if Virginia did not, if they don't
22:35
Speaker 1: pass their maps right now, it's six or five democratic advantage.
22:39
Speaker 1: With this political environment, they're going to be eight. It's
22:42
Speaker 1: going to be a three without remapping anything in Virginia,
22:47
Speaker 1: and they're trying to get ten to one. Probably ends
22:49
Speaker 1: up nine to two. But you know, this is why
22:53
Speaker 1: I think this is such a wasted effort and probably
22:55
Speaker 1: going to be probably going to blow back on the
22:58
Speaker 1: party in Virginia sooner than Virginia Democrats realize here and
23:04
Speaker 1: the irony is they didn't need it. They didn't really
23:08
Speaker 1: need it. We're talking that maybe this redistricting is going
23:12
Speaker 1: to net him one more seat than the political environment
23:14
Speaker 1: itself would have net it. And to think all of
23:20
Speaker 1: this political capital that Barack Obama's flushing down the toilet,
23:24
Speaker 1: that Abigail Spamberger's flushing down the toilet for one extra
23:28
Speaker 1: seat in an environment that they're probably going to win
23:31
Speaker 1: twenty to forty nationally overall. But look, I'm going to
23:34
Speaker 1: set that aside. Where we are here is this war.
23:37
Speaker 1: Is that Trump is now in his continues to be
23:40
Speaker 1: in this impossible box. He knows he's got to get
23:43
Speaker 1: out of this war. And yes, America can withstand and
23:49
Speaker 1: energy crisis caused by this war better than most other countries.
23:55
Speaker 1: And so that's why, you know, he's trying to basically say,
23:58
Speaker 1: you worry about it, but that But I'm sorry, if
24:01
Speaker 1: Europe gets the flu, We're economy gets the flu, We're
24:04
Speaker 1: going to get a cold, all right. We are all interconnected.
24:08
Speaker 1: We are not going to be able to hide from
24:11
Speaker 1: this and this, and eventually it's going to get worse.
24:18
Speaker 1: And I'm want to share. I want to share a
24:23
Speaker 1: few interesting pieces that have been written. This came from
24:28
Speaker 1: Liz Hoffman her newsletter in Semaphore, and she was trying
24:33
Speaker 1: to explain answer the question why do markets look calmer
24:36
Speaker 1: than they should in this current period? Right, so far
24:41
Speaker 1: the price of oil hasn't gone as high yet as
24:44
Speaker 1: folks expect, and the Nasdaq correction looks more of it
24:48
Speaker 1: AI driven due to the impact on the investors and
24:52
Speaker 1: some of the major investors in AI right now in
24:53
Speaker 1: the Gulf States. And the question is is this resilience
24:57
Speaker 1: or is this simply complacency? Right? Is the world so
25:01
Speaker 1: flush with money that it can still absorb more risk?
25:05
Speaker 1: And maybe that's true of the American Stock exchange or
25:08
Speaker 1: investors expect another government bailout, right, They've gotten they got
25:12
Speaker 1: so used to government bailing them out of the COVID
25:14
Speaker 1: pandemic or government bailing them out of the credit crisis. Right,
25:18
Speaker 1: But there's a third option, and that is just simply
25:20
Speaker 1: borrowed time. Right. We got an oil buffer, we have
25:23
Speaker 1: tankers already at sea, you've had the national reserve releases
25:26
Speaker 1: have already taken place in a lot of countries. But
25:29
Speaker 1: guess what all of that is going to get exhausted?
25:31
Speaker 3: Sooner than you think.
25:33
Speaker 1: And the real point that Liz Hoffman was trying to
25:36
Speaker 1: make is that the second and third order effects of
25:38
Speaker 1: this war have not let y enda. I've not landed yet.
25:43
Speaker 1: We don't yet have crops stunted by fertilizer shortages. We will.
25:49
Speaker 1: We don't yet have blackouts in Asia due to because
25:53
Speaker 1: of how much oil to Asia comes out of the
25:56
Speaker 1: Strait of Warmus. We don't have MRI yet from helium shortages.
26:02
Speaker 1: We will, and we don't yet have grocery price increases
26:06
Speaker 1: from trucking costs. But the promise you we will.
26:09
Speaker 2: Right.
26:10
Speaker 1: All of that is these have been lagging indicators and
26:13
Speaker 1: they haven't hit yet. Right. She used a pandemic metaphor,
26:21
Speaker 1: meaning scientists warned us we went to dinner anyway, then
26:25
Speaker 1: we didn't for a very long time. Well, it may
26:27
Speaker 1: be the same slow motion dynamic. Right. EU energy chief
26:31
Speaker 1: is urging Europeans to cut travel, Soul is weighing driving
26:34
Speaker 1: restrictions because of the energy shortage. The last this is
26:39
Speaker 1: important to note, the last Middle Eastern jet fuel shipment
26:41
Speaker 1: reaches Britain this week, which means, all of a sudden,
26:44
Speaker 1: we're going to have a jet fuel shortage. Twenty percent
26:48
Speaker 1: of the world's oil comes through the Strait of hormones.
26:52
Speaker 1: Of Europe's oil comes from the Strait of hormones. And
26:56
Speaker 1: we have the first company Unil ever citing the war
26:58
Speaker 1: for a hiring freeze. So the point is, all of
27:05
Speaker 1: the fears of what's going to happen haven't hit yet,
27:09
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump's actions have really helped mask a reality
27:14
Speaker 1: that maybe hitting is going to be about to hit
27:17
Speaker 1: us extraordinarily hard in the next four to six weeks,
27:21
Speaker 1: which may explain why he so desperately wants to find
27:23
Speaker 1: a way out. And you know, whether it's he thinks
27:27
Speaker 1: that maybe he can bomb the leadership into submission, I
27:31
Speaker 1: think that is of question. But this is a regime
27:34
Speaker 1: that is no problem killing and its own people as
27:37
Speaker 1: it is. Why does he think making the Iranian people
27:41
Speaker 1: suffer through blackouts and lack of water? This is Donald
27:44
Speaker 1: Trump that it's somehow going to bring the regime to
27:47
Speaker 1: its knees. So I think that is one miscalculation here.
27:52
Speaker 1: So then, of course, how you know, if he's got
27:57
Speaker 1: to open the strait of horn moves and he's essentially
28:00
Speaker 1: alienated all of our allies for the last year through
28:04
Speaker 1: tariffs and through what he's done in Europe, and through
28:06
Speaker 1: his lack of interest in helping Ukraine and all of that. Right,
28:10
Speaker 1: he's mad at NATO now while he's been treating NATO
28:12
Speaker 1: allies like crap for the last year, he's mad at
28:17
Speaker 1: other countries not helping go get your own oil out
28:20
Speaker 1: of the strait of Hoar Moves, and he's been beating
28:22
Speaker 1: them up with tariffs. So of course they don't want
28:24
Speaker 1: to help. But at the end of the day, we're
28:28
Speaker 1: the United States of America. We broke it, we got
28:30
Speaker 1: to fix it. So it does seem as if the
28:36
Speaker 1: military planners are assuming they're going to go in with
28:38
Speaker 1: some minimal ground invasion of some sort to figure out
28:42
Speaker 1: how to open up the straight of war moves. And
28:48
Speaker 1: once again, once you we have started a war we
28:51
Speaker 1: don't know, we don't necessarily have the ability to finish.
28:55
Speaker 1: Yet we pull up states right now, all we do
28:59
Speaker 1: is hand Iran more leverage he walks away. He's basically
29:05
Speaker 1: handing them more leverage over the strait of our moves
29:07
Speaker 1: than they had before this war started. So the question
29:15
Speaker 1: I think really is, and it is sort of do
29:19
Speaker 1: you believe what he says, or do you believe what
29:23
Speaker 1: they're doing? And if you follow what they're doing, this
29:27
Speaker 1: war is about to escalate. They're about to send in
29:30
Speaker 1: more ground troops, actual ground troops. There's going to be
29:33
Speaker 1: an attempt here. And maybe in his head he thinks
29:36
Speaker 1: commandeering control of Iranian oil means he controls oil Venezuela
29:40
Speaker 1: oil in Iran and then somehow that might give him
29:43
Speaker 1: leverage with China. I kind of think that's wishful thinking,
29:47
Speaker 1: but it may be a strategy they think they're pursuing
29:50
Speaker 1: at the moment. But I do think this, if you think,
29:54
Speaker 1: what should you believe? Do you believe that he is
29:57
Speaker 1: trying to find a way out of this was an
30:00
Speaker 1: easy way out? I think he already have found that
30:02
Speaker 1: exit ramp and would have left. Or do you follow
30:06
Speaker 1: what they're doing? Not what they're saying, And what they're
30:09
Speaker 1: doing appears to be a preparation for escalation, and at
30:15
Speaker 1: some point the economy and traders and the markets are
30:19
Speaker 1: going to have to are going to end up accepting reality.
30:23
Speaker 1: They're desperate not to accept reality, and any kind of
30:26
Speaker 1: breadcrumb he drops to be to be used as an
30:31
Speaker 1: excuse to say, well, maybe it's not you know, maybe
30:34
Speaker 1: this isn't going to be as catastrophic as we thought.
30:36
Speaker 1: Traders have grabbed onto it. But when you start to
30:40
Speaker 1: look at these other fundamentals, right, consumers are already changing
30:44
Speaker 1: their behavior. Consumer confidence wouldn't be this low if they
30:47
Speaker 1: weren't changing their behavior, And you're going to see the
30:50
Speaker 1: second and third order effects start, unfortunately cascading very soon
30:58
Speaker 1: and perhaps very quickly. So I hate to be such
31:01
Speaker 1: doom and gloom about it, but I think when you
31:07
Speaker 1: look stare at the situation, then you throw in the
31:09
Speaker 1: fact that the allies that Donald Trump cares about the
31:13
Speaker 1: most in the East are as financial allies. I think
31:16
Speaker 1: he's I think Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar have
31:20
Speaker 1: a lot more influence on him than Israel. Does I
31:23
Speaker 1: know the popular mythology is that Israel has all.
31:25
Speaker 3: This influence on him. No, no, no, no.
31:28
Speaker 1: It's the people that pay him money that have influence
31:31
Speaker 1: on him. Right. This is why this should be such
31:36
Speaker 1: an important focal point of being concerned about this, because
31:43
Speaker 1: who's making the strongest arguments now for the United States
31:47
Speaker 1: not to leave and to not end this war until
31:50
Speaker 1: that regime is essentially overthrown. But they don't say overthrown.
31:54
Speaker 1: They say tamed in some fort. But it's the Saudis,
31:57
Speaker 1: u Akuate bah Rain. They're all at this point. I
32:01
Speaker 1: think they all regret telling him go ahead and do it,
32:06
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, this is the mistake. Donald Trump
32:08
Speaker 1: does not is not somebody you can rely on long term.
32:13
Speaker 1: You can convince Donald Trump to do something for you
32:15
Speaker 1: short term if he thinks there's benefit to him, but
32:18
Speaker 1: you cannot rely on him to stick to anything and
32:22
Speaker 1: to be a long term partner with you, on anybody.
32:26
Speaker 1: And it's a huge mistake the Golf States made. It's
32:28
Speaker 1: what it was interesting and this fight, you know, sort
32:31
Speaker 1: of there's been an interesting fight between the two parties
32:35
Speaker 1: to figure out how to win over the hearts and
32:37
Speaker 1: minds of the Golf States both parties, if you know,
32:39
Speaker 1: there was a look Joe Biden wanted to write those
32:41
Speaker 1: folks off, but the reality was there's too much American investment,
32:47
Speaker 1: too much of the American business community does do business
32:49
Speaker 1: with the Golf States, and every presidential administration needs to
32:52
Speaker 1: be in good terms with them. And the argument that
32:57
Speaker 1: the Biden folks are trying to make to the Golf States,
32:59
Speaker 1: you know, and you know essentially they were trying to
33:02
Speaker 1: They didn't want to be bought off. And I think
33:05
Speaker 1: the Golf States got lured in because Trump was so transactional,
33:08
Speaker 1: i e. Easy to buy off, and they figure, oh,
33:10
Speaker 1: we can manipulate him, and they can't. The problem is
33:13
Speaker 1: you can't get him to stick to anything. And so
33:16
Speaker 1: they think they're getting what they want. And now I
33:22
Speaker 1: guess you can go to be careful what you wish for.
33:26
Speaker 1: And the Golf States are now the dog that caught
33:27
Speaker 1: the car. They got in the American president to do
33:29
Speaker 1: their dirty work. They've been wanting to get rid of
33:31
Speaker 1: this regime in Iran, arguably with more vigor than the Israelis,
33:40
Speaker 1: and now they don't want us to leave. Now they're
33:42
Speaker 1: petrified because they're they are they are dealing with the
33:47
Speaker 1: second and third order effects and they have a lot
33:49
Speaker 1: more to lose in this situation. And one wonders if
33:53
Speaker 1: they now regret how much they have invested in the Trumps,
33:59
Speaker 1: in the Trump family, thinking that they're getting.
34:02
Speaker 3: What they want.
34:03
Speaker 1: Well, they got the foreign policy they think they wanted.
34:07
Speaker 1: Are they sure they wanted this? Is this what they wanted?
34:11
Speaker 1: A global energy recession because unfortunately, I have a feeling
34:16
Speaker 1: that's where that's where this is headed. One more little
34:22
Speaker 1: note that I wanted to share with you, and this
34:24
Speaker 1: came from a column another Semaphore column from earlier today.
34:30
Speaker 1: And by the way, they have these interesting newsletters by
34:34
Speaker 1: region that I just think are tremendous. They have an
34:37
Speaker 1: African newsletter that I think is really good. They have
34:39
Speaker 1: a Golf State every day and it's a daily newsletter.
34:43
Speaker 1: I never was getting daily news from the continent of
34:45
Speaker 1: Africa or from the Golf States. And I'm certainly glad
34:49
Speaker 1: i am today. So kudos to my friend Justin Smith
34:51
Speaker 1: there and Ben Smith who've done some great work. But
34:57
Speaker 1: what's interesting is this point that Somemophore makes in the
35:00
Speaker 1: Southern newsletter they do energy newsletter that they do. The
35:03
Speaker 1: war is accelerating the global gleen energy transition, they write,
35:07
Speaker 1: And China dominates seventy percent of all green hardware. Chinese
35:12
Speaker 1: ev giant Gheely is up thirty percent since the war began.
35:15
Speaker 1: The world's largest battery maker, COTL is up twenty eight percent.
35:20
Speaker 1: So we are now. America is now a petro state
35:23
Speaker 1: thanks to Donald Trump because he wanted to get rid
35:25
Speaker 1: of windmills and get rid of anything that was alternative
35:28
Speaker 1: energy other than oil and gods. So we're now a
35:30
Speaker 1: petro state, and China is becoming an electro state at
35:34
Speaker 1: a time when being a petro state is very, very expensive.
35:39
Speaker 1: So the irony is that Beijing has been thinking long
35:43
Speaker 1: term on green energy and the Iran war may have
35:46
Speaker 1: just handed them a decisive advantage not in the battlefield,
35:50
Speaker 1: but in the supply chains as the rest of the
35:52
Speaker 1: world panics about oil, especially if the Strait of horn
35:57
Speaker 1: Moves is basically a battle a battlefield of sorts, if
36:03
Speaker 1: you will, for months on end, you're gonna have a
36:06
Speaker 1: lot of economies around the world desperately trying to transition
36:10
Speaker 1: to green energy, and they're not gonna be able to
36:13
Speaker 1: buy supplies from the United States. They're gonna be able
36:16
Speaker 1: to get their material from China. So yet another way,
36:20
Speaker 1: so this war with Iran has strengthened Russia, has strengthened China,
36:27
Speaker 1: and basically as weaken the United States diplomatically and certainly
36:32
Speaker 1: our reputation around the world, and the fact that essentially,
36:38
Speaker 1: even though we're winning on the battlefield, we're essentially losing
36:40
Speaker 1: in the larger strategic battle, if you will, with China
36:44
Speaker 1: and with Russia. One wonders if that ends up forcing
36:50
Speaker 1: more bad decisions to follow more bad decisions. Right, this
36:52
Speaker 1: is the concern. So many folks had this the minute
36:56
Speaker 1: you go open this door on Iran, Right, there were
37:00
Speaker 1: no good exit ramps and here we are. Hey, one
37:07
Speaker 1: more note I want to share. It's a totally totally
37:11
Speaker 1: different subject matter. But number one, it's a newsletter that
37:20
Speaker 1: I think you guys should everybody should subscribe to. You know,
37:23
Speaker 1: with so many questionable news sources when it comes to
37:26
Speaker 1: science these days, especially when it comes to viruses and
37:30
Speaker 1: what Bobby Kennedy Jr. Has done to eviscerate the credibility
37:35
Speaker 1: of the CDC, the FDA, and of course all things
37:38
Speaker 1: having to do with HHS, I started subscribing as something
37:42
Speaker 1: called your Local Epidemiologist, and I have to say it
37:46
Speaker 1: is fantastic. They do a great job. They keep up
37:48
Speaker 1: to date with public health developments, they share actual statistics,
37:52
Speaker 1: actual recommendations. Well, guess what, there's a new COVID variant
37:57
Speaker 1: that is out there, but it's manageable, and I just
38:02
Speaker 1: wanted to read what it is because there's a there's
38:04
Speaker 1: a good warning here because what I love about and
38:07
Speaker 1: I just highly recommend, especially if you're frankly over the
38:10
Speaker 1: age of fifty, because they do a really good job
38:12
Speaker 1: of sort of dealing with the basic questions. Okay, there's
38:14
Speaker 1: a new COVID variant. What should I do? All right?
38:17
Speaker 3: So this new COVID variant.
38:20
Speaker 1: Is called the Cicada variant. It's a descendant of omicron.
38:25
Speaker 1: It's been circulating around the globe over time. It is
38:28
Speaker 1: now accounts for eleven percent of US cases, and it's
38:31
Speaker 1: you know, they're basically warning you know. So this is
38:34
Speaker 1: the question, is this going to cause a spring or
38:36
Speaker 1: summer wave? Well, the answer is they don't have much
38:40
Speaker 1: data of how fast it is growing this but their
38:43
Speaker 1: guess is that this will cause a mini wave of sorts.
38:47
Speaker 1: It won't be a nothing burger, nor will it be
38:49
Speaker 1: a tsunami. Then the question is should people over sixty
38:53
Speaker 1: five get a spring COVID nineteen shot? And the recommendation
38:57
Speaker 1: is this, And this is why I want to share
38:59
Speaker 1: it because I know a lot of you you are
39:01
Speaker 1: always concerned about this, and again, so great substock your
39:04
Speaker 1: local epidemiologist. Go look it up. Should people over sixty
39:08
Speaker 1: five get a spring COVID nineteen shot answer. If it's
39:11
Speaker 1: been at least three months since your last dose, a
39:14
Speaker 1: spring shot is a reasonable call. Timing in around May
39:19
Speaker 1: or June tends to align well with how COVID nineteen
39:22
Speaker 1: seasons typically play out. So look, you're not gonna Unfortunately,
39:28
Speaker 1: we can't rely on the actual public health officials to
39:31
Speaker 1: give us sort of normal common sense advice, normal common
39:37
Speaker 1: sense facts about what is actually happening. And so I
39:43
Speaker 1: found that news helpful, and I figured I might as
39:46
Speaker 1: well share it with you guys that you might find
39:48
Speaker 1: helpful to, all right, So with that, let's sneak in
39:52
Speaker 1: a break when we come back, get to know a
39:57
Speaker 1: local news site that was designed for the growing immigrant
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41:57
Speaker 1: Am I continuing coverage and Yes News Day on April ninth,
42:02
Speaker 1: Circle Year Calendar's Local News Day in April ninth. One
42:06
Speaker 1: of my goals has been to essentially profile, if you will,
42:11
Speaker 1: different types of local news startups that are out there,
42:15
Speaker 1: and obviously part of the goal of Local News Day
42:18
Speaker 1: in April ninth is to create more awareness out there.
42:21
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of local news startups in
42:24
Speaker 1: your neighborhood that you may have not heard about. Some
42:28
Speaker 1: of them are very community specific, maybe for a smaller
42:32
Speaker 1: community that's a part of your area. Maybe it's geographic,
42:34
Speaker 1: maybe it's ethnic, but these startups are everywhere. And in fact,
42:40
Speaker 1: the profile of the organization I want to showcase today
42:43
Speaker 1: is the Sahan Journal. It's based in Minnesota, and we
42:48
Speaker 1: have the publisher here with this, Vanan Muru Gayson. He's
42:52
Speaker 1: not the original founder. He actually just he has essentially
42:56
Speaker 1: taken it over and expanded it from its original and tent.
43:00
Speaker 1: It is a news organization that has been vital to
43:04
Speaker 1: the immigrant community in Minneapolis in particular. But it's not
43:07
Speaker 1: just about one community. You know, what's been what's been
43:11
Speaker 1: interesting about Minneapolis over the last couple of decades and
43:14
Speaker 1: what's given it some amazing cultural features, if you will,
43:18
Speaker 1: that make it even more unique place to visit today
43:21
Speaker 1: than it was thirty years ago when Prince was walking
43:24
Speaker 1: the city the city streets, is that it has a
43:28
Speaker 1: lot of new communities, the Somali community among community, in
43:32
Speaker 1: addition to sort of maybe more familiar immigrant communities that
43:35
Speaker 1: many of you have out there. And they're just doing gangbusters.
43:40
Speaker 1: And this is a a story of a local of
43:43
Speaker 1: a local news outlet filling the vacuum for a community
43:47
Speaker 1: that was just completely underserved. We know that there are
43:49
Speaker 1: geographic news deserts, but sometimes there are.
43:52
Speaker 3: Community news deserts.
43:54
Speaker 1: And I think what the Shan Journal was able to
43:58
Speaker 1: essentially a gap they were able to is for a
44:02
Speaker 1: community a news organization that doesn't just meet them subject
44:06
Speaker 1: on the subject matters that they care about, but also
44:09
Speaker 1: on the platforms that they use, and I think this
44:12
Speaker 1: is something a lot of traditional newsrooms don't realize. The
44:17
Speaker 1: various ways immigrant communities get their information. They're in a
44:20
Speaker 1: lot different apps than the apps you see, whether it's
44:23
Speaker 1: WhatsApp being a big one, even telegram, and so the
44:27
Speaker 1: work that the Sahon Journal has done there I think
44:29
Speaker 1: will serve as as something for some of you out
44:33
Speaker 1: there in this space. There's going to be a lot
44:35
Speaker 1: to learn. So, without further ado, let me bring Vonon
44:38
Speaker 1: into the conversation. Vonon, welcome to the podcast.
44:42
Speaker 2: Thank you Chuck for having me. It's a pleasure to
44:46
Speaker 2: be here today.
44:47
Speaker 1: Well, before we get started, tell me how did I
44:50
Speaker 1: do in the introduction to the news organization? And please
44:52
Speaker 1: fill in some gaps? What did I miss? How would
44:55
Speaker 1: you if you're in an elevator with me and we're
44:58
Speaker 1: riding up fifteen flights?
45:00
Speaker 3: How are you describing it to somebody?
45:01
Speaker 2: Fifteen flights? Will that's quite generous of you here.
45:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm assuming we have five minutes right.
45:08
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, thanks for opportunity. It's so great that
45:11
Speaker 2: you're celebrating, you know, local news stap but also looking
45:15
Speaker 2: to uplift the different types of news outlets. That are
45:17
Speaker 2: working in this space, and in particular, I'm here to
45:21
Speaker 2: talk a little bit about immigrant serving newsrooms, and so
45:25
Speaker 2: I'll try to talk a little bit about Sahan and
45:27
Speaker 2: so also maybe it gives your audience a little bit
45:30
Speaker 2: of context around how immigrant newsrooms work. So Sahan will
45:34
Speaker 2: started twenty nineteen. You are right, I am not the founder.
45:38
Speaker 2: The founder is actually his name is Muktari brought him.
45:40
Speaker 2: He's a traditional journalist, really really good journalists. He worked
45:43
Speaker 2: for the Star Tribune and he worked for the MPR
45:46
Speaker 2: for Minnesota Public Radio News, and at that time he
45:49
Speaker 2: noticed something that you know, was not something that he
45:55
Speaker 2: wasn't able to cover. You know, Minnesota has one of
45:57
Speaker 2: the best local news scenes in the country, as you
45:59
Speaker 2: know that.
46:01
Speaker 1: Look, it's funny you bring up Minnesota Public Radio probably
46:03
Speaker 1: one of the strongest affiliates of the NPR system that there.
46:08
Speaker 2: Is exactly particularly exactly exactly, and yet he felt working
46:15
Speaker 2: for both of these organizations, he felt there were still
46:18
Speaker 2: important stories that were being missed, that was important to
46:20
Speaker 2: be covered, and in stories around the immigrant communities. You know,
46:23
Speaker 2: he he was somewhat disappointed at that time where he
46:26
Speaker 2: was packed as the Somali journalist and he would cover
46:29
Speaker 2: Somali issues and whatnot. And you know, at that time,
46:33
Speaker 2: unfortunately and even in some places, in some instances today
46:38
Speaker 2: issues from immigrants are talked around from a crime perspective
46:42
Speaker 2: or things that of negative in nature. Right, he grew
46:44
Speaker 2: very frustrated. And now this is the man. Mind you.
46:48
Speaker 2: His wife was pregnant with his third maybe fourth child,
46:52
Speaker 2: I think the third child. He quit his job in
46:54
Speaker 2: the cold month of December because he just couldn't take
46:56
Speaker 2: it anymore. And so he started Sahan Journal because he
46:58
Speaker 2: felt like some of this and studies were not showing up.
47:01
Speaker 2: And that's why newsrooms like SAHAN exist in Minnesota today.
47:08
Speaker 2: And I just want to I think it's important to
47:11
Speaker 2: also mention this is not a Minnesota thing. It's you know,
47:18
Speaker 2: it exists all around the state, all around the country.
47:21
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, right, oh, I mean I could tell I
47:24
Speaker 1: know growing up in so I grew up in Miami,
47:26
Speaker 1: I grew up in South Florida. And one of the
47:29
Speaker 1: hallmarks of the last ten years of local media is
47:35
Speaker 1: how micro and community oriented it is. If you want
47:38
Speaker 1: to talk to the Caribbean communities, there's actually individual you
47:44
Speaker 1: need to talk to. This Instagram influencer, and you need
47:46
Speaker 1: to talk to this person here. The demand in these
47:50
Speaker 1: immigrant communities for somebody that looks like them, that understands
47:53
Speaker 1: their life telling them today's news is through the roof.
47:58
Speaker 1: I get it, and I think that this is why
48:01
Speaker 1: I think this is. You guys are the best example
48:03
Speaker 1: of I think one that's getting traction and creating a
48:06
Speaker 1: revenue stream and all of this, because I think that's
48:08
Speaker 1: the more difficult part is how do these become financially sustainable? Right?
48:13
Speaker 1: And this is all part of what we're working on
48:15
Speaker 1: with Local news Day.
48:16
Speaker 2: You know, I, Chuck, I'm going to use this line,
48:18
Speaker 2: and I'm not sure how to resonate with you in
48:20
Speaker 2: your audience, but I've said this before in the past.
48:22
Speaker 2: I feel like the impulse behind the creation and the
48:25
Speaker 2: need behind immigrant news rooms is very much the same
48:28
Speaker 2: impulse that built kind of like Fox News where it
48:32
Speaker 2: is right now. It's basically a community that for the
48:36
Speaker 2: most part has felt either unseen or where traditional media
48:43
Speaker 2: their realities were not reflected there in traditional legacy media.
48:48
Speaker 2: Now I would say, obviously there is That's where the
48:51
Speaker 2: point of similarity would end and how we would use
48:54
Speaker 2: that moment would be different. But I you know, I'm
48:58
Speaker 2: not a journalist. I'm not a trained journalist, and I've always.
49:01
Speaker 1: An engineer, a mechanical engineer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but you
49:05
Speaker 1: certainly are a numbers guy.
49:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm a mechanical engineer. I did m my MBA.
49:10
Speaker 2: But I'm also a consumer. I love business models, and
49:14
Speaker 2: I'm a consumer of news content, and I've always observed
49:17
Speaker 2: news from a not just from a reader, but like, hey,
49:20
Speaker 2: what's going on over here? And I you know the
49:22
Speaker 2: fact that the first of all, things have changed dramatically
49:24
Speaker 2: and I would say improved quite a bit since since
49:27
Speaker 2: twenty twenty and since SHAN has been since created. But
49:30
Speaker 2: for the most part, people felt their reality was not
49:34
Speaker 2: reflected in how traditional news media portrayed it right, And
49:40
Speaker 2: so it was very important for SAHAN when we were
49:42
Speaker 2: when we were founded, to make sure that, yes, we
49:45
Speaker 2: are speaking to the facts, but we are also making
49:47
Speaker 2: sure that people's lives are reflected accurately in that space. Yeah.
49:53
Speaker 1: No, I get what you're saying. And I think I
49:57
Speaker 1: can tell you my experience that Meet the Press is,
50:00
Speaker 1: particularly with immigrant audiences, is that a lot of I
50:03
Speaker 1: had a lot of first gen viewers for Generation viewers
50:07
Speaker 1: and they and they would tell me, and it would frankly,
50:10
Speaker 1: it's the same thing I do when I'm in a
50:11
Speaker 1: foreign country, even for a week, which is I want
50:15
Speaker 1: to assimilate and understand what's going on locally as quickly
50:17
Speaker 1: as I possibly can. What's the best way to do it.
50:20
Speaker 1: A lot of times it is through the news, and
50:23
Speaker 1: you know, maybe there's a language barrier, and so maybe
50:25
Speaker 1: I'm finding anything that's in my language that still reflects
50:28
Speaker 1: what's going on in the community, or maybe you'll find
50:31
Speaker 1: your expat community in a specific city. But the thing
50:34
Speaker 1: is is that you know the sort of I think
50:38
Speaker 1: the ignorance sometimes that we portray about like how we
50:42
Speaker 1: behave when we move to a new area, we quickly
50:45
Speaker 1: want to assimilate. Is how anybody behaves when they move
50:47
Speaker 1: to a new area, which is they're constantly looking, but
50:50
Speaker 1: they want to understand the place they're living in. And so,
50:54
Speaker 1: you know, I know, the first thing I'd be doing
50:56
Speaker 1: if I lived in Malaysia would be to find the
50:58
Speaker 1: Sunday whatever thequivalent of the political programs are, just so
51:02
Speaker 1: I understood the lay of the land, I understood the
51:04
Speaker 1: politics of the area, Frankly, it's a survival. It's for survival.
51:08
Speaker 1: You're not doing it because you want to know. You're
51:10
Speaker 1: doing it because how do I navigate this new community?
51:13
Speaker 1: Let me learn the politics and economics of.
51:15
Speaker 2: The new community exactly exactly. And yeah, so in a nutshell,
51:19
Speaker 2: that's how that's what SAHAN was was was was created.
51:23
Speaker 2: You know, since then, you know, I have colleagues and
51:28
Speaker 2: I know the leaders of mp of minist of Public
51:31
Speaker 2: Radio and the Stout Tribune and whatnot, and things have
51:33
Speaker 2: dramatically changed since then. But I would say just the
51:36
Speaker 2: thing though, SAHAN, our coverage is one hundred percent focused
51:41
Speaker 2: on issues that impact immigrants and communities of color, right,
51:45
Speaker 2: And I like to use this analogy. So Stout Tribune
51:50
Speaker 2: and MPR they're like, you know your targets, you know,
51:53
Speaker 2: or you know, I don't know what's the grocery.
51:56
Speaker 1: A department store, But you're what you're saying is they
51:58
Speaker 1: have a little bit for everybody, exactly, And everybody can
52:02
Speaker 1: find something in a target that is meant for them.
52:06
Speaker 1: But maybe that target doesn't have everything they're looking for,
52:09
Speaker 1: but they have a couple of things they at least
52:11
Speaker 1: acknowledge my existence exactly exactly.
52:15
Speaker 2: But if you want something very specific, and I use
52:18
Speaker 2: grocery stores because I cook and eat a lot. But
52:21
Speaker 2: if I want that bock Choi vegetable, right, and even
52:23
Speaker 2: though Target sells it for whatever, I'm going to build
52:26
Speaker 2: that an Asian stall two miles away just because I
52:29
Speaker 2: know it's legit for whatever it is, right.
52:31
Speaker 1: And then you think that they're more likely to find
52:34
Speaker 1: the smart, the better growers of bock choi, and they
52:36
Speaker 1: know where to.
52:37
Speaker 2: Get exactly exactly exactly, They're going to care a little
52:40
Speaker 2: bit more. They ca they care much more. Frankly, for
52:43
Speaker 2: that matter, they care much more. And they could also
52:45
Speaker 2: provide insights that the target may not have, right, and
52:49
Speaker 2: that's not targets business foun They shouldn't care. They cut
52:52
Speaker 2: care for everything, right. And so that's why Sahn exists.
52:56
Speaker 2: We exist within this ecosphere. If you care about immigrants,
52:59
Speaker 2: and if you care about issues that the main papers
53:02
Speaker 2: may not have the resources or time to cover, which
53:04
Speaker 2: it does happen right down the daily cycle, that's why
53:08
Speaker 2: you come to Sahan. Because you come to Sahan because
53:10
Speaker 2: you're curious, you're interested, and you seek to understand issues
53:14
Speaker 2: more than just the surface level.
53:16
Speaker 1: Well let's talk about Shan specifically, because you are doing
53:19
Speaker 1: something that on paper wouldn't be easy to do, because
53:22
Speaker 1: you're basically saying, look, we're going to cover all of
53:24
Speaker 1: these underserved immigrant communities, and then while they have some
53:29
Speaker 1: things in common, they actually don't have a lot in common. Right,
53:32
Speaker 1: a Somali community versus among community versus a first generation
53:37
Speaker 1: Mexican American community, right, like it is? It is not
53:42
Speaker 1: so that actually I wonder how difficult that is. That's
53:47
Speaker 1: your north star. But you're basically you know that that's
53:51
Speaker 1: a pretty wide breadth of coverage. So yeah, give me
53:56
Speaker 1: a specific how does it? You know what when you decide, hey,
54:00
Speaker 1: this community needs we need a we need a full
54:03
Speaker 1: time reporter for this community.
54:05
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, well we well, thank you, Chuck Fall putting
54:11
Speaker 2: my problems in a nutshell essentially, but thank you for that.
54:14
Speaker 1: Thank you for uh and my part of our goal here, right,
54:17
Speaker 1: we're trying to figure out how to solve how many
54:19
Speaker 1: of these problems can we solve individually, and how many
54:21
Speaker 1: of these problems are we going to have to build
54:24
Speaker 1: a collective network for. I mean, I know I have
54:26
Speaker 1: a vision of a of a collective network that can
54:29
Speaker 1: where you get to keep your independence. But maybe there
54:32
Speaker 1: is ways to share some expenses, right, and that's you know,
54:36
Speaker 1: to make all of this a little more affordable.
54:39
Speaker 2: Exactly exactly. So let me try to answer you a question.
54:41
Speaker 2: So a couple of things. So you know, Sahan is
54:43
Speaker 2: six years old. So some of the things that you
54:45
Speaker 2: bring up, we're still trying to crack the code, right,
54:47
Speaker 2: you're trying to solve it, right, So a few things.
54:52
Speaker 2: I think there was a deliberate, very deliberate decision that
54:55
Speaker 2: was made when we were started. We published in English,
54:58
Speaker 2: and that was deliberate because our mission is not to
55:01
Speaker 2: just serve one pocket of immigrants, right, Like as you mentioned,
55:05
Speaker 2: we have a whole host of communities. We primarily serve
55:08
Speaker 2: East Africans among Its of Hispanic, but it was also
55:12
Speaker 2: equally important for us to show all Minnesotas, so the
55:15
Speaker 2: non immigrants to a more equitable state. And that only
55:19
Speaker 2: works if we have non immigrants of non immigrants reading
55:22
Speaker 2: our work as well. Now, and we don't really bucket
55:26
Speaker 2: our stories into Somali among Hispanic. We we do traditional beats, healthcare, education,
55:35
Speaker 2: social justice, you know, uh, police reforms uh sorry uh,
55:40
Speaker 2: and security and crime criminal justice and stuff like that.
55:46
Speaker 2: And you know, sometimes those stories relate to a Somoli
55:49
Speaker 2: community modern not among community. As you can imagine, some
55:52
Speaker 2: of the fraud coverage that we were covering right right
55:55
Speaker 2: would would center on a particular community, So we don't
55:59
Speaker 2: necessarily cover them by community. But about topic issues, now,
56:04
Speaker 2: one of the things that we've noticed is that people
56:07
Speaker 2: are not jumping from let's say I'm a mong person.
56:11
Speaker 2: I'm not necessarily going to jump to the Hispanic main
56:15
Speaker 2: story or a Mons story, sorry, a Somali story. And
56:19
Speaker 2: that's something that we're trying to work through right now.
56:22
Speaker 2: But for you, for the fact is that's one of
56:24
Speaker 2: the challenges that we have. So we don't we try
56:29
Speaker 2: to cover things that matter to a particular community, regardless
56:33
Speaker 2: of their regardless of their background. Now, this is what
56:37
Speaker 2: I would say though, and this is a little bit
56:39
Speaker 2: of like a business model where you if you serve
56:42
Speaker 2: the outlier case, you tend to also serve the general public.
56:46
Speaker 2: When it comes to education, right, we wrote a beautiful story.
56:50
Speaker 2: We've written Step one of our education reporter is absolutely
56:53
Speaker 2: amazing and everywhere I'm blessed that everywhere I go people
56:59
Speaker 2: just talk about the report is more than and the
57:01
Speaker 2: ones that I've inherited from this job, so they're really good.
57:04
Speaker 2: But when you talk about the education needs of the
57:07
Speaker 2: current community or the Somali community, and it is uplifted
57:12
Speaker 2: and regardless of your background, when you read it and
57:17
Speaker 2: you're trying to improve the school system and you care
57:19
Speaker 2: about the immigrant that particular community, you do uplift your
57:23
Speaker 2: education system for your own child as well. And so
57:25
Speaker 2: that's one of the things that we've learned that we've
57:28
Speaker 2: seen where you know, the majority non immigrant population in
57:33
Speaker 2: Minnesota still use our news contents their source of not
57:39
Speaker 2: just information, but to advocate for their own child's education system.
57:45
Speaker 2: I can't tell you the amount of moms that I've
57:47
Speaker 2: bumped into who use our education stories in their mom's
57:51
Speaker 2: chat group, because we are at the end of the day,
57:55
Speaker 2: it is a melting bodies, a multi racial society, and
57:59
Speaker 2: what's best for this child is also good for my child,
58:01
Speaker 2: and so it's not as binary as you think as
58:05
Speaker 2: one would think, you know, which is what I walked into.
58:07
Speaker 2: But I you know, I learned quite a number of
58:10
Speaker 2: things as I into my new role here.
58:12
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting you said that you guys are
58:15
Speaker 1: you always publish in English. Yeah, do you think you're
58:18
Speaker 1: leaving any readers on the it is? I mean, does
58:23
Speaker 1: the effort to publish in multiple languages? I mean, is
58:26
Speaker 1: that a how much of that is a financial decision
58:29
Speaker 1: and how much of it is Look, I know, like
58:31
Speaker 1: I said, had grown up in Miami. When I grew
58:33
Speaker 1: up in Miami in the seventies and eighties, I knew
58:35
Speaker 1: many I had many friends whose parents insisted that English
58:40
Speaker 1: be spoke in the house, even though they were Spanish
58:43
Speaker 1: first parents, because they wanted their kids to assimilate to America.
58:47
Speaker 1: So I know there's a lot of immigrant parents who
58:50
Speaker 1: are here with their kids and they're like, no, no, no, no,
58:53
Speaker 1: you've got to We want you to assimilate into American cultures.
58:56
Speaker 1: So we'll do this. So I understand that five. But
59:00
Speaker 1: I'm curious if you looking at at the numbers, if
59:04
Speaker 1: you ever contemplated, well maybe we should or I don't know.
59:08
Speaker 2: It is an ongoing conversation, and let me let me clarify. Yes,
59:13
Speaker 2: we do publish in English, and last year we started
59:16
Speaker 2: Sahan and Espaniels, and then you can imagine what that is, right,
59:20
Speaker 2: and so we do have translations in Hispanic, and we
59:24
Speaker 2: chose Hispanic because they are the largest immigrant population within Minnesota.
59:29
Speaker 2: It is okay, it is, I mean, Somali is very
59:33
Speaker 2: close to second.
59:34
Speaker 1: But but this is state wide versus city. If you
59:38
Speaker 1: just did this in Minneapolis proper, would it be Somali
59:40
Speaker 1: over Latino.
59:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the numbers I mentioned was statewide. Yeah, yeah,
59:44
Speaker 2: absolutely right, yeah yeah. And so here I'm not going
59:49
Speaker 2: to throw anyone under the bus here, but I got
59:51
Speaker 2: to tell you the founder and our editor in chief,
59:54
Speaker 2: they are really picky if they feel like they cannot
59:57
Speaker 2: get the translation right. They were not going to do
59:59
Speaker 2: it at all all because they felt like it would
1:00:01
Speaker 2: insult that population, that community.
1:00:04
Speaker 1: That is also true, and they're looking forward to how
1:00:07
Speaker 1: AI blows this.
1:00:08
Speaker 2: Exactly so, And if you if you want to think
1:00:11
Speaker 2: about AI explosion and technology, this we're talking about the
1:00:14
Speaker 2: last twelve months. But before I when I came on board,
1:00:17
Speaker 2: it was that was what I heard, like, we can't
1:00:19
Speaker 2: do if we can't do this right, which means actually
1:00:22
Speaker 2: actually having a human translator translated from a cultural context. Chunk.
1:00:28
Speaker 2: Don't forget, I'm not talking about word usage, but it's
1:00:31
Speaker 2: a word for a word.
1:00:32
Speaker 1: It's crazyactly, No, no, no, no, that's always much much
1:00:36
Speaker 1: harder to connect exactly.
1:00:38
Speaker 2: So our our editor in chief was mon and and
1:00:41
Speaker 2: found those Somali. They were like, Nope, not going to
1:00:44
Speaker 2: do it, not going to do it because it's it's
1:00:46
Speaker 2: too expensive to have a human translator. Right now, I've
1:00:51
Speaker 2: always wondered when I came on board, you know. And
1:00:54
Speaker 2: now he's two things that we've that I've I've seen
1:00:59
Speaker 2: a We've seen a lot of articles where it's published
1:01:03
Speaker 2: in English and then the comment section is in the
1:01:05
Speaker 2: native town like someone's yep.
1:01:08
Speaker 1: Because it's a less server posted on our somewhere.
1:01:11
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly. And so the the the assumption that we're
1:01:15
Speaker 2: pulling is that people are just reading it, but then
1:01:17
Speaker 2: they're communicating to the community about the content in their
1:01:21
Speaker 2: in their own language.
1:01:22
Speaker 1: Right. So that's perfectly normal. Yeah, perfectly normal.
1:01:24
Speaker 2: And I've seen that in my own life. But then
1:01:28
Speaker 2: now I'm thinking, now news from like, huh, that's interesting.
1:01:41
Speaker 2: We've all experienced this, yeah exactly, and that's probably the
1:01:46
Speaker 2: second generation immigrant population that we're referring to. And now
1:01:50
Speaker 2: the third thing is this a I think it is
1:01:51
Speaker 2: ridiculous how you can press a button here and people.
1:01:56
Speaker 2: There's two options. We can provide the button to be
1:01:59
Speaker 2: pressed so that the language is translated, but you could
1:02:02
Speaker 2: also just click on the page and google whoever it is.
1:02:06
Speaker 2: Your your provider is going to say translated yourself. Right,
1:02:10
Speaker 2: So we are at a crossroads right now. My one
1:02:13
Speaker 2: of my team member, my growth person, brought this idea
1:02:16
Speaker 2: to me and say, hey, do you just want to
1:02:18
Speaker 2: have three buttons up there, English, Somali, mong up the
1:02:21
Speaker 2: top and so people can just click And I would say,
1:02:26
Speaker 2: at this point we could explore it. It's a slightly
1:02:29
Speaker 2: lower list I have my my it's a it's a
1:02:32
Speaker 2: lower lift than what it was twelve months ago, that's
1:02:34
Speaker 2: for sure, right. And my curiosity around audience growth is
1:02:39
Speaker 2: not necessarily around language, but it's around uh, the needs,
1:02:45
Speaker 2: the information needs of a particular generation. So I hope
1:02:50
Speaker 2: that answers your question, because it was a curiosity that
1:02:53
Speaker 2: expected that I was curious. I was thinking about, well, it's.
1:02:56
Speaker 1: One of those things where you know, news make the
1:03:00
Speaker 1: mistakes sometimes where they think, we know we have to
1:03:02
Speaker 1: do this, let's not use an outside tool, let's not assume,
1:03:06
Speaker 1: and sometimes your own readers will do it. So go
1:03:09
Speaker 1: ahead and embrace what their tools may be, and then
1:03:13
Speaker 1: you just offer them all right. You know, it's almost
1:03:15
Speaker 1: like you let your readers. Some of you want to
1:03:18
Speaker 1: translate this. How do you want it done? You know,
1:03:21
Speaker 1: do you have a favorite Most people might have their
1:03:23
Speaker 1: own way. You know what, I use my own translator.
1:03:25
Speaker 1: I don't need you. Maybe you guys can come up
1:03:27
Speaker 1: with a better one. But you're reinventing the wheel here,
1:03:30
Speaker 1: and you know what, it turns out none of us
1:03:32
Speaker 1: have the resources to reinvent wheels in the local news space.
1:03:35
Speaker 1: We've got to save every dollar that's possible here. So
1:03:38
Speaker 1: you know where you can share a resource? Well, great, Hey,
1:03:42
Speaker 1: here's Google. Here's the button for Google Translate. Here's the
1:03:44
Speaker 1: button for Apple's version. Here's the button for open Aiyes,
1:03:48
Speaker 1: and clauds or whatever, Right, and I buy that. Let's
1:03:51
Speaker 1: talk about your business model. Yeah, do you imagine that
1:03:54
Speaker 1: you're always going to be a nonprofit or do you
1:03:56
Speaker 1: see the do you see a vision here? Because you know,
1:04:01
Speaker 1: when you're serving an underserved community, your opportunity to have
1:04:05
Speaker 1: a classified ad system I think is probably higher than
1:04:09
Speaker 1: a more general news local news outlet. The opportunity that
1:04:14
Speaker 1: you have specific businesses that want to target you know,
1:04:17
Speaker 1: your community that you're serving because they provide services that
1:04:22
Speaker 1: over index with immigrant populations. Right. So I imagine there
1:04:28
Speaker 1: is some interesting business opportunities that you have. What's working,
1:04:34
Speaker 1: what do you think is underutilized that you're hoping to
1:04:37
Speaker 1: experiment with, and do you think this can move from
1:04:40
Speaker 1: nonprofit to for profit? You know?
1:04:46
Speaker 2: I as part of my homework, I did hear the
1:04:50
Speaker 2: interview that you did with John right, and there was
1:04:53
Speaker 2: a line that he said that I think residents of
1:04:55
Speaker 2: a lot of people the nonprofit faul profit that's essentially
1:04:58
Speaker 2: a tech status right at the end of the day, yep.
1:05:02
Speaker 2: And the key here is sustainability. That's all what we
1:05:04
Speaker 2: that's all we want.
1:05:05
Speaker 1: We want to have enough regardless of whatever the whatever,
1:05:08
Speaker 1: the your whatever your tax is, are you sustainable or unsustainable?
1:05:13
Speaker 2: Exactly? I think one big difference is if you're a
1:05:16
Speaker 2: nonprofit and you have a banner year, you are reinvesting
1:05:19
Speaker 2: those dollars into the community and into the work, as
1:05:22
Speaker 2: opposed to going to a shareholder or whatnot. Right. So
1:05:27
Speaker 2: the goal here is so let me try to talk
1:05:29
Speaker 2: about it from a sustainability perspective.
1:05:31
Speaker 1: Chuck, that's a great way, perfect perfect is that?
1:05:33
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, if we move the for profit, so be
1:05:37
Speaker 2: it that. I'm guessing I'm going to have to pay
1:05:39
Speaker 2: lawyers a bunch of money to make that happen. But
1:05:41
Speaker 2: is that what we really want?
1:05:43
Speaker 1: So he's either way, lawyers, either way, because you got
1:05:48
Speaker 1: to pay a smart account and a lawyer and then
1:05:50
Speaker 1: not for profit and nonprofit all of it, right, like,
1:05:53
Speaker 1: no matter what. That's why everybody tells tells their kids
1:05:56
Speaker 1: a go to law school because there's always a job. Yeah,
1:05:58
Speaker 1: go ahead, yeah, but I do.
1:06:00
Speaker 2: So let me talk about sustainability here and you I'm
1:06:04
Speaker 2: not I'm sure you are familiar with this, but let
1:06:07
Speaker 2: me share out this story for your audience if they're
1:06:09
Speaker 2: not so familiar but local for a nonprofit entity, it's
1:06:14
Speaker 2: usually the national funders who come in to catalyze a
1:06:19
Speaker 2: news room, right, and so they see a need right
1:06:21
Speaker 2: here in Minnesota, great news ecosystem. But man, that's the
1:06:24
Speaker 2: huge segment of the population that's been neglected. Boom, let's
1:06:28
Speaker 2: invest in Sahan journal, Okay, And from a national foundation perspective,
1:06:33
Speaker 2: they like that, you know, they catalyze they whatever you
1:06:37
Speaker 2: want to call it. The shiny object kind of thing.
1:06:40
Speaker 2: But eventually they believe, and I agree with them, that
1:06:43
Speaker 2: the work needs to be sustained from a from the
1:06:46
Speaker 2: local foundation perspective, from the local reader's perspective, and whatnot. Right,
1:06:50
Speaker 2: And that's the journey where Sahana is in this midpoint.
1:06:53
Speaker 2: We still have national funders, but the conversation is that, hey,
1:06:58
Speaker 2: we need a little bit more time, but we are
1:06:59
Speaker 2: slowly moving into local foundations in local readers. Right if
1:07:06
Speaker 2: eventually we end up becoming like a public like the
1:07:09
Speaker 2: NPR model where I think you're I don't know what's
1:07:12
Speaker 2: the number, but anywhere between sixty to seventy percent uh
1:07:15
Speaker 2: funded by your audience, right, and then the remaining to
1:07:21
Speaker 2: other maybe it's foundations, a couple of foundations here in there,
1:07:24
Speaker 2: but out of business benures. I think that is where
1:07:27
Speaker 2: we need to be, whether we have for profit, So
1:07:30
Speaker 2: for profit is going to be like a paywall system.
1:07:33
Speaker 2: I guess if you want to call it, but nonprofit
1:07:35
Speaker 2: then people are paying twenty bucks a month. They pay
1:07:38
Speaker 2: twenty bucks on Netflix. Now they're paying some undy dollars
1:07:40
Speaker 2: a month. And that's the key piece here because when
1:07:43
Speaker 2: we have a lot of majority, if our revenue comes
1:07:46
Speaker 2: from individual donors. Then we are not beholden to some
1:07:52
Speaker 2: of this. I mean it does happen. We're not beholden
1:07:55
Speaker 2: to lunch lunch, you know, big donors and and and
1:07:59
Speaker 2: and big onnus.
1:08:01
Speaker 1: Right, the right you don't want to have, right, No,
1:08:04
Speaker 1: I know what you mean, meaning like you're you either
1:08:07
Speaker 1: have shareholders, that's one thing, and they demand and it
1:08:11
Speaker 1: really is, look, they demand. It's a judiciary responsibility that
1:08:16
Speaker 1: that word means something for a reason. Right, it is
1:08:18
Speaker 1: about maximizing your profits hard stocks. Right. There is not
1:08:22
Speaker 1: a there is not a character test on that. Right,
1:08:25
Speaker 1: it is just maximizing profits an individual. I always say,
1:08:29
Speaker 1: you know, you can have a benevolent billionaire or a
1:08:32
Speaker 1: malevolent billionaire, or you could have a billionaire who's both
1:08:34
Speaker 1: malevola some years and benevolent other execs. Right, and relying
1:08:39
Speaker 1: on the whim of one means you're always going to
1:08:42
Speaker 1: be defined by that one, for better or for worse.
1:08:45
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, look at the Washington Post. They're
1:08:47
Speaker 1: being defined by their individual owner. I never thought the
1:08:51
Speaker 1: Washington Post would ever put itself in that situation. Right,
1:08:53
Speaker 1: it was like, you know, most people can't tell you
1:08:56
Speaker 1: the name of who owns the New York Times.
1:08:58
Speaker 2: That should be.
1:08:59
Speaker 1: How the Washington Post works, even the Wall Street Journal.
1:09:02
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people don't fully a lot
1:09:06
Speaker 1: of you know, I'm guessing if you're in the business,
1:09:08
Speaker 1: you know who owns it. But I bet you it
1:09:10
Speaker 1: isn't easily known, right because the murdocks are so afraid
1:09:14
Speaker 1: of the Wall Street Journal losing its prestige, they kind
1:09:18
Speaker 1: of back off, back off. They don't want it, They
1:09:21
Speaker 1: don't want to be the defining image and brand of that.
1:09:25
Speaker 1: So I totally understand what I'm curious about, because this
1:09:29
Speaker 1: is what happened to the successful black press news organizations
1:09:33
Speaker 1: of the thirties, forties and fifties and sixties, where it
1:09:37
Speaker 1: was incredibly necessary until mainstream media finally acknowledge the existence
1:09:43
Speaker 1: of these communities. Then over time, the resources of those
1:09:48
Speaker 1: large news organizations suddenly finally covering Black America made it
1:09:55
Speaker 1: harder for the black press to to you know, survive
1:09:58
Speaker 1: in that in that instant. I mean, look, this would
1:10:01
Speaker 1: be a good problem for your communities to have. Suddenly
1:10:04
Speaker 1: the start Tribune had the resources to cover it all. Yeah,
1:10:08
Speaker 1: is that something or do you think we're you know,
1:10:11
Speaker 1: we're in a. This is a generational shift in how
1:10:14
Speaker 1: the information ecosystem on a local level is going to work.
1:10:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean if you work. I came from a
1:10:21
Speaker 2: nonprofit background before this, right, And if at the end
1:10:25
Speaker 2: of the day your job is to kind of work
1:10:28
Speaker 2: yourself out of the job at the end of the day,
1:10:30
Speaker 2: that means like some point.
1:10:31
Speaker 1: If you're doing it, well, if you're using nonprofit, well
1:10:34
Speaker 1: that's exactly right, that whatever you're doing, you should eventually
1:10:37
Speaker 1: not have to be doing that because exactly your investment
1:10:41
Speaker 1: was so smart and targeted that it got it thrives
1:10:45
Speaker 1: on its own exactly.
1:10:47
Speaker 2: So. But let me go back to what you were saying.
1:10:50
Speaker 2: Here's so, here's my theory.
1:10:51
Speaker 1: I do think.
1:10:54
Speaker 2: Fundamentally we do need to be reader funded by a reader,
1:10:58
Speaker 2: like a big portion, more than fifty sixty maybe even
1:11:01
Speaker 2: seventy percent. And I don't know what the exact number is,
1:11:04
Speaker 2: and and that's something that we have to work it through.
1:11:08
Speaker 2: I have a a. I also have a theory. Again,
1:11:13
Speaker 2: I'm saying this again because I'm not a journalist, so
1:11:15
Speaker 2: I might be saying things that might make me look
1:11:19
Speaker 2: dumb or whatnot, but I I'm not convinced I'm not
1:11:25
Speaker 2: convinced that audience size is our Is it panacea? That's
1:11:34
Speaker 2: the word panacee? Yeah, we do. We need to do
1:11:39
Speaker 2: a good job. We need to have a sizeable audience,
1:11:42
Speaker 2: not just from an impact perspective. Right, you guys talk
1:11:44
Speaker 2: about here, you write the best article in the one
1:11:46
Speaker 2: than five people read it?
1:11:48
Speaker 1: Who cares? Right? Right?
1:11:49
Speaker 2: So okay, so if it's not five, how about five
1:11:51
Speaker 2: thousand volient? How about fifty thousand? What maybe it is
1:11:54
Speaker 2: half a million dollars, but half a million. But here's
1:11:56
Speaker 2: the thing, Chuck, if I would read it right now,
1:11:59
Speaker 2: if I will read this, we have let's say about
1:12:00
Speaker 2: two hundred thousand a month, it goes up to three
1:12:03
Speaker 2: hundred thousand a month or four hundred thousands of a month.
1:12:05
Speaker 2: Does that mean our revenue size double? No, it's not right.
1:12:09
Speaker 2: I don't think so, because it's not. It's not a
1:12:11
Speaker 2: one for one thing, right we. Part of it feels
1:12:15
Speaker 2: that we talk about reader size because it's still tied
1:12:18
Speaker 2: to the old way of making money, which was advertising. Right,
1:12:22
Speaker 2: And the way I look at audience size is that
1:12:24
Speaker 2: it is important for legitimacy, It is important for impact.
1:12:28
Speaker 2: Even if ten people read that and those ten people
1:12:30
Speaker 2: happened to be state legislatures.
1:12:32
Speaker 1: Good for good for Saha. Oh absolutely right. Yeah, Looking CNBC,
1:12:37
Speaker 1: I can tell you the business model for CNBC is
1:12:39
Speaker 1: not ratings. They've never had. There's not a lot of
1:12:41
Speaker 1: people that watch the stocks every day. But you know
1:12:44
Speaker 1: it's CNBC sells. They have CEOs who keep their TV on.
1:12:47
Speaker 1: So it's the it's they're selling who's watching, They're not
1:12:52
Speaker 1: selling how many are watching. And what you're saying is
1:12:55
Speaker 1: the quality of your reader is as important to yours.
1:12:58
Speaker 2: As inporting and exactly and so yes, we you know,
1:13:02
Speaker 2: is that what the grow audience? Yes, I think if
1:13:05
Speaker 2: we have time to talk about in the future, we've
1:13:07
Speaker 2: talked about where we want to grow next. But I
1:13:09
Speaker 2: I we we do need an excizeable audience, but we
1:13:13
Speaker 2: need to leverage that audience. How do I say, the
1:13:18
Speaker 2: understanding of what sahan means the brand right, and how
1:13:22
Speaker 2: can we make money from that? We've talked about I
1:13:24
Speaker 2: mean you've already seen events. They've talked about creating events,
1:13:28
Speaker 2: right John.
1:13:32
Speaker 1: You know, a quarterly festival of some sort of cultural
1:13:35
Speaker 1: might be news, might be you know whatever, right exactly.
1:13:40
Speaker 2: You know I've talked about I think the future generation
1:13:44
Speaker 2: people are yearning for a sense of community, and what
1:13:47
Speaker 2: can SAHAN do to create that sense of community? Right
1:13:50
Speaker 2: and and when they have this thing from us, I'm
1:13:53
Speaker 2: sure they will continue to support SAHAN. So I don't
1:13:57
Speaker 2: have a full answer yet, but I've told this to
1:13:59
Speaker 2: my team before. It's become a broken record to the
1:14:01
Speaker 2: point where I actually need to do it. But if
1:14:03
Speaker 2: I find out that, hey, a laundromet that has a
1:14:06
Speaker 2: net profit margin of thirty percent, maybe SAHAN should just
1:14:10
Speaker 2: own laundro mets and turn the profit margins to fund
1:14:13
Speaker 2: for newsroom because I don't care as long as it's clean,
1:14:16
Speaker 2: legit money, obviously, But at the end of the day,
1:14:19
Speaker 2: if we can transfer some of our net earnings from
1:14:21
Speaker 2: one unrelated business model to support of a newsroom, that's
1:14:25
Speaker 2: a win for me. You know, I find it so
1:14:28
Speaker 2: unfortunate that, but.
1:14:29
Speaker 1: That's exactly how media has always been funded. You know,
1:14:32
Speaker 1: it's interesting take you know, I sort of joke that
1:14:35
Speaker 1: a man named Craig decided classified how to be free, YadA, YadA, YadA,
1:14:39
Speaker 1: we destroyed the entire local news ecosystem, right, Well, it
1:14:42
Speaker 1: turned out for a lot of news organizations you know,
1:14:47
Speaker 1: and this was true of some newspaper publishers. They believe
1:14:50
Speaker 1: they were running an advertising business and whatever space they
1:14:54
Speaker 1: couldn't fill an ad, they had to have news article,
1:14:58
Speaker 1: you know. And and I think that that is how
1:15:02
Speaker 1: some news publishers felt it was simply a vehicle for
1:15:05
Speaker 1: advertisement and and you know, and so you know, there
1:15:09
Speaker 1: is that there there there is that line there that
1:15:12
Speaker 1: I that I think is that that there was probably
1:15:14
Speaker 1: some truth to that. But you're not wrong. It's like whatever,
1:15:19
Speaker 1: you know, you may stumble on like, I've got this
1:15:22
Speaker 1: theory that there's a lot of money to be made
1:15:24
Speaker 1: in youth sports exactly, yep, and that youth sports can
1:15:29
Speaker 1: be a way to become the new classified advertising for
1:15:33
Speaker 1: local journalism. So youth sports is something that families of
1:15:36
Speaker 1: all shapes and sizes care about. Everybody is you know what,
1:15:40
Speaker 1: and there's always a there's some sport we have our
1:15:42
Speaker 1: kids participating in. It is a glue for a community.
1:15:46
Speaker 1: It they are always you know, it is very niche.
1:15:48
Speaker 1: But at the same time, it's also something everybody has
1:15:51
Speaker 1: in common. No matter how wealthy you are or how
1:15:53
Speaker 1: poor you are, you may have a kid who's playing
1:15:55
Speaker 1: in participating in youth sports. So you may stumble upon
1:16:01
Speaker 1: a way to showcase youth sports games that make a
1:16:05
Speaker 1: ton of money that finances the journalism. So I totally
1:16:08
Speaker 1: see where you're going.
1:16:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thank you for You know, Amazon was not
1:16:13
Speaker 2: really profitable until they stumbled on. I'm not gonna use
1:16:16
Speaker 2: stumble because the person will be insulted. But Amazon Web
1:16:19
Speaker 2: Service isn't this right? Finally turned finally to quantify.
1:16:22
Speaker 1: They're the profit engine, and that's right. I don't know exactly,
1:16:25
Speaker 1: I don't know if Amazon has ever made money as
1:16:27
Speaker 1: a retail outlet. It acquired audience, right, it was a
1:16:31
Speaker 1: loss leader, and you know, they just wanted it quickly.
1:16:34
Speaker 1: I mean, look at how they've suckered us all in
1:16:36
Speaker 1: on streaming services. Right. It turns out we all got
1:16:40
Speaker 1: addicted at three and four dollars a month, Like, okay, great,
1:16:43
Speaker 1: now it's nineteen ninety nine a month. Whoa, whoa? What
1:16:46
Speaker 1: am I all of a sudden, I'm spaying what up
1:16:47
Speaker 1: out of the cable bundle? Right? Like, we're all going,
1:16:49
Speaker 1: exactly where did that go?
1:16:51
Speaker 2: So? I think so that's where we're that's where we're looking.
1:16:54
Speaker 2: That's the that's the moment we're looking for. Like, so
1:16:56
Speaker 2: I found this is one of my surprising things. And
1:17:01
Speaker 2: you are probably going to say, yeah, what if you
1:17:02
Speaker 2: didn't know that? But newsrooms can be conservative at times
1:17:06
Speaker 2: in terms of what they're willing to try out from
1:17:07
Speaker 2: a business model perspective. I'm fortunate that I'm not that
1:17:13
Speaker 2: in that space. You know, I work with I'm in
1:17:16
Speaker 2: a coalition with other newsrooms, like like newsrooms Documented in
1:17:20
Speaker 2: New York, el Teimpannel in in in the Bay Area
1:17:25
Speaker 2: and then connect to Arizona, and we are working you know,
1:17:28
Speaker 2: it's funded by Press Forward.
1:17:29
Speaker 1: Uh Press Forward.
1:17:32
Speaker 2: Foundation, Yep, you're familiar with that. And we are trying
1:17:34
Speaker 2: to identify new revenue, new revenue streams for not just newsrooms,
1:17:38
Speaker 2: but in the immigrants serving newsrooms, and so we are
1:17:42
Speaker 2: you know, we're piloting a few things, we're testing them out.
1:17:45
Speaker 2: But the spirit of being an immigrant and where you're
1:17:48
Speaker 2: not tied to certain traditional legacy media practices allows us
1:17:53
Speaker 2: to push things out on the boundaries. And hey, if
1:17:55
Speaker 2: we have some good news to share, A love to
1:17:56
Speaker 2: be coming back to your show with my colleagues to
1:17:59
Speaker 2: talk about how we are making money to support the work.
1:18:11
Speaker 1: So have you networked with other immigrants focused news organizations
1:18:16
Speaker 1: around the country. And if so, tell me about that network,
1:18:19
Speaker 1: how how much of you how how much of it
1:18:22
Speaker 1: is it? How loose is it or how specific does
1:18:25
Speaker 1: it get?
1:18:26
Speaker 2: Sure? Yes, So on my first day, on my first week,
1:18:31
Speaker 2: I even before going to the office, I met with
1:18:35
Speaker 2: this this group. So we call ourselves I n C
1:18:39
Speaker 2: Immigrant Newsroom Coalition right now, it's just it's it's document
1:18:44
Speaker 2: like I'm going to say, in names again, documented in
1:18:46
Speaker 2: New York, Sahan in Minneapolis, out Timpano in the Bay Area,
1:18:50
Speaker 2: and connect to Arizona. Each of us have very different,
1:18:55
Speaker 2: you know, slightly different for sure, different audiences, different business models.
1:18:59
Speaker 2: And they've just taken me on board to just not
1:19:03
Speaker 2: just to educate me about the industry, to welcome me,
1:19:07
Speaker 2: to tell me, hey, yeah, this is how it is
1:19:09
Speaker 2: in the in in the space that we're operating in.
1:19:12
Speaker 2: And and we we meet weekly. This is a very
1:19:17
Speaker 2: dedicated group of leaders and news rooms.
1:19:19
Speaker 1: Very so this is national. You do like a weekly
1:19:22
Speaker 1: zoom or something, We do a weekly zoom.
1:19:24
Speaker 2: We we meet quarterly for a retreat to strategize, and
1:19:28
Speaker 2: you know, we we have a few we're working through
1:19:31
Speaker 2: a few things. I mentioned a little bit about our revenue,
1:19:34
Speaker 2: the different pilots we're testing out to bring in new
1:19:37
Speaker 2: revenue streams. But we feel but one of the and
1:19:40
Speaker 2: we're working through a few initiatives right now. I think
1:19:44
Speaker 2: one big part is to continue to to impress upon
1:19:48
Speaker 2: important stakeholders like you know, Chuck, you you got you
1:19:51
Speaker 2: get the message, and you got the message pretty loud
1:19:54
Speaker 2: and clear early on in your life. And the same
1:19:56
Speaker 2: fact is not everyone is in that space, you know,
1:19:59
Speaker 2: And so we do feel like we do need to
1:20:01
Speaker 2: champion we do need to champion the needs of immigrant
1:20:05
Speaker 2: serving newsrooms. You know, we have some really good newsrooms
1:20:08
Speaker 2: out there around the country that that's still.
1:20:11
Speaker 1: Tell me about them. Tell me a couple of partners
1:20:13
Speaker 1: that you think people ought to be aware of that
1:20:16
Speaker 1: you look to as where you've learned something, you've taken something. Obviously,
1:20:21
Speaker 1: you guys share best practices. So yeah, i'd love I'd
1:20:23
Speaker 1: love a couple of shout outs.
1:20:25
Speaker 2: Yeah sure, sure, let me So I'm going to use God,
1:20:30
Speaker 2: you're putting me in a spot where i feel like
1:20:32
Speaker 2: I'm picking favorites here, then I'm going.
1:20:34
Speaker 1: To get on exactly.
1:20:38
Speaker 2: So one of my favorite so I think one one
1:20:42
Speaker 2: key thing that that is in common with all immigrant
1:20:45
Speaker 2: serving news rooms that I've observed is the lack of
1:20:49
Speaker 2: adherence to certain practices that traditional media tends to follow.
1:20:54
Speaker 2: And so I would one of my favorite stories is
1:20:56
Speaker 2: from Connect to Arizona. So the founders Maritza Felix, and
1:21:00
Speaker 2: I'm going to butcher her origin story, but it's pretty
1:21:03
Speaker 2: cool for what it's worth. During COVID pandemic, you know
1:21:07
Speaker 2: her mom who lives on the other side of the
1:21:08
Speaker 2: border with she would be on the phone with her
1:21:10
Speaker 2: mother talking about COVID precautionary stuff and all that stuff,
1:21:13
Speaker 2: and her mom was receiving incorrect information, and so she
1:21:17
Speaker 2: would spend a lot of time just speaking to her
1:21:19
Speaker 2: mother over the phone. She said, And Mariita is a
1:21:23
Speaker 2: journalist herself, and that phone call became in my mind,
1:21:31
Speaker 2: it became like an audio newsletter because right now, she does,
1:21:35
Speaker 2: if you go to journal dot com, you're going to
1:21:38
Speaker 2: see something that looks like a traditional website, and Mariita's
1:21:43
Speaker 2: Connected result does not have that because her primary content
1:21:46
Speaker 2: is still through WhatsApp channels. Right, So someone could say
1:21:49
Speaker 2: I have five hundred newsletter subscribers. She will say I
1:21:53
Speaker 2: have five hundred. I don't know what terminology she uses,
1:21:56
Speaker 2: like WhatsApp subscribers, right, I'm so glad you up WhatsApp
1:22:00
Speaker 2: in general, because I don't think people realize how global
1:22:04
Speaker 2: and how it's such an important lifeline to so many
1:22:07
Speaker 2: immigrant communities in America because it's global exactly. So I
1:22:13
Speaker 2: can't remember when, but I was walking past her. She
1:22:17
Speaker 2: was just filming a whatstapp, She was reading a script,
1:22:19
Speaker 2: she was basically reading her content, and she said she
1:22:22
Speaker 2: was going to send push to all of her subscribers, right,
1:22:25
Speaker 2: So isn't that I mean, that's really cool, Chuck. How
1:22:31
Speaker 2: many legacy newsrooms would say they would do that to
1:22:34
Speaker 2: connect primarily with the audience, because there is a deep
1:22:37
Speaker 2: understanding that my audience are auditory audience as opposed to
1:22:42
Speaker 2: they would prefit things over right, So.
1:22:44
Speaker 1: I think this is what you know. It's funny if
1:22:46
Speaker 1: you look at the history of media, and one of
1:22:48
Speaker 1: the things I like to remind people is that, like, actually,
1:22:51
Speaker 1: disruption is a feature, not about meaning. It starts with
1:22:55
Speaker 1: when we figured out how to reproduce photographs. Then people
1:22:58
Speaker 1: launched a bunch of magazines because we could now reprint photographs.
1:23:01
Speaker 1: When we figured out how to transmit audio, we had
1:23:04
Speaker 1: radio stations everywhere. When we figured out how to do
1:23:09
Speaker 1: moving pictures, then we got television right like. And so
1:23:12
Speaker 1: what we're in now is this fragmenting stage and the
1:23:15
Speaker 1: specialization stage, where there is no barrier to entry to
1:23:21
Speaker 1: create news and information anymore. There's no you know, look
1:23:25
Speaker 1: at the organization I used to work at NBC. We
1:23:28
Speaker 1: used to have a feature called where in the world
1:23:31
Speaker 1: is you know, filling the anchor blanks? You know that name,
1:23:34
Speaker 1: because we're going to go live from the Gobi Desert.
1:23:37
Speaker 1: We're going to go live from Antarctica. And it was
1:23:40
Speaker 1: such a marvel ten fifteen years ago that we could
1:23:44
Speaker 1: take you lot. Anybody can go live from Antarctica. You've
1:23:48
Speaker 1: got to get there, okay, But you could have an
1:23:51
Speaker 1: antic correspondent. Today, you could find somebody that lives there
1:23:55
Speaker 1: and they could real time transmit information back and forth.
1:23:59
Speaker 1: The point being is, I think the future of news
1:24:04
Speaker 1: delivery is going to be personal. It is going to
1:24:07
Speaker 1: come through trusted curators. The person that conveys the information
1:24:11
Speaker 1: maybe part of a larger network that aggregates information collectively. Right,
1:24:15
Speaker 1: we may all work in some of these same newsrooms together.
1:24:19
Speaker 1: We may bundle like I could see, you know, I
1:24:21
Speaker 1: bet you in the future, I'm going to, hey, I
1:24:23
Speaker 1: want I want to subscribe to all Minnesota publications for
1:24:27
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars a month and I'll get a bundled
1:24:30
Speaker 1: fee or I want you know, you know, and everybody
1:24:33
Speaker 1: will get a piece of that. And maybe that's how
1:24:35
Speaker 1: I'll I'll roll there. But I just think we're going
1:24:38
Speaker 1: to the way people come into a news organization is
1:24:41
Speaker 1: going to be personal, not based on a brand, but
1:24:44
Speaker 1: based on an individual I just think that. And you
1:24:47
Speaker 1: just described the individual way that suddenly half a million
1:24:51
Speaker 1: people showed.
1:24:52
Speaker 2: Up in exactly Yep. It's one individual way. And and
1:24:56
Speaker 2: that's just what it's with WhatsApp, right, And that's a
1:24:59
Speaker 2: lot of information that's been shared over sms. Now. Sahans
1:25:03
Speaker 2: started from it, and it's still predominantly like a very
1:25:06
Speaker 2: traditional outlet right now. We do really good work with
1:25:09
Speaker 2: social media, with TikTok and with our video content, and
1:25:13
Speaker 2: that's why we over index with not just immigrant population,
1:25:16
Speaker 2: but young immigrant population, something that I'm really proud of.
1:25:20
Speaker 1: But the.
1:25:23
Speaker 2: I think what I said earlier, what was it the
1:25:25
Speaker 2: lack of adherence to legacy practices binds us together not
1:25:30
Speaker 2: just from a content creation, content distribution, but also from
1:25:33
Speaker 2: a revenue generation perspective. So we are willing to take
1:25:37
Speaker 2: a risk. We take a risk coming to this country.
1:25:40
Speaker 2: We believe in the ideal supports in this country. We're
1:25:42
Speaker 2: willing to take a risk, and it shows up in
1:25:44
Speaker 2: the way we run our organizations.
1:25:49
Speaker 1: Well, look, I anyway, it's very exciting. I think these possibilities.
1:25:55
Speaker 1: Let me ask this, what kind of are you syndicate
1:26:00
Speaker 1: in your work? Yeah? Meaning you know it's the Star
1:26:02
Speaker 1: Tribute and said, you know what, we want to improve
1:26:05
Speaker 1: our coverage, and it may be I'm curious if you
1:26:08
Speaker 1: would do this or would you see this is too close,
1:26:10
Speaker 1: too competitive?
1:26:11
Speaker 2: No, no, we actually do that already, so we have
1:26:17
Speaker 2: you know, I walked into a Kumba Kumbay. Kumbay is
1:26:21
Speaker 2: what I'm learning here, Kumbaya. I got you situation.
1:26:25
Speaker 1: Yep.
1:26:26
Speaker 2: So you know Sahan was incubated Minnesota.
1:26:28
Speaker 1: Nice. Please, it's Minnesota. Nice. You guys are all too cooperative, right, Hey,
1:26:35
Speaker 1: I that's.
1:26:36
Speaker 2: Some friendly competition. But you know, Sahan was incubated at
1:26:40
Speaker 2: Minnesota Public Radio, like muk Bar had a desk in there.
1:26:44
Speaker 2: They they funded the first million dollars. They was far
1:26:48
Speaker 2: and yeah, and so I think I look, first of all,
1:26:52
Speaker 2: I look about Sahan listening Minnesota Public Radio.
1:26:55
Speaker 1: So we do have content already collaborating. We are already.
1:26:58
Speaker 2: Collaborating the Start Tribune. I believe every Sunday chooses one
1:27:05
Speaker 2: article that we run, that we've published, and then they
1:27:09
Speaker 2: put it into their their circulation and say, this is
1:27:11
Speaker 2: a hundred article. You know, they because they realize that
1:27:15
Speaker 2: of the value, our value the ecosystem, and we also
1:27:20
Speaker 2: realized that they have the reach that we don't. We
1:27:22
Speaker 2: will never get. Well, I wouldn't say we will never
1:27:24
Speaker 2: get because my team will slaughter be. We're not. We're
1:27:28
Speaker 2: not there yet, right, Yeah, So we are cooperating around
1:27:31
Speaker 2: along those lines. I'm really excited that we are also collaborating.
1:27:37
Speaker 2: We are finding stories that we can collaborate on. You know,
1:27:40
Speaker 2: because frankly, if you I'm sure you are aware of
1:27:45
Speaker 2: what happened in the first quarter of the year in Minneapolis, and.
1:27:50
Speaker 1: This was a case where the story so big it
1:27:52
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. You kind of needed each other as resources
1:27:55
Speaker 1: and exactly.
1:27:56
Speaker 2: So we found some some we found some opportunities to
1:28:01
Speaker 2: collaborate editorially, and I'm extremely curious to see how that
1:28:04
Speaker 2: plays out.
1:28:05
Speaker 1: Let me close with this, you know, I'm I look
1:28:09
Speaker 1: at I look at local news into two ways, and
1:28:14
Speaker 1: I think the mistake. The reason national news never has
1:28:17
Speaker 1: the trust that local news has, I believe is simply
1:28:23
Speaker 1: national news is news. You you should know, it's it's
1:28:27
Speaker 1: civics class, okay. And I say that not as a
1:28:31
Speaker 1: way to knock it. It's what it should be at
1:28:33
Speaker 1: its best. It is because you know, but local news
1:28:37
Speaker 1: sometimes is civics and sometimes it's just very personal. It's
1:28:42
Speaker 1: service journalism, meaning it ain't the greatest, it ain't the
1:28:47
Speaker 1: sexiest story. Oh you know, but if you're helping your
1:28:51
Speaker 1: readers save money, save time, live their lives, you're just
1:28:57
Speaker 1: helping them live their life a little better. It does.
1:29:00
Speaker 1: It isn't always telling them who's corrupt. Sometimes it is
1:29:05
Speaker 1: letting them know where to find more affordable chicken, right
1:29:08
Speaker 1: like you know, And I used to say, the reason
1:29:11
Speaker 1: that the local newspaper has such a nostalgic field for
1:29:14
Speaker 1: some of us is because it was they had something
1:29:17
Speaker 1: for everybody, right If the news junkie the puzzle junkie,
1:29:21
Speaker 1: the sports junkie, the coupon clipper, the whatever you want
1:29:24
Speaker 1: to look, the person looking for a job. Right, there
1:29:26
Speaker 1: were there was a It was one entity that provided
1:29:30
Speaker 1: service to eight to ten different parts of the community.
1:29:34
Speaker 1: How would you describe at the SAHAN Journal? What are there's?
1:29:38
Speaker 1: There's there's the news that we'd all traditionally sense. What
1:29:41
Speaker 1: are type of this?
1:29:42
Speaker 2: What?
1:29:42
Speaker 1: What tell me your service oriented type of journalism? And
1:29:47
Speaker 1: how much culture? How much you know youth coverage, sports, food, entertainment?
1:29:54
Speaker 1: You know? Are you are you? I know those are
1:29:56
Speaker 1: luxury items as you grow right as a news organization,
1:29:59
Speaker 1: But where are you on that? And and what do
1:30:01
Speaker 1: your readers want? I mean, obviously ultimately you should be
1:30:04
Speaker 1: only providing what your readers actually correct?
1:30:06
Speaker 2: What what would consume correct? We it's a let'm trying
1:30:16
Speaker 2: to unpack this question a little bit here, but uh,
1:30:20
Speaker 2: we we do a really good job when it comes
1:30:25
Speaker 2: to hard hitting news that impact immigrants, and so we
1:30:28
Speaker 2: don't we will we will never run away from that.
1:30:30
Speaker 2: We will not stay away from it, right we We
1:30:36
Speaker 2: also strongly believe that if it was if there was
1:30:39
Speaker 2: something that that that was hard to be covered from
1:30:41
Speaker 2: an from an immigrant community perspective. We are the best
1:30:44
Speaker 2: ones to do it because we we bring a lot
1:30:46
Speaker 2: of perspective that that that that better to the reader.
1:30:49
Speaker 2: Now along the lines are like what you just said,
1:30:54
Speaker 2: it's also very my dog just walked in. Sorry a lot.
1:31:01
Speaker 2: There are a lot of parts about being an immigrant
1:31:03
Speaker 2: that that needs to be celebrated, that needs to be
1:31:06
Speaker 2: looked at from a from a joyful perspective that oftentimes
1:31:10
Speaker 2: is missing in coverage. And that's a piece that we
1:31:13
Speaker 2: that we also seek to highlight because it shows the whole,
1:31:17
Speaker 2: the whole, the whole picture of what it means to
1:31:20
Speaker 2: be an immigrant within in Minnesota. Right, So yeah, we
1:31:24
Speaker 2: cover we cover. You can cover your restaurant openings, but
1:31:27
Speaker 2: we cover the holidays that are being celebrated by these
1:31:29
Speaker 2: different communities. Right. We just did a beautiful story about
1:31:33
Speaker 2: Ramadan and also eat. I have so many I'm not
1:31:37
Speaker 2: going to share the stories, but I have so many.
1:31:41
Speaker 2: We have stories about the passing of a father from
1:31:44
Speaker 2: a Mong father, Monk farmer father, and how it was
1:31:46
Speaker 2: celebrated by the community that was you know, Mong but
1:31:50
Speaker 2: also uh also white in the suburbs. So we we
1:31:56
Speaker 2: don't we don't cover sports, and that's that's okay, that's okay, But.
1:32:01
Speaker 1: You will, I promise you at some point you might.
1:32:04
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and a bit of art arts are being celebrated,
1:32:08
Speaker 2: but uh and and and and and we feel like
1:32:10
Speaker 2: that's a good opportunity for the population to understand the
1:32:14
Speaker 2: immigrants space within the art space. And so yeah, we
1:32:17
Speaker 2: we do. I call it the candy broccoli analogy. I
1:32:21
Speaker 2: think you guys used news that people need to have
1:32:23
Speaker 2: versus what they want. So it's the candy broccoli thing.
1:32:26
Speaker 2: And so that's a fair mix of that. Yeah.
1:32:29
Speaker 1: Well, anyway, I've enjoyed this conversation, and I know everything
1:32:35
Speaker 1: I've heard about and and been reading about SAHAN Journal
1:32:38
Speaker 1: has been I mean, you guys seem to be a
1:32:40
Speaker 1: bright a bright spot here and and these and this
1:32:43
Speaker 1: growing local entrepreneur space.
1:32:45
Speaker 2: And thank you, thank you so much.
1:32:47
Speaker 1: No, I think a lot of like I said, the
1:32:49
Speaker 1: barrier entry has never been lower, but you know you
1:32:53
Speaker 1: still got to jump.
1:32:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, thank you. I I appreciate you highlighting
1:32:57
Speaker 2: the importance of local news. I completely agree with you.
1:33:00
Speaker 2: You there's a very very strong there's some study that
1:33:03
Speaker 2: has shown that local news is also less divisive right.
1:33:07
Speaker 2: We tend to look at news outlets and there's always
1:33:09
Speaker 2: someone yelling at someone else, and you know, you say, oh,
1:33:13
Speaker 2: this restaurant opened, this treat me that's less divisive, but
1:33:16
Speaker 2: it's helpful, right, And studies have shown when people in
1:33:19
Speaker 2: the RCT with the local news, they are most civically
1:33:22
Speaker 2: engaged and civic minded and stuff like that as well.
1:33:24
Speaker 1: And then there's the other stories that uh, local news.
1:33:28
Speaker 1: Deserts pay more than taxes, so you know, you know,
1:33:33
Speaker 1: there's a there's a fiscal Uh, there's a there's a
1:33:36
Speaker 1: there's fiscal health for people's personal bank accounts at Staycare anyway, yes, uh,
1:33:42
Speaker 1: but it was a pleasure.
1:33:44
Speaker 2: Oh, pleasures all mine, Chuck. I remember if I had
1:33:47
Speaker 2: this day with you, so thank well.
1:33:48
Speaker 1: Let's celebrate Local News Day. And I imagine most people
1:33:52
Speaker 1: in Minneapolis are very very well read city and community,
1:33:56
Speaker 1: but hopefully those that aren't aware will be more aware
1:34:01
Speaker 1: of come April night.
1:34:02
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
1:34:03
Speaker 1: Thanks right to start with you, all right, remember April ninth,
1:34:17
Speaker 1: Local News Day. I hope you've already. I've got a
1:34:22
Speaker 1: great email the other day from somebody saying that they've
1:34:27
Speaker 1: you know, thanks to me, harping on this so much.
1:34:28
Speaker 1: And I think that's what they use the words harp.
1:34:31
Speaker 1: It's like, okay, if you want to say I'm harping,
1:34:32
Speaker 1: I'm harping that they've signed up and subscribe to a
1:34:37
Speaker 1: local news outlet. So hey, I'm happy to be the
1:34:43
Speaker 1: harp player for you here. So April ninth, local news day.
1:34:47
Speaker 1: But you don't have to wait till libor ninth to
1:34:49
Speaker 1: go find out what good local news is in your
1:34:52
Speaker 1: neck of the woods. Go figure it out now. But
1:34:55
Speaker 1: on April ninth, hopefully those local news proprietors will be
1:34:59
Speaker 1: making it ea for you to find them. All Right,
1:35:02
Speaker 1: it's my it's Wednesday. Let's do a top five, top.
1:35:07
Speaker 3: Five top test.
1:35:12
Speaker 1: And I'm just going to go back to basics here.
1:35:14
Speaker 1: But the premise of the top five list this week
1:35:17
Speaker 1: is the premise that I think now it is official.
1:35:21
Speaker 1: I think in the moment we're in at the moment
1:35:23
Speaker 1: and this, you know, it's very interesting when it comes.
1:35:25
Speaker 1: I've I've always had this debate with my friend Charlie
1:35:28
Speaker 1: Cook and the folk Namy Walter, the folks over at
1:35:30
Speaker 1: the Cook Report, folks at crystal Ball, the folks inside Elections,
1:35:34
Speaker 1: which is when you do your rankings, do you do
1:35:37
Speaker 1: it trying to figure out it's based on where you
1:35:39
Speaker 1: think the political environment is going to be in November
1:35:42
Speaker 1: or where you are at the moment, right, And I
1:35:46
Speaker 1: would say, you know, we all will say, well, it's
1:35:48
Speaker 1: a hybrid, right, And that's where I am.
1:35:50
Speaker 3: It's a hybrid.
1:35:51
Speaker 1: I think we are. I think this is a political
1:35:53
Speaker 1: environment that is that is deteriorating quickly for Republicans.
1:35:57
Speaker 2: Right.
1:35:58
Speaker 1: You now have the House and the Senate openly feuding
1:36:01
Speaker 1: over how to resolve thes DHS funding crisis. In fact,
1:36:06
Speaker 1: the fact that House Republicans and Senate Republicans are in
1:36:08
Speaker 1: a completely different place on this has bailed out Democrats.
1:36:12
Speaker 2: Right.
1:36:12
Speaker 1: I think now Republicans own this more at the moment
1:36:16
Speaker 1: because the Senate Republicans passed something to do this, and
1:36:20
Speaker 1: then the House Republicans, I guess, with a little bit
1:36:23
Speaker 1: of Donald Trump's encouragement, decided to tank it. And so
1:36:27
Speaker 1: now we're in this uncomfortable situation where yes, TSA employees
1:36:31
Speaker 1: are kind of getting paid. But anyway, the point is
1:36:33
Speaker 1: is that every week it seems, you know, this goes
1:36:37
Speaker 1: back to the Haley barbarism that I've been quoting quite
1:36:40
Speaker 1: a bit here for those of you that listen a lot,
1:36:42
Speaker 1: and that as good gets better, bad gets worse. And
1:36:44
Speaker 1: right now this political environment for Republicans bad is going
1:36:49
Speaker 1: to worse. Right The Texas situation is not any better.
1:36:52
Speaker 1: What looked like could be an opportunity for Republicans to
1:36:55
Speaker 1: save a Senate seat down in Texas with John Cornyn unexpectedly,
1:37:00
Speaker 1: you know, being the top vote getter in the first
1:37:02
Speaker 1: round of voting. Maybe they could convince Trump to endorse
1:37:05
Speaker 1: Cornan over Paxton. Will that ship is ill right, the
1:37:10
Speaker 1: Paxton folks have bought enough time. Now it looks like
1:37:12
Speaker 1: Trump's not going to do it. And we know Trump
1:37:14
Speaker 1: will never back somebody he fears could lose and embarrass
1:37:20
Speaker 1: him because you know, I think we're going to find out.
1:37:22
Speaker 1: And my friend Jonathan Martin is a great piece about
1:37:25
Speaker 1: how May is really going to be the month that
1:37:27
Speaker 1: we learn how tight is Trump's grip on the Republican Party.
1:37:31
Speaker 1: Can you run away from Trump? Can you criticize Trump
1:37:34
Speaker 1: and survive in a primary? Right, it's going to be
1:37:36
Speaker 1: tested all over the map. Thomas Massey is probably going
1:37:39
Speaker 1: to be the first test. But that's I think we're
1:37:43
Speaker 1: gonna we're going to We're going to start. That'll be
1:37:45
Speaker 1: a big one. And if he succeeds, you're going to
1:37:48
Speaker 1: start to see I think more Republicans feeling emboldened perhaps
1:37:53
Speaker 1: to try to chart their own course, because you do
1:37:57
Speaker 1: get to a point anytime when you're in a political
1:37:59
Speaker 1: party where the national environment's going south on you. It
1:38:02
Speaker 1: becomes every every member, especially on the incumbent side, every
1:38:07
Speaker 1: incumbent for themselves. There's no longer, there's no more team player.
1:38:11
Speaker 1: It is survival of the fittest, or survival of the
1:38:14
Speaker 1: of the of the fittest, might be the wrong way,
1:38:17
Speaker 1: of the of the most pragmatists, or whatever you want
1:38:19
Speaker 1: to call it, but the point is is everybody kicks
1:38:22
Speaker 1: into survival mode and we may be in there. So
1:38:25
Speaker 1: look with that, and you've seen this turn right, There
1:38:28
Speaker 1: was a new norm, you know. So look Number one
1:38:30
Speaker 1: my top five list, top five Senate seats most likely
1:38:34
Speaker 1: to flip. And the big news on my list this
1:38:37
Speaker 1: week is there's not going to be a single republicancy
1:38:39
Speaker 1: a Democratic health seat on my list, and the only
1:38:42
Speaker 1: one that comes close is Michigan. But I will tell
1:38:45
Speaker 1: you in a minute why I have no longer put Michigan.
1:38:47
Speaker 3: On that list.
1:38:48
Speaker 1: But number one continues, and in fact I think it's
1:38:51
Speaker 1: number one, and there's actually some space now, and that
1:38:54
Speaker 1: is North Carolina. There's I just saw a recent poll
1:38:56
Speaker 1: that had Cooper up eighteen points, so I think he's
1:38:58
Speaker 1: up eighteen points. I don't. But the fact is it
1:39:03
Speaker 1: seems as if the gap is spreading, it is not closing.
1:39:07
Speaker 1: You know, Michael Wattley, the former R and C chair,
1:39:09
Speaker 1: was already trying to do something, and I think was
1:39:11
Speaker 1: quite hard to go directly from being a national chair
1:39:15
Speaker 1: of the chair of a national party to try to
1:39:17
Speaker 1: win a Senate seat. Tim Kaine pulled this off, but
1:39:21
Speaker 1: he was also a governor, a former governor, so he
1:39:23
Speaker 1: had had some he had had some electoral experience. It
1:39:29
Speaker 1: is much more difficult to basically make this your first
1:39:33
Speaker 1: entree into into sort of state wide elect the politics
1:39:36
Speaker 1: like that in general. But you're also you own everything Trump, right,
1:39:39
Speaker 1: there is no way Whatley can be independent of Trump
1:39:42
Speaker 1: under any circumstance, and you sort of see it in
1:39:45
Speaker 1: the numbers. And Cooper doesn't have to deal with a
1:39:48
Speaker 1: didn't have to deal with any sort of radical left
1:39:52
Speaker 1: and you know, anybody way to the left, he didn't
1:39:55
Speaker 1: have to deal with, even somebody you know, from the
1:39:57
Speaker 1: from further to his left, but maybe in the main
1:40:00
Speaker 1: extream liberal wing of the party. He didn't have to
1:40:02
Speaker 1: deal with any of that. And if you can avoid
1:40:05
Speaker 1: a primary in this environment as a Democrat in a
1:40:08
Speaker 1: purple state like North Carolina, you're gonna have a lot
1:40:11
Speaker 1: of room to run. So he's number one, and arguably
1:40:14
Speaker 1: there is huge space now like that is I'm almost
1:40:18
Speaker 1: at a seventy five percent confidence level on that one.
1:40:22
Speaker 1: You can go take a look at what Polymarketer Calshier
1:40:25
Speaker 1: at and find out where the actual money is. Number
1:40:29
Speaker 1: two continues to be made. And we've seen even and
1:40:32
Speaker 1: I look, I'm going to keep it here. At number two,
1:40:37
Speaker 1: we see the governor Janet Mills has gone a bit
1:40:41
Speaker 1: scorched earth trying to salvage her you know, we put
1:40:44
Speaker 1: it this way, her behavior going after Graham Platner confirms
1:40:49
Speaker 1: that all the polling is true. Platner is ahead, and
1:40:51
Speaker 1: he's ahead by a lot. So the fact that he's
1:40:53
Speaker 1: already ahead and he didn't really have much name minded
1:40:57
Speaker 1: going into this thing and me, it's going to be
1:41:00
Speaker 1: really hard for her to dislodg him, especially because he
1:41:05
Speaker 1: has the resources to respond. You know a lot of times,
1:41:08
Speaker 1: you know, an insurgent like Platner may catch fire, but
1:41:14
Speaker 1: they don't really have the resources. Once the big bad
1:41:16
Speaker 1: establishment machine sort of trains its negative ad guns on you,
1:41:22
Speaker 1: it's harder to recover. But he has enough resources to respond.
1:41:26
Speaker 1: I think he's done a reasonable job responding. And as
1:41:29
Speaker 1: we see this is you know, when you're in environments
1:41:34
Speaker 1: like this as a challenger, it is harder as an incumbent.
1:41:39
Speaker 1: In some ways, both Janet Mills and Susan Collins are
1:41:41
Speaker 1: incumbents in this situation, right, One is a sitting governor,
1:41:43
Speaker 1: one is a sitting senator. Graham Platner gets to be
1:41:45
Speaker 1: the outsider, whether he's running against in the primary against
1:41:48
Speaker 1: Mills or he's running in a general against Susan Collins.
1:41:51
Speaker 1: And if you want to make him the referendum, I
1:41:53
Speaker 1: get why you want to do it. You try to
1:41:55
Speaker 1: make his character referendum. The problem is, in a political
1:41:58
Speaker 1: environment like this, the incumbents, it's much harder for an
1:42:01
Speaker 1: incumbent to change, to change the climate to where it's
1:42:06
Speaker 1: no longer a referendum on those in office. And I
1:42:09
Speaker 1: think that's especially going to be difficult for Susan Collins,
1:42:11
Speaker 1: but I think it's also a bit of a problem
1:42:14
Speaker 1: for Janet Mills. But the fact of the matter is
1:42:17
Speaker 1: it won't It may not matter which Democrat wins the primary.
1:42:19
Speaker 1: Either one right now is ahead of Susan Collins, and
1:42:22
Speaker 1: that's why it sits at number two. So number three
1:42:26
Speaker 1: on my list is now Ohio because that is another thing,
1:42:32
Speaker 1: and this is how you can see things deteriorating. Right,
1:42:36
Speaker 1: you know, during the presidential election cycle, Sharon Brown when
1:42:39
Speaker 1: he was running in it's you know, he's now running
1:42:42
Speaker 1: for the other Senate seat technically, right, he lost the
1:42:45
Speaker 1: Senate CETL before he lost to Bernie Moreno. This is
1:42:49
Speaker 1: the special technically the special election to fill out the
1:42:53
Speaker 1: rest of JD. Vance's term after he became Vice president.
1:42:57
Speaker 1: The appointed Republican senators John Houston. And look, when this
1:43:03
Speaker 1: race began, you saw that the generic Republican advantage in
1:43:06
Speaker 1: Ohio was holding and Houston would be up by a
1:43:10
Speaker 1: couple of points. And to me, with somebody as well
1:43:13
Speaker 1: known as Shared Brown, if you're trailing somebody who's less
1:43:15
Speaker 1: known than you, yes, Houston as run statewide himself, was
1:43:18
Speaker 1: the elected secretary of state, been a running mate, all
1:43:20
Speaker 1: of those things shared Brown's you know, probably had more
1:43:26
Speaker 1: than a billion dollars of TV ads run on his
1:43:29
Speaker 1: behalf of just in just this decade, right in the
1:43:32
Speaker 1: multiple time, basically since twenty eighteen. So he's a far
1:43:38
Speaker 1: more well known figure in Ohio than John Houston is.
1:43:42
Speaker 1: But this is where I've seen that the biggest change
1:43:49
Speaker 1: in any in sort of the political climate has been
1:43:53
Speaker 1: with the start of this around war, the negative view
1:43:56
Speaker 1: that many voters have, particularly independence in the middle, throw
1:44:00
Speaker 1: in the impact on the economy, and now all of
1:44:05
Speaker 1: the polling has started to show Democrats taking a small
1:44:08
Speaker 1: lead in Ohio. That is hugely significant. You already have
1:44:14
Speaker 1: a very good challenger candidate here. Look, my skepticism on
1:44:18
Speaker 1: Brown is still there that it's tough to be a
1:44:22
Speaker 1: challenger when you've been sort of in office as long
1:44:25
Speaker 1: as he has. But if the bigger issue is the
1:44:30
Speaker 1: economy and Trump, you know, I don't know if the
1:44:34
Speaker 1: Republicans are going to able to make this a referendum
1:44:35
Speaker 1: on share Brown. They had a better They did it,
1:44:39
Speaker 1: They did a better job. It was an easier thing
1:44:41
Speaker 1: for them to do in twenty four. It's gonna be
1:44:43
Speaker 1: a little harder now. And again, the national political environment,
1:44:46
Speaker 1: you sort of feel it hasn't bottom hasn't fallen yet,
1:44:52
Speaker 1: but you can hear the cracks. And that's what this
1:44:55
Speaker 1: war has done, right. It has sort of weakened the
1:44:58
Speaker 1: floor that republic are currently standing on, and there's every
1:45:02
Speaker 1: chance it could sink down the level sooner than we think,
1:45:06
Speaker 1: so Ohio. Number three on my list of most likely
1:45:11
Speaker 1: to flip. Number four is Alaska, and we've seen Mary
1:45:18
Speaker 1: Patola again, she's somebody else that appears to be starting
1:45:22
Speaker 1: in a strong position. I still I think this race
1:45:27
Speaker 1: is a coin flip at best. But I you know,
1:45:31
Speaker 1: and I am you know, there is a chance that
1:45:36
Speaker 1: Alaska short term economy might benefit from the rising cost
1:45:41
Speaker 1: of energy in some ways that can happen sometimes to
1:45:44
Speaker 1: a state that is exporter of oil and gas. So
1:45:47
Speaker 1: you know, I don't I don't want to fully characterize
1:45:50
Speaker 1: the economy yet in what it's going to feel like
1:45:53
Speaker 1: or look like in Alaska, because it might be unique
1:45:55
Speaker 1: and different given the current circumstances that we're in. But
1:45:58
Speaker 1: we've already seen early polling indicating Popolo starts an extraordinarily
1:46:04
Speaker 1: strong position here. I think Dan Sulvin's going to be
1:46:07
Speaker 1: hard to magify, if you will. But because you have
1:46:12
Speaker 1: Lisa Murkowski sitting there as a sort of closer to
1:46:14
Speaker 1: being a true independent in the Senate, I think by comparison,
1:46:18
Speaker 1: he certainly looks more trumpy than certainly Lisa Murkowski. And
1:46:23
Speaker 1: then I think the question is what is number five
1:46:25
Speaker 1: on the list? What is the fifth most likely to flip?
1:46:30
Speaker 1: And I think at this point I'm going to say
1:46:32
Speaker 1: it's Nebraska, And this is going to be a bit
1:46:35
Speaker 1: of the surprise. But let me explain why I think
1:46:37
Speaker 1: Nebraska and Dan Osborne winning as an independent and what
1:46:42
Speaker 1: kind what that could mean. Some of you may think, oh,
1:46:45
Speaker 1: it's just wishful thinking that I want to see sort
1:46:48
Speaker 1: of both parties get challenged here from a third way,
1:46:54
Speaker 1: from an independent way. Yes, it's true. I think both
1:46:56
Speaker 1: parties need to need a a disruption from the outside
1:47:01
Speaker 1: as much as they're trying to disrupt each other internally.
1:47:08
Speaker 1: But my skepticism, Look, I think Pete Ricketts is no
1:47:11
Speaker 1: debt Fisher, and I don't mean that to not debt Fisher,
1:47:14
Speaker 1: but I think Ricketts is going to be is already
1:47:17
Speaker 1: a bit more prepared for this campaign, is probably going
1:47:21
Speaker 1: to drop more APO on Osborne than Fisher ever did.
1:47:24
Speaker 1: She waited too long. So, but again, when you're the
1:47:30
Speaker 1: incumbent and you're having to defend a really bad political environment,
1:47:35
Speaker 1: it is harder to turn your challenger into to create
1:47:39
Speaker 1: a referendum on the challenger. It's not impossible. And Ricketts
1:47:42
Speaker 1: has some deep pockets and has even his own money
1:47:46
Speaker 1: potentially if he chooses to use it. His father TD
1:47:49
Speaker 1: Ameritrade at least a piece of that version of the
1:47:52
Speaker 1: company before it merged with some other aspects of it.
1:47:56
Speaker 1: But there's some deep financial pockets there. But I think
1:48:01
Speaker 1: this political environment presents Osborne an even stronger opportunity to
1:48:04
Speaker 1: win than the presidential environment did. Right. First of all,
1:48:07
Speaker 1: presidential turnout Nebraska made it even harder for him, I think,
1:48:10
Speaker 1: to overcome. But the other thing that's that is still
1:48:13
Speaker 1: going to be a difficult thing for him to overcome
1:48:15
Speaker 1: is this idea of well, if he's running against Ricketts,
1:48:18
Speaker 1: it means he doesn't want Republicans control the Senate. So
1:48:21
Speaker 1: by default, Dan Osborne, does that mean you want Democrats
1:48:24
Speaker 1: and Chuck Schumer to run the Senate. How he answers
1:48:27
Speaker 1: that question, and how he answers that question throughout the
1:48:30
Speaker 1: campaign is going to matter a lot and his ability
1:48:32
Speaker 1: to win. If I were in issues and I kept
1:48:36
Speaker 1: getting asked that question, So which party you're going to
1:48:38
Speaker 1: caucus with? He goes, Look, I don't know the easy answers.
1:48:41
Speaker 1: I don't want Donald Trump running the Senate. I don't
1:48:43
Speaker 1: want Chuck Schumer running the Senate. I know, when I
1:48:46
Speaker 1: get elected, I'm going to you know, I'm going to
1:48:48
Speaker 1: pull together the true independence of the Senate, Lisa Murkowski,
1:48:54
Speaker 1: Angus King, and whoever wants to be in this independent caucus.
1:48:58
Speaker 1: And I'm going to try to start an independent caucus,
1:49:00
Speaker 1: and we're going to make the two parties make their
1:49:03
Speaker 1: case to us as a group as to which party
1:49:06
Speaker 1: ought to run the Senate. And I think short of
1:49:14
Speaker 1: a response like that, there's that Osborne is going to
1:49:18
Speaker 1: have a hard time convincing. Maybe somebody who's not a
1:49:21
Speaker 1: big Rickets fan, maybe not a big Thoon or Trump fan,
1:49:25
Speaker 1: but doesn't want to see Chuck Schumer in charge of
1:49:27
Speaker 1: the Senate. Right to me, that's the voter. Osborne's got
1:49:32
Speaker 1: to figure out how to talk to and how to
1:49:34
Speaker 1: convince that he's serious about being an independant. And that's
1:49:40
Speaker 1: certainly how I would convey my seriousness about being an
1:49:42
Speaker 1: independent and basically saying, you know, my goal is not
1:49:46
Speaker 1: to pick either side. My goal is to work with
1:49:48
Speaker 1: the Common Sense Center or the common Sense Senators and
1:49:53
Speaker 1: we'll decide. You know, we don't want to be sucked up, right,
1:49:56
Speaker 1: you know, right now, Trump and Schumer, this is this
1:49:58
Speaker 1: is part of the problem. And if you can get
1:50:02
Speaker 1: to a message like that, and I think he has
1:50:04
Speaker 1: a better shot at getting to a message like that
1:50:06
Speaker 1: than many other candidates running, then I think that's a
1:50:10
Speaker 1: recipe there. So for that reason, I am putting Nebraska
1:50:14
Speaker 1: in the five slot there at this point. Now for
1:50:20
Speaker 1: this first time, I haven't put Michigan in the top five.
1:50:22
Speaker 1: And you ask why is that? Because I think the
1:50:24
Speaker 1: Michigan candidate that is hardest for Republicans to defeat is
1:50:27
Speaker 1: Mallory mcmarrow. And by the way, I've had people mentioned
1:50:30
Speaker 1: to me that I keep calling her Molly McMorrow. That
1:50:32
Speaker 1: is one hundred percent accurate in my head. I keep
1:50:35
Speaker 1: calling her Molly instead of Mallory. Mallory McMorrow. My apologies
1:50:39
Speaker 1: to you. Maybe this is why we haven't gotten you
1:50:41
Speaker 1: on yet, I tease, But I think the fact that
1:50:48
Speaker 1: her candidacy is getting more traction, more polling is showing
1:50:50
Speaker 1: her getting more traction. I think she is probably the
1:50:53
Speaker 1: nominee that is best suited to unify what is a
1:50:57
Speaker 1: very splinter Democratic primary. Right, Haley Stephens sort of the
1:51:01
Speaker 1: Schumer candidate, Abdul Elsai ed the Elizabeth Warren Bernie Sanders candidate,
1:51:05
Speaker 1: and there's malloy McMorrow sort of straddling the fence there.
1:51:09
Speaker 1: But I think in some ways she has leaned into
1:51:12
Speaker 1: being the outsider, and outsider is better I think than
1:51:17
Speaker 1: being establishment or Warren Sanders, progressive, right, outsider an independent.
1:51:22
Speaker 1: To me is what are the best descriptors to be
1:51:27
Speaker 1: to be a candidate in twenty twenty six. I would
1:51:30
Speaker 1: not say being progressive or conservative or I don't think
1:51:34
Speaker 1: those are the best adjectives to want to have as
1:51:35
Speaker 1: a candidate. Outsider, independent, I think those are the words
1:51:41
Speaker 1: that the swing voters of twenty.
1:51:43
Speaker 3: Twenty six are going to be looked for.
1:51:51
Speaker 1: Ask Chuck, Hey, Chuck, this comes from Chase, who I
1:51:57
Speaker 1: think is the person who invented the ash Chuck five
1:52:00
Speaker 1: timer Club, So he is I think I'm gonna make
1:52:02
Speaker 1: him president. You don't have to just hashtag in anymore.
1:52:05
Speaker 1: Chase you are you are? You are the president of
1:52:09
Speaker 1: the ass Chuck five timer Club, and he asks, hey,
1:52:13
Speaker 1: Chuck as the ranking echoes himself the ranking member, not
1:52:15
Speaker 1: the chair. But I'm gonna make a president. I reserve
1:52:18
Speaker 1: the right to lob the occasional tinfoil hat question. Those
1:52:21
Speaker 1: are the rules I wrote them. I could amend them
1:52:23
Speaker 1: at will. So what exactly is going on with all
1:52:26
Speaker 1: the alien talk lately? Between Obamas who knows, Trump talking
1:52:28
Speaker 1: about declassifying everything, jad Van saying aliens might be demons,
1:52:32
Speaker 1: and Rubio talking about possible long term cover ups. It
1:52:34
Speaker 1: feels like extraterrestrials suddenly became a bipartisan talking point. So
1:52:38
Speaker 1: actually something driving this wave of UFO UAP chatter or
1:52:42
Speaker 1: is this just the world's strangest recurring political subplot best regards?
1:52:45
Speaker 1: I have to tell you, I you know, I'm one
1:52:47
Speaker 1: of those who believe, who believes that we're not alone.
1:52:52
Speaker 1: By the way, I'm obsessed with the three body that
1:52:56
Speaker 1: I think the premise of the TV show on Netflix
1:52:59
Speaker 1: called the Three Body Problem. I think it is, which
1:53:01
Speaker 1: come on Netflix. I want my next season. It's been
1:53:03
Speaker 1: a while. I know it's in a very expensive and
1:53:06
Speaker 1: my friend Mark Murray read all the novels and he
1:53:08
Speaker 1: says they're fantastic. At some point I may delve into
1:53:11
Speaker 1: him myself. But the premise of that one is we
1:53:13
Speaker 1: find out sort of, you know, almost a couple generations
1:53:17
Speaker 1: in advance, that these aliens are coming, but it's going
1:53:19
Speaker 1: to take them a while, right, And so it is,
1:53:25
Speaker 1: you know, I buy that, you know, I buy the
1:53:28
Speaker 1: idea that maybe some of these things we see might
1:53:31
Speaker 1: be probes or something, but they're probably not people. They
1:53:34
Speaker 1: probably were coming from another entity that are just in
1:53:37
Speaker 1: the same way we send out you know, if we're
1:53:39
Speaker 1: sending out telescopes to go look at far off galaxies,
1:53:44
Speaker 1: if there is another civilization of sorts out there, or
1:53:47
Speaker 1: another species, they're likely doing the same thing.
1:53:50
Speaker 2: Right.
1:53:51
Speaker 1: So the odds, right, I don't know, can we bet
1:53:55
Speaker 1: on this on Calshier polymarket. I think the odds are
1:53:57
Speaker 1: in the ninety five percent area that there is there
1:54:02
Speaker 1: is extra terrestrial life outside the Earth. But I don't,
1:54:08
Speaker 1: you know, while all the increased chatter really hasn't added
1:54:12
Speaker 1: I'm with you, it hasn't added any new information other
1:54:14
Speaker 1: than oh okay. So it looks like the military and
1:54:20
Speaker 1: the government have been keeping track of any time members
1:54:22
Speaker 1: of the military think they see something they can't identify,
1:54:26
Speaker 1: but it hasn't really added to anything, right, So I
1:54:30
Speaker 1: count myself on you know, I think the movie Contact
1:54:35
Speaker 1: and the TV show Three Body Problem, I think are
1:54:39
Speaker 1: the ones that best. I think that you know. I'm
1:54:46
Speaker 1: in many ways. Contact was based on sort of Carl
1:54:50
Speaker 1: Sagan theories, right, I am. I find myself in that
1:54:55
Speaker 1: camp where the aliens are just going to show one day,
1:55:00
Speaker 1: we're going to get years in advance and sort of
1:55:03
Speaker 1: see this coming. The question is do we see it
1:55:06
Speaker 1: coming in time? And are they benevolent or malevolent? But
1:55:11
Speaker 1: I'm with you, I think all of the chatter is
1:55:15
Speaker 1: it's sort of self fulfilling, right, because the government's released
1:55:19
Speaker 1: a few more details, more people ask people that used
1:55:23
Speaker 1: to be in government about it, and more people that
1:55:25
Speaker 1: used to be in government feel more comfortable talking about it.
1:55:27
Speaker 1: But they don't have any more information really than any
1:55:31
Speaker 1: of us ever did. Next question comes from Dean from
1:55:35
Speaker 1: Long Island. He says, Hey, I understand your point that
1:55:37
Speaker 1: you can't win a race to the bomb, and I
1:55:39
Speaker 1: generally agree with your approach, but I sometimes wonder if
1:55:41
Speaker 1: what we're seeing now feels less like a race and
1:55:43
Speaker 1: more like a survival moment Politically, if one side feels
1:55:46
Speaker 1: like the rules are being rewritten, is it's still possible
1:55:48
Speaker 1: to play by the old rules and complete and compete effectively.
1:55:51
Speaker 1: At what point does the old playbook stop working and
1:55:53
Speaker 1: something else become necessary. Look, I get, I understand what
1:55:57
Speaker 1: you're saying, and I will just say that that history's
1:56:02
Speaker 1: lesson is when you do try to sort of change
1:56:06
Speaker 1: your principles to fit a moment because you're trying to
1:56:09
Speaker 1: survive a moment, it is very hard to get back
1:56:12
Speaker 1: to where you were on the principal side of things.
1:56:19
Speaker 2: And so.
1:56:21
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I'm guessing you're more writing about
1:56:24
Speaker 1: sort of my stubbornness about this Virginia remap, which I
1:56:28
Speaker 1: just think is again, this political environment right now, it's six'.
1:56:32
Speaker 1: Five the first and the second in this political environment
1:56:36
Speaker 1: would both, flip so we'd be at a three without
1:56:38
Speaker 1: changing the map at, All Virginia. Democrats so now you're
1:56:43
Speaker 1: going through this entire. Rigmarole you're basically burning whatever political
1:56:47
Speaker 1: Capital Abigails bamberger got for two extra, seats not five extra,
1:56:52
Speaker 1: seats not four extra. Seats two extra. Seats that's a
1:56:57
Speaker 1: lot of political capital for two extra. Seats that may
1:57:00
Speaker 1: not be that. Meaningful, look if it turns Out democrats
1:57:04
Speaker 1: win by five or, less Then virginia And california bailed
1:57:08
Speaker 1: the party. Out but it's not as if if that's
1:57:12
Speaker 1: How democrats win The, house that's no. Mandate that's you,
1:57:17
Speaker 1: know that's not effective. Control that's technical, control but it's
1:57:21
Speaker 1: not effective. Control and it doesn't mean the voters really
1:57:23
Speaker 1: were affirming For democrats control The. House it was, basically you,
1:57:28
Speaker 1: know anything less than five seats is just sort of
1:57:32
Speaker 1: a race by race. Contest so look what you, describe,
1:57:40
Speaker 1: right that is that's the judgment. Call BUT i think
1:57:49
Speaker 1: if you, want you, know it all comes through short,
1:57:51
Speaker 1: termism long, termism AND i just think the unintended consequences
1:57:56
Speaker 1: of essentially being a, party and AND, i you know
1:58:00
Speaker 1: this IS i get at this a little. BIT i
1:58:02
Speaker 1: don't think we're ready to move on from this moment
1:58:06
Speaker 1: we're living. IN i you, KNOW i sort OF i
1:58:11
Speaker 1: went deeper on My monday monologue about talking about sort
1:58:14
Speaker 1: of comparing the era Between jackson And lincoln to the
1:58:17
Speaker 1: era we're living in now and how long it took
1:58:19
Speaker 1: us we had seven presidents that basically refused to deal
1:58:22
Speaker 1: with the actual divide that was the issue that was
1:58:25
Speaker 1: actually dividing, us which was. Slavery in this era of,
1:58:29
Speaker 1: polarization we don't seem to be dealing with the issue
1:58:32
Speaker 1: that we're actually all arguing, about which is who's An
1:58:34
Speaker 1: american and who should be An? American and what what Is?
1:58:37
Speaker 1: America and until we confront that issue head, ON i
1:58:45
Speaker 1: don't you, know all these little things we do to
1:58:49
Speaker 1: game the situation on the left right to try to
1:58:51
Speaker 1: win power just, delays just puts that, large that confrontation
1:58:56
Speaker 1: and that issue off yet another election cycle or. Two
1:59:00
Speaker 1: SO i guess my longer term answer to your point here, Is,
1:59:04
Speaker 1: dinez this certainly allows you to deal with the moment
1:59:10
Speaker 1: on firmer, ground but it ain't a. Solution i'm gonna
1:59:18
Speaker 1: take one more question and THEN i unfortunately we're going
1:59:21
Speaker 1: to have to put this. One we don't want to
1:59:23
Speaker 1: go too long on these. Things last question comes From Scott,
1:59:26
Speaker 1: turner And. Oregon, Hey, CHUCK i listen to your podcast
1:59:28
Speaker 1: at the. Gym sweating around oldies rather than to them
1:59:32
Speaker 1: helps take my mind off of how much tougher it
1:59:34
Speaker 1: is to age at my. Age my question has to
1:59:36
Speaker 1: do with how media outlets handle political. Lies how often
1:59:38
Speaker 1: avery reporters say there's no evidence for those, claims which
1:59:40
Speaker 1: makes it sound like the claims might still be true
1:59:43
Speaker 1: instead of just. False why don't journalists more directly call
1:59:45
Speaker 1: lies what they? Are and how do reporters keep a
1:59:47
Speaker 1: straight face when they hear obviously ridiculous? Answers, also happy.
1:59:50
Speaker 1: Baseball your current Nets travail's remind me of being an
1:59:53
Speaker 1: early nineteen Eighties oaklanees fan in nearly empty. Stadiums thanks
1:59:56
Speaker 1: to all you do Is scott Seed. Turner scott Seed, Turner. Oregon,
2:00:00
Speaker 1: look it is always you. Know, UH i think you
2:00:08
Speaker 1: better be careful when you call somebody a, liar because
2:00:14
Speaker 1: you know they may truly believe something that isn't. True
2:00:18
Speaker 1: lying implies sort of, intent, Right and how do you?
2:00:22
Speaker 1: Know can you crawl inside their head and know that
2:00:24
Speaker 1: they are intentionally misleading you or there or you? Know
2:00:29
Speaker 1: so that's why you see so many a journalists sort
2:00:32
Speaker 1: of couch. IT i think even in the infamous EXCHANGE
2:00:36
Speaker 1: i had With kelly And conway And meet The press alternative,
2:00:38
Speaker 1: FACTS i, said those are, falsehoods AND i you, KNOW
2:00:42
Speaker 1: i lost a little sleep wondering SHOULD i said lies or?
2:00:44
Speaker 1: Falsehoods AND i think when you use the word, lie
2:00:47
Speaker 1: you immediately put somebody on the, defensive and then you
2:00:51
Speaker 1: get to the point where you're no longer having you,
2:00:54
Speaker 1: KNOW i am more interested, in, well why do you think?
2:00:56
Speaker 1: That where did you get your? Information AND i think
2:00:58
Speaker 1: that that's the better way to, go because then you
2:01:01
Speaker 1: find out how somebody came to believe what they. Espoused
2:01:08
Speaker 1: AND i think the role of the journalists rolled should
2:01:10
Speaker 1: be more of trying to understand why did you say?
2:01:14
Speaker 1: That where did you get your? Information that's where the
2:01:17
Speaker 1: interrogation should, go and to help the viewer understand why
2:01:23
Speaker 1: they're misleading in that. Moment but, look it's A that's
2:01:31
Speaker 1: the WAY i viewed it is THAT i didn't want
2:01:33
Speaker 1: to chase people. AWAY i wanted everybody in the. Conversation
2:01:37
Speaker 1: so that's why you sometimes you, know WE'RE i don't
2:01:44
Speaker 1: want to say we're playing umpire, referee but it's sort
2:01:46
Speaker 1: of a little bit more in that territory where if
2:01:50
Speaker 1: you start throwing, out you, know all of a, sudden
2:01:53
Speaker 1: we're the debate participant versus being the debate. Moderator SO
2:01:58
Speaker 1: i guess that's the. Line that's certainly the. Line AND
2:02:00
Speaker 1: i was hugging all the, time which is why some
2:02:02
Speaker 1: people loved it and some people hated.
2:02:03
Speaker 3: It AND i understand.
2:02:05
Speaker 1: That all. Right with, that you're going to see me
2:02:08
Speaker 1: in forty eight hours on twenty eight four, hours as you, know,
2:02:12
Speaker 1: tonight first night Of, passover SO i will be dropping
2:02:17
Speaker 1: my next episode not On, thursday but On. Friday and with,
2:02:21
Speaker 1: That i'll see in forty eight hours