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Local Journalism Matters with Justin Engel · Sidewalk Talks

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You ever done a
• 0:00
  Speaker 2: podcast like this? No, I haven't. I Really? Heard my voice I'm hearing it, like, point two seconds after I say it.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Isn't that weird kinda? I have
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: to be a little used to that, but
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: I'll be okay.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: It's like yeah. Is it weird? Like, is it too weird? No.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: It's not too weird. Okay. I'll adjust. Okay. Yeah.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: You're a smart dude. Well, this is your first podcast ever? Or Oh.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Yes. I mean, I listen to podcast, but I've never been on podcast. So in my head, I've been in podcasts. How you've been I'm hearing other people Yeah. Do podcasts.
• 0:32
  I'm in my head talking to them. So now I'm
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: just speaking up. Wait. Like, what's your go to podcast?
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, I like any movie movies, like a movie podcast. Podcast. Okay. How did this, like, kinda spoof funny comedy movie podcast? Like, how did this get made?
• 0:49
  Oh,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: I like that one. You're a movie buff? What's your why? Like, how? Why?
• 0:55
  How'd you get into movies? Do you remember the first movie that, like, got you into movies that said, like, I really like this?
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: I remember my first theater experience. Oh. Well, I don't know if it was my first, but my first memory I had about this theater experience was coming out of the Court Street Theater, and I watched Return of the Jedi, like, when it came out. And I'm a little I'm not young, but I'm not old enough to have experienced the original Star Wars. So Return of the Jedi was my introduction and my theater introduction to to Star Wars.
• 1:27
  So that was fun, and the Court Street Theater was and is well, it's not reopened yet, but Coming back, baby. Lately, it's it's been a nice venue. I like going there.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I hear the word on the street is here in 2026.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: That's what I'm hearing too.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Rumor. The rumor mill. Thanks, Jordan, for doing that Jordan Dice. So the so coming out of the Court Street Theater, you said, like, I I dig movies.
• 1:51
  What, like, what was it about that movie that said, like, I'm more than just, like, a Friday night every once in a while kind of movie guy.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Joppy the Hutt was a pretty pretty cool monster villain. Yeah. When you're I must have been, like, six or seven when that came out. Luke Skywalker was a cool, hero. Han and Leia, I mean, the whole thing.
• 2:12
  It's it's you know, again, I hear people talking about the original Star Wars as their, you know, touchstone for why they got into theater movies. But for me, it was Return of the Jedi because that was my my age and my era.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: It's it's kinda like the epicness of it. Like, it's not just this moment in time in a New Jersey neighborhood, you know, like that kind of ubiquity of it, but of like, here's an entire universe that can go so many different and all the different storylines. And of course, like, you got the reluctant hero, like, becoming the hero. Like, who doesn't love that?
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: That's right. You know? And Darth Vader, he was a cool villain Darth Vader. But Jabba the Hutt, that was my guy.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: See, I never I wasn't I was never really into, like, the movie part of it. I was really into, like, the special effects of it. Like, I want I wanted to be the guy sketching out the 30 versions of Jabba the Hutt and, you know, putting the rubber on, like, making that kind of stuff. That I was really into. That I thought was dope.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Well, it's not too late. You know, they're still making them. I'm sure there's a way they'll bring Jabba back somehow.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: There's still time for his seventh career.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Exactly. Not too late.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Phil, just pick one thing and stick to it. Do you have a favorite movie? Like like, what's the movie that you could watch 20 times in a row and never get bored?
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: It's not that far from Return of the Jedi, but aliens
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Oh, really? My favorite movie. You know, I've never seen an
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: alien movie. None of them? Really? None of them. Wow.
• 3:40
  Like, the first two are My parents thought
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: it was too scary growing up, and then I just never got into it.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. They're pretty scary. Yeah. If you're not into horror movies, aliens is more of a well, it's a horror movie, but it's also like a military movie. But again, this was a childhood experience.
• 3:54
  I always wonder if I had seen this for the first time when I was 30, would I still have the, you know, affinity that I have for it today? I don't know. But I I didn't. I saw it when I was like eight or nine. What is it?
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Like the chest buster or whatever that Yeah.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: They have some of that in Aliens. They have some of that in Aliens. Yeah.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Almost Famous for me is the movie.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: That is a great movie.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: I just there's something about that movie that every time I sit down watch that thing and, like, there's also, like, the journalist tinge Yep. To it, like, stories and just it is such a perfect movie. I just ugh. It's great movie. It's so good.
• 4:31
  It's so good. You have that kind of combination between music and journalism and nostalgia, and it's just when they're when they're on the bus singing Tiny Dancer, I just melt every single time. I am a golden god. Standing on the roof jumping in the pool.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: It's it's great movie. It's a great scene. My favorite journalism movie is that's up there. It's gotta be top three probably, but number one, Zodiac. You ever seen Zodiac?
• 4:59
  Yes. This is yeah. That was, I mean, based on a lot of real life Yeah. Things that happened a long time ago, but Zodiac for me is my favorite.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Also an interesting also an interesting angle that it shows, like, the function of journalism. Like, so like, it's really easy to especially now with social media and just kind of the relentless barrage of words and content and stuff. Like, it really shows this angle that, you know, like journalism solves a real world funk serves a real world function. Like, it can change things and it can solve things. And like this uncrackable thing that everybody's, like, scratching their head, like, can figure it out if you dig in and you talk to people and you Mhmm.
• 5:42
  You spend enough time doing it, like, you can change things. And I love that.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And sometimes it can take years, and sometimes the answers don't come to you. Sometimes it's just it's left a mystery and Yeah. Sometimes that's a story worth telling, just the mystery of it all.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Fair. Yeah. That is I yeah. That is true. Like, there's not there's not always an immediate answer Yeah.
• 6:05
  Which is kind of the antisocial media age. Like, I should know exactly what I need to know about everything that's happening everywhere all at once in one half of a second or less, and you're talking about, like, you could spend years and still not know. Yeah. Interesting. Did you always wanna be a journalist?
• 6:22
  Or
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I was fortunate that I kinda hooked on to it at a really young age. I mean, I I always was a writer. Like, I remember in the second grade, I would try to hurry through my math assignments so I could write, like, little fictional stories.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: So Instead of the doodles on the back of the test, you were like, once upon a time, there was a boy named Justin.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. It was it was pretty close to that. And then, in my so my this is a an anecdote that might explain a lot of things about the origins of me as a a journalist, but my first newspaper experience. So I I went to Arthur Earl High School.
• 7:03
  My sophomore year, I took a journalism class because I figured, okay. I'm a writer. This is a class that probably shouldn't be too hard for me. I probably probably had algebra or something that semester. So I'm like, I need something that'll be a little easy, not realizing, okay.
• 7:16
  This is gonna become my career one day. So I took a journalism class, and then the next year, I joined the Arthur Hill News as a reporter. And the summer before my first issue, my cousin was dating the daughter of our principal at Arthur Hall at the time. And so I had this weird source, into the life of my my principal. And so at some point during that summer, my my cousin's girlfriend must have told him that the principal was going to was thinking about retiring.
• 7:50
  And then my cousin told my grandma, and then my grandma told me, and that that was just kind of my first, like, rumor that I had to confirm whether it was a rumor or or a fact. And I got it, like, delivered to me from my grandma. My grandma was my my first newspaper source. So my first issue or our first staff meeting comes up for our first issue, and I raised my hand. Hey.
• 8:16
  I got a I got a story I want I can look into. You know, I I hear our principal might be retiring, and and so I dove into that story. He said, no. He's not retiring. But when the story came out that, you know, he was we did write in a story, basically saying, no.
• 8:32
  I'm I'm not retiring. I'm feeling good. I'm here to stay. Uh-huh. My editor at the time, who was a senior I was I was a junior at the time, but my editor at the time was a senior and came up to me and said, you know, this this reads really well like a this reads like a newspaper story.
• 8:46
  Most this is your first time writing one of these, and and that was just really, really encouraging to me to to hear that that from a peer. Another side thing is that was his name was Andy Caloris. He had he went on to become our state rep inside over here for a couple of years. So he was my first editor too. Oh, cool.
• 9:05
  So a couple of funny stories kinda coming together there for my my first my first newspaper story. And the epilogue to the story is that the principal did end up eventually retiring the next year. So my my my source was good. Mhmm. He just denied it is all.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Sometimes sometimes the timing is wrong. Like, got one more year to go and you don't wanna go quite go public yet because then things get messy.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: So Right.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Interesting when you're talking about, like, the first it was your first rumor, like, so and so talked to so and so, talked to so and so, grandma talked to you. Yep. And and that that's really one of the really fascinating things about this work of telling these kinds of stories is just to see, yeah, it's a story and yeah, it's a subject, but to see how everyone and everything is connected, you know, like you talk to this person and they talk to this person and then you go over here and then you learn things like, wow. Like I did not see that coming. And then it's almost like, what does that meme?
• 10:11
  Like in Beautiful Mind with all the algebra and all the math equations going around. And that's what I feel like sometimes in communities, like you just see this tangled, especially Saginaw, this, this web of all of these different connections and everybody knows everybody and is related somehow and worked for somebody as a kid is really the fascinating part of telling these stories.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. A lot of us around today have been here for a while and and know each other. I've known each other for a while.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: So you went to Arthur Hill, then what?
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: I went to Delta College, had a great experience there. They had they they had a journalism professor there, Joan Ram. Retired now, but but was really instrumental in kind of growing my skill as a reporter. Yeah. Was the editor there for a couple of years, and I went on to SVSU, Saginaw Valley State University, very proud alumni of of there.
• 11:03
  I went to become the, editor of the student newspaper there. And then from there, I got a internship at the Saginaw News, and they hired me in 2004.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: 2004. I graduated high school in 2003. So look at you being one step ahead of me.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: Little little ahead of you.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: When you joined the Saginaw News was what were you feeling? Were you intimidated? Were you like, yeah, unleash me onto the world of journalism? Like, what are you thinking?
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: Well, it was different because I I it was a mix of that because I remember at SPSU, there wasn't a journalism program, so there wasn't a whole lot of I didn't have a lot of peers there. Yeah. And so being the editor, I was kind of at the top of the, you know, at the top of the Yeah.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: You were the news guy.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: He was yeah. Exactly. And and and I I so I had that kind of top dog mentality going into the Saginaw News. But then you go you go there and you see all these reporters who I've been reading their work since I was a kid. You know, my parents subscribed to the Saigon News, so I remember that print newspaper landing on my my front porch for as long as I have been alive.
• 12:13
  Mhmm. And some names in there that that, you know, really kinda shaped my views of what what journalism is, what newspapers are. Now suddenly, they're they're working with me, that's very that was very humbling. And so I yeah. Suddenly, went from being, like, the editor to being the the the new kid, the green kid on on the block.
• 12:32
  And so I wouldn't say it was intimidating because they a lot of them were very gracious and welcoming and became my mentors early on. And so it was it was a great start, really. I I loved I loved working there right from the start.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: You you mentioned, like, your experiences really with those folks really shaped, like, what what journalism is, what a newspaper is.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: So I I kinda wanna ask you this, and maybe it's a hard question, maybe it's an awesome question. I guess we'll find out.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: We'll find out.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: What is journalism? Because we live in a time, again, come back to social media where you pop open Facebook and everybody with a blue check is a journalist and like like what does it mean to be a journalist? What is journalism?
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: Journalism is diving into a rumor. If I hadn't written that story that my grandma told me without checking with the principal first, and that wouldn't have been journalism. That would have been maybe more akin to what some of the Yeah. Some of the information you might get on social media now. Someone heard something and wasn't from a very reliable source, but it might be true.
• 13:42
  Kinda kinda rings true, but It's
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: kind of unfounded gossip. Yeah. And just yeah.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So so journalism is kinda is the practice of diving into that scene. If it's true, talking to the people who would know it's true, developing those sources over hopefully years, understanding the context, being able to relay that context through through your work. It's, yeah, giving giving truth or falsity to rumors a lot of times.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You're just finding out the truth of things, it I sounds want you to talk about this too because I think it would be important for folks to understand is, like, what what all needs to happen before you hit publish or even maybe even start writing a piece? Because sometimes the impression is, like, journalists sit down and they start typing away on the computer and then they send it out into the world and then they just type the next thing and then they send it out into the world. But to be a good journalist, what has to happen before you ever put your hands on a keyboard?
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: Well, you wanna know the history of a thing. I mean, really depends on there's so many different stories I've written about. Some are as easy as that as that. You know, if you're writing about an event that's coming up, usually there's a poster that you you recognize and see the the hallmarks that, okay, that's coming from the the Temple Theater. I know that's legit, so I can just write a story without talking to a person.
• 15:10
  But the the harder stuff is when you have to interview somebody. When I have a a story idea and I need to talk to, hopefully, people who have different perspectives and and and and like you had talked about earlier, you know, bringing together those equations that that that that sometimes are are floating out there don't always come together. You wanna bring them together into a a cohesive story that's Mhmm. Is true. Yeah.
• 15:38
  Like, that's the most important thing about journalism. I I the thing that keeps me up at night is, did I put the right date in the story? I will wake up in the middle of the night sometimes wondering I said Friday. I know it's Friday, but it's Friday, January 20, or was it the nineteenth? Did I get that?
• 15:54
  I will sweat over that. Yeah. And which is maybe not great for my health, but it's good for my journalism. Yeah. Because I'm double and triple and quadruple checking information.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: Bad for my mental health. Great for journalists. So, well, I mean, that's that's also the thing that people are going to point out in the comments. Like, they won't read the actual story, but they'll be like, hey, Justin, Thursday is the twentieth, not Wednesday. Yep.
• 16:21
  Exactly. Exactly. I do want to say, like, you do such a great job in your articles and your pieces. And you do a great job because you do something that I think is so important to not just journalism, but to being informed about a community in that when you write something, you give it context. You give it environment, you give it, like you said, the history of a thing is important.
• 16:48
  The facts of a thing is important. And it's really important for us when we become or are trying to be more connected, more informed in the community. That context means everything. I mean, like, I'll just I'll just use an example. In Fashion Square Mall just had a killer concert.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: I saw photos of that, yeah.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, like, I don't want to say that that concert single handedly changed the trajectory of the Fashion Square Mall, but it might have. We might be looking at that concert and say like, that's when everything changed for that mall because like, just to see, and I don't know, is it hardcore, that kind of music? I don't, I'm sorry guys.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: You look like it.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: If that's not the right terminology, I'm sorry. I am, I am green. But it look people are having the time of their life, like dudes scream just screaming into that microphone. Like people, like like wall of death and just like fake fighting. It was awesome.
• 17:52
  Like, just to see that happen in the Fashion Square Mall was awesome. Even if you weren't there, even if that's not your kind of music. And then, like, there was a post made about how cops were called because there was a cutting. Like, someone was cut. And so all of a sudden it turns into this like outside social media narrative of like, oh, like there's violence happening, of course.
• 18:14
  Like the association between Saginaw and violence, oh, like, of course it got out of hand. But like, it turns out that like somebody then there wasn't a cutting. And then somebody actually, somebody was cut, but it was an accident. Like they had just like accidentally cut their hand. And so it's not a big deal.
• 18:33
  And I use that not to throw anybody under the bus, but to just really highlight how important context is to the truth of things. Like if you just look at that, you can walk away from that post saying like, Oh, Saginaw's being Saginaw, people getting out of hand again, when that is absolutely not the case. And I think the importance of journalism is that context, like digging into the truth of things, talking to all the people, making sure that things are fact checked and that your bases are covered and then presenting that in whole. So like folks, if you're getting your local news just by reading the headlines, stop. Like stop doing that because that doesn't give you all the information.
• 19:14
  If you're getting your local news by primarily by folks who are not doing their due diligence, like also stop. Like you owe it to yourself and to the community to know what the truth is, to have a fully formed opinion. And you can do that by pulling up the local news and taking three minutes to read it. And you get all the history, you get the context, you get the nuance, you get what was actually happened or what was said. And I just, I just, sorry to be on the soapbox, but I think we owe it to ourselves and to this community to say, we got to take a step forward into the truth by reading, by getting all the facts, and then talking about what happened or did not happen.
• 19:56
  So, sorry.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: No, you're preaching to the choir there. I two things to say about that. First of all
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Join me on my soapbox, Justin.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: Well, no. People who are trying to give information out, I admire that. I got one lesson, that I learned early on is police scanner traffic is just like a first draft of what might may or may not have happened Yeah. At a Yes. At a place.
• 20:18
  So if if you're going by police scanner traffic, you're gonna come up with a lot of, things that actually didn't happen that just police have to check it out because someone said something, and you gotta check it out, but hasn't been hasn't been verified. So the journalism of that would be to, okay, I heard something on the police scanner that sounds serious. I need to look into it. I gotta call or email or text the police chief or whoever the sergeant is who answers those sorts of questions. And then they verify or tell you we don't have any comments.
• 20:47
  So that's the extra step that a journalist needs to take to make sure that information is getting out there accurately. Because, yeah, if you if you if you heard on the police scanner that there was a cutting at a at an event and then you put that out there right away, that's not gonna be good for
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: You get one chance at a first impression. Yeah. And, like, that that then becomes a narrative. So, like, again, not gatekeeping anything. And I think like the motivation to keep a community informed is an amazing one.
• 21:16
  Like, it's an amazing one, especially given the techno we have godlike powers that we can instantly connect people to information and people to each other. But that also comes, I think, a responsibility to to not just throw words out there and and say, oh, I've done my due diligence as a journalist. You don't do that due diligence, you're not a journalist, you're a disseminator of something that you heard. And so if you do wanna call yourself a journalist, take that extra step, call that police chief, you know, go there, like, the information and then send it out into the world. It's really easy to try to and journalists are also guilty of this too.
• 21:54
  Like we all want to be the first person to break a story or to tell the story, to get the clicks and, you know, get that kind of thrill of like, beat everybody and I told that story first. And then you screw up and you feel stupid and you hurt somebody's reputation unnecessarily and we just we can all do better.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: No. I agree. I agree. And the other thing I wanna say about
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Yes, please.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: That too is that it can be hard to disseminate between what is good what is what's the right word I'm looking for here? Accurate and what's not what might be misinformation. True. There is there's a lot of clickbait out there that's not true, and I'm I'm not gonna there there have been and has been, elected officials in our region who have seen things on social media and shared it as being true, like athletes who have in click clickbait articles, but not in real life, built homeless shelters inside. I've seen that.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: I've seen that on the social media feed shares from politicians, and then I I know that's that was just clickbait, but the person didn't recognize that.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: It's AI generated. The graphic is AI generated. The news is yeah.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: Yep. It looks real, but it's not. And I, you know, would have to verify and I have verified that.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Tremont, have you built 5,000 homeless shelters in the city of Saginaw over the last week? Can you confirm or deny? Yeah.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, maybe maybe this clickbait will guilt trip and guilt trip to and doing that sort of thing.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: But We would love those. Thank you, Tremont. Yeah. But there's a
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: lot of that going out there, especially with someone who's a public figure like like Draymond. You know, he makes the news a lot for a lot of different reasons. And so that that's the other thing I would say is is there's a news literacy that I think people could Mhmm. Benefit from, that that that I think a lot of people are lacking. It's not it's just it's hard in the in this day and age to to disseminate sometimes.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: Yep. Yeah. And it's even more important. Like, it was important pre AI age. Yeah.
• 24:02
  But now, like, you literally and all it's gonna take is another six months, another year or whatever it is, and even those of us who can look at it and say, Yeah, that's AI. Like, it's gonna trick us. And so looking at the future of things, it's gonna become even more important to take a deep breath, read it. And I I think back to like grade school, like learning how to use the library. You know, you go into the library and you're sitting on the carpet squares and the librarians like, how do you tell if a source is trustworthy or not?
• 24:37
  And they give you like this bullet list of like all the different things you have to think about when you read something like, well, can I trust this source? And like, is it can you find it in another place other than just this place? And it that kind of like librarians will save the world is basically what I'm saying. They're great people.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: I need more of them. Keep them around, please.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: Yes. Keep them around, please. What is it like, why is local journalism important? Like we, and maybe we'll talk about this is, you know, kind of on the on the Internet, there's this idea that that local journalism is not important because I I can get it from all of these other sources and, you know, I've got a Facebook group with 60,000 members. Like, why do I need the local newspaper?
• 25:22
  Why is local journalism so important? Well, we are trained
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: in how to to find the accurate information. We we're paid to spend hours out of our day doing this while while other people at work doing hard work, making their money, making their their wages so they can pay their bills. That's how I I make my wages. Mhmm. And I love doing it.
• 25:48
  But I'm I'm spending my days doing that when people sources are available to talk to me that I can verify, you know, information with them that, you know, someone someone who's working a nine to five wouldn't be able to call them. Mhmm. Well, maybe they could call some mayors, during the daytime, but but some officials are are just not around at nights. And and and you I don't know. I feel like you would it would just be more efficient if you were to rely on local a local, news outlet, whether it's Mhmm.
• 26:16
  You know, Mlive or ABC twelve or WSGW, TV five. We have a lot of really solid media organizations here in in in the region that I that's not the case everywhere. We're we're fortunate that we we've got a pretty strong I mean, we've taken the hits like every media outlet has over the last fifteen years, but, we have some really, really strong journalism happening here. And and that's important because of what I just said. There are there's misinformation out there.
• 26:46
  It's easy to get something wrong, if you don't have somebody who who has the time, and that's their job to find out what's going on and and getting under the layers that that sometimes are not so obvious on the surface of of things.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. We we do have great journalism going on. And I just want to say that explicitly because the prevailing assumption, not just here locally, but everywhere is that, you know, local we don't have great local journalists anymore. And the additive layer to that is the entire industry of news and journalism has is undergoing just a tumultuous change.
• 27:29
  Like it used to be like everybody bought their paper in the morning and you read it, and then you did the same thing the next day. And that's not the case as technology changes, as business models change, as all of these things change. But that doesn't change the fact that people who are paid to do this for a living locally here right now in the Great Lakes Bay Region are good at what they do. And do we have a team of 40? We don't.
• 27:56
  Like there isn't a newsroom of like a 150 people all frantically typing on the typewriters and calling and, you know, hitting the streets. Yeah. But at the same time, like like we have to give people the respect they deserve by saying, like, you guys are doing a good job at what you do.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And they I love my job. And I I know a lot of people a lot of my peers in this region feel the same way that are that are doing what I do. You kinda have to hear that the the tendency, think, for a lot of journalists after a certain amount of time is to they kinda get worn worn down and maybe want to look at other industries. Marketing actually left the journalism industry for eight years.
• 28:38
  I was at the Saginaw News for nine years, and then I went into marketing for eight years. And it was a great experience that was very enriching. It was nice to try out something that I, you know, that was different than I had been doing since I was 15 years old, checking out my grandma's rumors. Mhmm. But, you know, I my my calling, and I think the calling of a lot of journalists who have been around for a while, and that's a lot of them here in in in Mid Michigan and Saginaw, is that we we're we're here because we love this job Mhmm.
• 29:09
  And believe in it. It's it's it pays the bills, but it it keeps, it keeps my heart pumping in a good way.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: And those are the kinds of people that you want telling the news. Like, want people that that are are fiercely committed to this idea that journalism is important, that doing work is important, that calling 10 people about the thing to see what they have to say about it is important or calling them again the next day and calling them again the next day. And like we're talking about your, like your beans bunny story, like sometimes look, or zodiac even like it's sometimes it, you're working on a story for months and months and months or a year or years because it's not ready yet. Like you can't, you don't know everything yet. And so you can't just throw it out into the world and guess and make up things or leave it incomplete.
• 30:00
  You gotta keep gnawing away on that thing. And so I just, again, like I want to encourage people, if you think that local journalism here is not good, please double check to make sure that you're reading the local journalism. Because if you're making an if you're forming your opinion based on the headline or whatever it is or the narrative in the comment section, like what you're doing is not engaging in the local journalism, you're engaging in the comment section. So please, please, for the love of all that is holy, take a second and read it. And then also just like support it, like pay the subscription like $7 a month or whatever it is.
• 30:42
  Like when it just drives me, I'm gonna get fired up and I'm gonna go. Like, it drives me bonkers to hear people say local journalism is not good, but I will steal this locally written news article and post it because it's good enough to get me clicks and then Facebook sends me a check at the end of the month because I took somebody else's work and I posted it publicly like it is theft, it is stealing, please don't do it. If you want the local news to be better, that requires financial support just like anything. And so we owe it to ourselves to pay the $7, pay the $10 to support the people whose living is local journalism. Like, we gotta do it.
• 31:29
  We can't we can't speak out of both sides of our mouth. I fine. Last soapbox. I'm sorry.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: Thank you, fellas.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: It just gets me it gets me worked up, and I know that you guys can't necessarily come out and say that because, you you know, you're the ones getting paid. So I'm gonna say it. I'm gonna like, we have to support our local journalisms. They're doing a good job. Yeah.
• 31:49
  Thank you. You're welcome. Yeah. Go ahead.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: No. I was gonna say I I I like it when people share my store our stories because it's getting the news out there, but but, yeah, there there sometimes is an effect that when that happens, that there it doesn't help us financially, and that can be a problem. That has been the problem Yeah. In media in general all over the world. Yeah.
• 32:11
  There's there's been less financial support for it.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: And we're kind of operating under the assumption because social media is free that news should be free. And that's that's never how it's worked. Like, you paid 5¢ for the newspaper. The newspapers weren't given out for free. You paid 5¢, 10¢, a dollar, whatever it was, you know, over time.
• 32:31
  There was always a financial transaction because that's what is required to keep it at a high quality. As soon as you start giving it out for free, like what is actually happening here? And so like the news is never good news, good journalism has never been free. And so we we have to acknowledge that we're we're not just owed news because that doesn't work. Like, you're not volunteers.
• 32:54
  You don't run around volunteering your life to, like, live in poverty so that, you can write news articles for folks. Like, we just gotta do better.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: I wish it were free. Yeah. Me too. I wish it were. Wish that were the system, but, no.
• 33:08
  No. That's that's not unfortunately, it's not. And so I I know people have budgets, and so I I I I I don't want to get on people for you know, I I see a lot of times in on social media when I share a story and people saying, well, there's a paywall. I'm I don't I'm not gonna pay for this. Mhmm.
• 33:26
  And I understand that. Like, they they they've got other priorities in life, so I'm I'm not gonna get on them about that. But I'm hoping that, you know, they'll they'll read enough headlines that get them enticed enough times where maybe that supporting that local media organization will gradually rise to the in their priorities list. Yeah. Maybe one day they'll have room for it.
• 33:48
  I mean, that's kind of the the hope is that if we haven't won them over, that we will eventually. Yeah. Hopefully.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. If you can't afford it, that's one thing. If you can, I'm just telling you there's good stuff behind that paywall, man. There's good stuff behind that paywall. There's good people behind that that paywall.
• 34:05
  There's good information behind that paywall. So if that's something that you value
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: Do it, and that will support more. Yeah. Like, there will be more coming your way if if that's might feel like that subscription isn't a whole lot, but it it every subscriber counts. Every that's for print online media, but for TV, every viewer counts. Yeah.
• 34:26
  For radio, they've got their own their own metrics. So whatever however you can support whatever local media that you kinda latch onto, please do however you can.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: I'm curious to ask you this. How has your work as a journalist either changed your perception of this community or your understanding of this community? Or even just like communities or the world at large, this act of talking to people and digging into truth and what is truth and what is not and facts. Like how has it changed your perception of this community or of the world or people? Or how has it changed you?
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: Well, so I was born and raised in the city of Saginaw. But outside of the city, in with outside Saginaw County, I I I didn't have as much experience with that in the world until I became a journalist. And so, yeah, the the if you run into a a farmer and, you know, in Frank well, Frankenlest is Bay County. I'm trying to think of a good rural Brant Township. He's very different than my neighbor in in the city of Saginaw.
• 35:37
  But if you go interview him, you'll you'll learn things about this is still my neighbor. He might not be right next door to me, but he's Mhmm. In my county. We share the same state representative. We're voting for the same people.
• 35:50
  We have a lot of the same we have some of the same problems, definitely in some different ones too, in being a farmer and me being a city boy. But, yeah, you learn things about your people that are that, you know, you didn't grow up around. That was that's at least my experience because I'm I'm I'm someone who is was, like I said, born and raised in Saginaw and stayed here. I lived in the township for a little little while, Saginaw Township, so I've I've got a little out of city experience. But, yeah, I think I think that was that's probably the thing I've learned the most is just, going out into those rural communities in Saginaw County, as a journalist, that I didn't I didn't necessarily get that perspective when I was in high school.
• 36:32
  I thought everything was like Saginaw, city of Saginaw.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: It depends on who you talk to. Some folks would say that Saginaw is country. Yeah.
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That's true. That's right.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. The diff the differing the experiencing of different perspectives, think has been the most beneficial thing for me because like, like, don't I don't don't know what it is to live that life or your life or anyone else's life. And like, will I ever really understand what that means? I won't.
• 37:02
  But when you spend time with somebody and you ask them questions, it gets you close. It gets you as close as you can come. And I just I just feel like that, like, that's something regardless of what's happening in the culture. I mean, like right now, things in the world are pretty, pretty intense. Mhmm.
• 37:23
  And so I like I don't want to get too kumbaya with it, but like I just I just feel like that's that time spent with another person, not telling them things or assuming things, but just really giving asking a question and giving them space, I I think is is just something that we desperately need.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: I agree. I agree. And a lot of good journalism is bringing that perspective to people who don't have it. You know, writing about what it's like to live in a different part of of the county that has different, you know, different jobs and and and and different different ways of doing things. Yeah.
• 38:04
  That's part of journalism is to to bring that to to younger versions of you and me who are maybe more familiar with, you know, city life.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: I I I sometimes describe the work I do as not being a storyteller, but being a story advocate. Yeah. Like it's not like you being in control of the story and you're spinning a yarn and like, at my story, but like you're talking to all these people and you're essentially a caretaker of what they've told you. And so now because you've been trained or you have experience in writing or the mechanics of telling that, like now it's your job to advocate for that story to present it as itself and not inject yourself into every little nook and cranny.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. I'm a terrible fictional writer, by the way. When I when I was writing between assignments in the second grade, I I those weren't good stories
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: at all. Once upon a time, there was a boy named Justin.
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: It was just different variations of aliens and Jabba the Hutt stories, basically. So I'm glad I didn't go that route. It's much more interesting to write other people's stories that have nothing to do with me other than they're happening in the community that I that I'm from and that I I wanted to tell stories about.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: Storytelling also, I think, is is very much an important part of Saginaw culture. I mean, like, we we are not obviously, like, the only ones doing it, and we are obviously not the first people to do it. I mean, it's just like a long long lineage of people, great journalists, great storytellers, people who are not public, but just are, again, like caretakers of information, the stories. You think about, like, Julian Morris and Swag Magazine. Mean, like, what what others what other city in the state of Michigan had had a kids a by kids, for kids magazine at that level?
• 39:59
  I'm gonna I'm gonna skip ahead and tell you the answer. None of them. None of them. Like Saginaw was the one that said like, this place is worth worth it to have an actually printed magazine.
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: I I remember, by the way.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Please. I'm not
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: interrupting you. No. You can interrupt me. I remember reading about Julian and reading that about his publication Yeah. When I was out of journalism.
• 40:23
  I was in marketing at the time, and I remember reading Yeah. I remember reading, about Kid Journalist. I think that was the the nickname he had. He says, he's grown up. He's a little older now.
• 40:32
  So maybe Kid Journalist is not his moniker. Yeah.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: Man man journalists at MSU
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: now. Yeah. But I I remember reading his story and and and seeing him and thinking, wow. That's that's what I love right there. Mhmm.
• 40:46
  Like, that's the kind of like, you need when you're doing that at that young of age, you're you're a born storyteller. Mhmm. And I I remember reading about him and thinking, man, I I miss journalism. And that I mean, a lot of things contributed to me coming back. But that was certainly one of them, seeing other other journalists do stories.
• 41:07
  Like, whenever there would be a big story, I and I was out of it and not be able to report on it. I was like,
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: I wanna
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: be there right now. Yeah. I wanna be there right now. Whenever I would go, like, I'd go on a first date with somebody and you're getting to know them and you're telling them what you're doing for a living, I'm I would tell them, hey. I'm I'm an I'm a marketing professional, and that's there's great stories there.
• 41:27
  But the the the stuff that I felt most passionate about that most represented represented me were the stories I had when I was at the Saginaw News a couple of years before then. That was kind of the key to me. Okay. Maybe I should get back into that. Like
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The the FOMO is strong, man. Like, when you see everybody, like, writing stories or, like somebody does beat you to a story or like this morning there was a, it got rescheduled because of the cold, but at the Dowell Vance Center, the theater, I believe they're renaming the theater, but like, didn't hear about that. And I heard about it like from somebody a day or two ago. And I just was like, oh, why didn't I hear about that?
• 42:06
  Like, I gotta go. Like, I gotta be in the loop of that. And I think that kind of wanting to be a part of the experience of the story and then like telling other people about it, think is what makes a good journalist. Like like, it's the mechanics of it and, you know, it's the kind of the technique of it and the experience, but really that curiosity, I think, is the thing. Well, like, I wanna I wanna be in the loop.
• 42:31
  Like, I wanna I wanna be the person that breaks it. So, like, talking about Julian and talking about this, like, what makes a good journalist? Like, what would you say to the 12 year old who's like, I'm like, I'm writing those stories, or I was like, I wanna be the newspaper writer. I wanna be swag magazine two point o. Like, what would you say to them as they're thinking about their future in in journalism or becoming a journalist in in any kind of form, whether it's podcasting or writing or magazines or whatever it is?
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: What would I say to them? I mean, I hear a lot of people discouraging journalism because of, you know, the the the state of some of the organizations, you know Mhmm. Cutbacks and whatnot. But, man, if you love doing it and you know it at that young of an age that that's that's something that gets your heart pumping in a good way, You gotta follow that because that's that's something that's that that that's a natural thing for you. You don't wanna run away from that.
• 43:29
  You know? I I I went into an industry that, again, I had a great experience in marketing, and I there it, you know, appealed to a lot of things that I like to do. But journalism to me, storytelling to me was something that was just I don't know. It was in my bones, and that's not something that you should dismiss. Don't be discouraged.
• 43:49
  Don't be discouraged.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. I love that. Yeah. Because I mean, the desire for information and to hear a story and to know a story and know what's going on and know the truth, like that's never gonna go away. The form of it's gonna change as technology changes.
• 44:10
  Like, I was talking to a young journalist and he he was talking about like wanting to go into college, like to to major in journalism and like, well, what else should I do? And I said, well, like minor in business, you know, like, like you, because if, if you're not going to get hired by an outlet, like you got to make your own and that requires entrepreneurial knowledge. And so I really like that combination of like journalism. You get the hard storytelling skills, but then you're also given the tool to say like, I can make my own outlet. I can sell it.
• 44:45
  I understand the money mechanics behind how to do this in a different way, in a different form. Like the, you know, also interesting to see like print is starting to swing back into favor similar like film photography, you know, it was digital for decades, like look at this wondrous technology and then, you know, the the industry really rediscovers the magic of film and physical things. And so that's kind of an interesting pendulum swing back. Like, may not be the 30 page newspaper anymore, but what is that form? You know?
• 45:17
  So, yeah. Don't be discouraged. I love that.
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: I love that. I've had to recently start, doing unseen videos Hell, yeah. Of myself and
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: the I do new see your face on on my news feed more often now, Justin.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: That that's not why I got into trouble. That's TV New
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: Jersey You're such a handsome guy, though. I love to see your gray beard. Just fun. Like, oh, there's Justin on the scene.
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That's not what I got into journalism. But but it but it is I mean, it it's I don't know. It's it's enriching to do something new in in in in the field that I love. And so I if I have to do something that's a little Mhmm.
• 45:53
  Out of my comfort zone, like like being on a video talking on a podcast, I'm feeling fine right now. I don't know. It's my first time doing You're crushing it. Normally nervous or
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: It depends. Okay. Yeah. It kinda depends. Every once in
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: a while. I had a bunch of Goldfish Goldfish crackers and cherry coke before I came here.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: That's The Goldfish crackers call me is like a comfort food.
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: That's my journalism that's my journalism fuel right there. Goldfish. Well,
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: Justin Engel, I wanna say that, like, one, thanks for joining me on this conversation. So glad that this was our first podcast, your first podcast. They're very cool. But also, like, I wanna I wanna thank you and I wanna thank all of the folks that you work with for the work that you you are doing in giving us context, in in doing your diligence, in telling us the story, and really connecting us to ourselves in a very important way. And I'd like it takes a a huge amount of work, a huge amount of time, a huge amount of experience and talent, and I don't think that you guys get the things that you should.
• 47:03
  So so I wanna give you the things that you should. And I I and I know I speak for for a lot of folks too. Like, thank you for the work that you're doing, here in Saginaw and the region, and thanks so much for joining me today.
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you. Thank you. Yeah. My my readers are the reason why I I I do it. I love doing it.
• 47:20
  I'll I'll I don't see an end. I'll probably die doing this job. And hopefully, long, long year long, long time
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: from now. More stories to tell.
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: Yes. Exactly.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much. Thank you. You're awesome. That was great. You're great.
• 47:34
  That was great. That was great.