Media in Minutes

From Chicago to Poynter: Neil Brown's Journey in Journalism and Media Innovation

• Angela Tuell • Season 5 • Episode 2

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Renowned journalist Neil Brown joins us to share the journey that shaped his career, from his Chicago roots to becoming the president of the Poynter Institute. Neil's childhood, surrounded by the buzz of political activism and the Watergate hearings, ignited a lifelong passion for journalism. His path took him from Skokie, Illinois, to the Miami Herald's Key West Bureau, offering a front-row seat to unique challenges, from drug dealing to cultural shifts, all the while being closer to Cuba than his own editor. Neil's story is a testament to the formative experiences that honed his journalistic instincts and set him on a path to success.

Our conversation also takes us to Washington, where Neil navigated the complexities of political journalism, and back to local newsrooms, where his leadership at the St. Pete Times garnered six Pulitzer Prizes. Neil shares invaluable insights on the critical disconnect between Washington's political bubble and the real-world issues that matter most. The discussion highlights the importance of maintaining journalistic integrity and the role of fostering ethical reporting and innovation in achieving monumental success.

Neil also opens up about his transformative role at the Poynter Institute, guiding its mission to train journalists and connect with news consumers in a rapidly shifting media landscape. From initiatives like PolitiFact to media literacy programs with organizations like Google, Neil emphasizes the vital need for partnerships and innovative solutions to sustain local journalism. We also explore the evolving dynamics between journalists and PR professionals, the challenges posed by AI integration, and the crucial role of storytelling in upholding democratic values. This episode offers a rich tapestry of Neil's experiences and insights, promising a wealth of knowledge for anyone passionate about the future of journalism.

Poynter website: https://www.poynter.org

Poitifact: https://www.politifact.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neil-brown-0711b9151/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Poynter/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/poynter_institute/

Thank you for listening!  Please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe to the Media in Minutes podcast here or anywhere you get your podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/media-in-minutes/id1555710662  

Angela Tuell:

Welcome to Media in Minutes. This is your host, Angela Tuell. This podcast features in-depth interviews with those who report on the world around us. They share everything from their favorite stories to what happened behind the lens and give us a glimpse into their world From our studio here at Communications Redefined. This is Media in Minutes. In today's episode, we are talking with Neil Brown, the president of the Poynter Institute, a leading organization in journalism education, where he has served since September 2017. With four decades of experience in journalism and media leadership, including nine years on the Pulitzer Prize board, Brown has a distinguished career that began at the Miami Herald. He rose through the ranks at the Tampa Bay Times, winning six Pulitzer Prizes during his tenure as editor. Under his leadership, Poynter has become home to initiatives like PolitiFact and the International Fact-Checking Network, training journalists and promoting ethical standards worldwide. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Iowa, Brown is a Chicago native dedicated to advancing the craft of journalism. Hello, Neil, how are you?

Neil Brown:

I'm good, Angela, good to talk to you. How are you?

Angela Tuell:

Yes, doing well. You're in a much warmer place than I am. I believe you. How are you?

Neil Brown:

Yeah, we just had a cold snap last week where it got into the 60s.

Angela Tuell:

Oh, okay, I won't say what our temperature is then I am very much looking forward to talking with you today. You've had such an incredible career thus far in journalism and it's hard to even know where to start. So how about we talk a little bit about how and when did you know you wanted to be a journalist?

Neil Brown:

Well, I was one of those kind of nerd kids who got into thinking about journalism at a very early age. I was in, I grew up in Chicago, okay, in our house we got four newspapers a day, back in the day, you know, and serving the city of Chicago. My dad was a lawyer who was politically interested and we, you know. So journalism was something we really valued, I will tell you, putting you know some age behind it, I guess my dad was so fascinated by the Watergate the case of Richard Nixon and Watergate that PBS back then would replay the Watergate hearings that were being held in Congress where they were trying to get to the bottom of the school, and PBS would replay them in the evening. The hearings would go during the day and they would replay them in the evening, and my dad actually wielded the TV into the kitchen so we could watch, and so at that point our family no longer was hey, what are you doing at dinner over dinner? Well, how was school? It was all about quiet. Sam Irvin is on TV, these are the hearings, this is important, and I think that kind of got the bug in me.

Neil Brown:

And then I wound up going to high school in a little suburb uh called skokie, illinois, and there the um. It had a large, huge, large population of holocaust survivors and the and the what and the local chapter of the american nazi party wanted to march in skokie and uh, just sort of inflame the environment and I wound up getting assigned by the local newspaper, the little community weekly, to cover the rally and some of the legal hearings. The rally wound up being delayed by the legal hearings. Anyways, it was a, it was out of a like it kind of a. It was a bug that bit me, related to journalism because it was such a big deal in the community. So all of those kind of rolled up into this journalism thing is just interesting and fascinating and a way to sort of get an eyeballs view of things, sometimes before other people did too, and that fascinated me.

Angela Tuell:

Yeah, absolutely so. You went to college for journalism, went to college for journalism and political science Okay. I wanted both. And then you started your career at the Miami Herald. What was your first job like?

Neil Brown:

So my first job in journalism it's one of these weird things like what turned out to be the best job I ever had. Even now. I'm saying that not to all of a sudden, because what happened is the Herald hired me and they, completely by luck, my first job was in Key West.

Angela Tuell:

Oh, that's awful. My first one was at the beach too in Salisbury, maryland, so I know how that feels to be near the beach.

Neil Brown:

It's like near the beach. You think this is awesome and I respect I was closer to Fidel Castro in Cuba by my like. That was 90 miles away. My nearest editor was 150 miles away. So I was the Key West Bureau for the Miami Herald that I used to write all kind of really great stories about drug dealers and corruption and the tourist industry and fishermen and the collision between the old conks who lived there and the new tourists who were coming and the growing gay population. I just got so many great page one stories.

Neil Brown:

I really didn't want to leave Key West. I used to see Jimmy Buffett and Tennessee Williams. They were citizens down there, so all these cool people were down there and it kind of skewed me to think, oh, this is awesome, I don't ever want to leave. Leave. But of course I. I wanted to rise up through the ranks but my first job was Key West and I had to write like crazy. We had keys sections six days a week so I used to write. It sounds like old, fogey stuff. We used to take our own pictures. I take my story and then take the film because this is pre-digital journalism take the film and put it on a plane to Miami every day at three o'clock.

Angela Tuell:

Wow.

Neil Brown:

They could put the pictures with my stories, which, in my deadline, was like 9 pm that night. So it was a. It was a great, a great time, and that was at the time when Florida was really transforming. There was a real migration from of Cuban immigrants and others and there was a lot of crime in the state of Florida. You know just from all kinds of dynamics, and I was happened to be in a newsroom at the Miami Herald with just some superstar folks, so I was able to learn a lot as well, particularly as I moved from Key West to Miami.

Angela Tuell:

Yeah, so walk us through your career a little bit, how you went from there to where you are today.

Neil Brown:

Okay. So I kind of came up through the ranks after Key West, covered politics in both Miami and Tallahassee for a bit and loved government reporting and I thought someday I'm going to get to Washington. But it was kind of a competitive field and I didn't know if the Herald would have any opportunities. But I was willing to kind of wait my turn. When suddenly I was at this point an assistant city editor and I get a call from a guy out of the blue with a magazine called Congressional Quarterly. His name was Bob, former Wall Street Journal guy, and Bob calls me and says I've heard about you from some of your former Herald colleagues who are now in DC and I know you love politics. Would you be interested in working up here in Washington at a magazine called Congressional Quarterly? So I'll keep that part brief.

Neil Brown:

Eventually I took that job and went there because I didn't know how soon I could get to Washington and I didn't know it at the time. But Congressional Quarterly was owned by the St Petersburg Times newspaper and wound up then coming back to the newspaper later on in an editing capacity. So we were all in the same building up in Washington and I got to meet these folks and it turned out Nelson Poynter, who was a true visionary, and I can talk about that again in a minute. He had created Congressional Quarterly back in the mid 40s, 1945, actually because he really believed that back in St Petersburg, where he owned the newspaper, there too, the folks didn't really know what their Congress people were up to. Back then it was really Congress.

Angela Tuell:

Yeah.

Neil Brown:

You know, but the center. And so he started a magazine that would just write weekly stories about what the members of Congress were doing everywhere, but particularly in Florida. And it caught fire. From a standpoint of lobbyists loved it because under tracking what was happening in Congress was an opportunity to make sure their clients were well represented, and that meant making money, in particular using tax law or financial implications. And so Congressional Quarterly became super successful as a very expensive, not mass market publication. So I learned a lot about magazines and finance through covering doing a CQ, which again was founded by Nelson Poynter, through covering doing a CQ, which again was founded by Nelson Poynter, and having done that for five years. Then the folks at the St Pete Times said you're really a newspaper person at heart about coming back to Florida, and so my wife and I decided, yeah, we'll give Florida another chance, this time in the West Coast of Florida, tampa.

Angela Tuell:

So I must ask how was being a journalist in Washington, a political journalist in Washington, everything you thought it would be?

Neil Brown:

Yes and no. So I love Washington. I love politics. I still do. I'm a political junkie and, as a newspaper person who cares deeply about it, I was so glad for that experience and I truly loved it. That said, I was also. This is why I wanted to go back into the newspaper business and get back to Florida. I was also.

Neil Brown:

It was a defining situation for me because I realized you know the folks in Washington, while they're trying hard to do the right thing, they have a skewed vision of everything around them. It all rolls around through the prism of Washington and they talk language that is disconnected from the people that they're serving and that included the journalists, by the way. And so I try to be, even in my role of pointer and even when I was running the St Pete Times and the Tampa Bay Times, I try to be mindful that the Washington perspective is a little bit disconnected from what's happening out in the regular world, and politics kind of does that to people. So I found that an extremely important life lesson, even as I respected it, and I did feel like everything in Washington was being sort of run through a prism of am I going to be a winner or a loser, you know.

Neil Brown:

From a political standpoint, yeah, that was not a I going to be a winner or a loser, you know. From a political standpoint, yeah, it was not a good place to be, and it further, I'll add, not to ramble too much, but I did feel like the Washington Press Corps, on one hand, has a very hard job they have a particularly hard job in this current environment but they also do get too close to their sources and it is a risk for our business when Washington journalists are a little bit, I wouldn't say behold, and that's a little too strong, but there can be a little too aligned or embedded with the people they cover. And so that was an important professional lesson for me to learn out of Washington. To some degree it was disappointing, but ultimately I just thought it was like a lesson right.

Angela Tuell:

Right right.

Neil Brown:

And it made me more excited to go back to a local newspaper and be in the local space where there's just a greater diversity of thinking and interests.

Angela Tuell:

Yes, yes.

Neil Brown:

The prism through which everything is seen in Washington.

Angela Tuell:

Yeah. So during your time at the St Pete Times, the paper won more national and state awards than at any time in its history, including six Pulitzer Prizes. What led to all the success? I'm assuming you.

Neil Brown:

I think that's a trap. I think that question is a trap. We had an exceptional team and I do mean that. I do mean that the mean that the tampa, the saint p times then changes down to the tampa bay times eventually. Um really was at back in its the biggest when I was the editor of it. It was his, believe it or not, and this is I know. We're going to talk about some of this going down, going forward.

Neil Brown:

It was 400 people in the newsroom alone wow so we some of the most, uh, sophisticated local zoning of stories, so we would have different editions in the five counties we covered and it was what that allowed. Which kind of gets to your question is basically, within the organization people could grow and develop their skills and get better and better without leaving, and people like living on the West Coast of Florida, they like the weather, the beaches were nice, climate frankly wasn't as big a deal at the time obviously and so that allowed us to have a good culture of writing and editing and I know your own audience has a lot of interest in those topics. Your own audience has a lot of interest in those topics. But that certainly contributed to a real sort of culture of trying things getting better and I think certainly that's where you wind up getting the prizes down the road. But if you don't start with like a real strong fundamental base of strong ethical reporting, I think all good things come out of that. Let's put it that way yes.

Neil Brown:

So what led you to the Poynter Institute? So I was at the St Pete times in a leadership capacity for I don't know, I guess I could do the math but probably 20 years as a leader of the newsroom. He's either the manager, managing editor or editor, and um, and pointer owns the tampa bay times right okay.

Neil Brown:

So I was part of the the family all along. I knew the folks at pointer, I was part of the governance, through the different boards as well, and the opening for president came open and I was this is like they call this the dick cheney story. I was on the search committee to find the new president, oh, and we were doing candidates and they were doing okay. Some of them were good, you know, but it wasn't. It wasn't as strong, uh, as know, we weren't as enthused about all of the possibilities as we maybe should have been or could have been, and so the job got reframed as a little bit more about initially Pointer's brand. By the way, in this coming year we're going to celebrate our 50th anniversary.

Neil Brown:

Wow, and for 40 of those years, the number one thing Pointer did and that was Mr Pointer's vision was to train professional journalists to be better at their craft.

Neil Brown:

Wow, through its struggles and it really is now going on 20 years of those struggles our main audience at Poynter was journalists. Well, that was a shrinking pool, and so Poynter needed to expand its portfolio to not just helping elevate the work of those who do journalism, but we saw an opportunity to help those who consume journalism have a connection with the journalists. So we suddenly went from just serving journalists in a very effective and very powerful way, with ethical training, to also working with citizens and bringing the two groups together. Well, when the job got kind of bigger than it had been in that regard, then I wound up expressing an interest and I was hired as the point of president, and after 20 years running a newsroom and going through all the ups and downs, it was time to try something a little new and different. And this was a little bit more on a national and international scale than my local news background.

Angela Tuell:

Yes, yeah, and the rest is history right.

Neil Brown:

Not yet, and we're still making history. That's for that.

Angela Tuell:

For those who are not super familiar with Poynter Institute and you mentioned a little bit there how else would you describe what you all do?

Neil Brown:

So I'm going to take one quick I'll try to be real quick about Nelson Poynter for a second, particularly since we're headed to the 50th anniversary, and then I can expand a little bit about all the things we're doing. But you know, sometimes in our world we talk about, we throw words around like leadership and visionary kind of quickly. But this guy was really a visionary and here's how, in the 1940s he wrote a statement of ownership principles when he bought the newspaper the St Petemps from his father. And back then he said owning a newspaper is a sacred trust that we needed to be sure in the accuracy and integrity of the information, say in the 1940s, that we shouldn't be afraid of technology and that we needed to improve and expand our thinking or we will dwindle and die, his point being we need to adapt, to change. But here's the other thing, angela, that he did, which was kind of profound and it kind of came to fruition in the 1970s. He knew that back then, not so much anymore, running a newspaper was very lucrative, so it not only had the important mission to serve its community, but it was making people a lot of money and he feared that the heirs of the owners of newspapers around the country in all, in great markets like Los Angeles and Dallas and Chicago and other places, that the heirs won't want to be in the newspaper business and they will eventually sell out to big corporations. And that would mean that local news organizations would be owned by out of town owners, right, and all corporations, right.

Neil Brown:

And so what he did was he created three years before his death. He created a school then called the Modern Media Institute and he announced when I die. He didn't know he was going to die in three years, but when I die, instead of leaving the newspaper, his St Petersburg Times, to his heirs, he willed it to be owned by the school. He said while I'm alive, the school will train journalists to get better at their jobs. Back to that adaptation part. And then, when I die, to preserve the independence and keep it out of the hands of corporate owners, I want the school to own the company. That's crazy. Back in the day a couple of his rich colleagues at the time said Nelson, what are you doing? Why don't you leave it to your heirs? And he supposedly said to them hey, look it, I've never met my great-grandchildren and I'm not sure I would like them.

Neil Brown:

And so he dies three years later of a stroke unexpectedly, and the school which we later renamed the Poynter Institute owns the Tampa Bay Times. So that's one thing Poynter does. We are the owner of a local newspaper and it remains independent and locally owned to this day own to this day. Subsequently, we became the leader in the training of journalism and writing ethics codes for news organizations around the country. So we are a leader in ethics training and that'll be relevant as we talk about AI and other things going forward. But if it comes to social media policies, ai, how you treat sources, your transparency with your audience it's all built around ethics that Pointer trains in, trains professionals in and has helped them write their policies. Now, when I came to Pointer in that way I described about wanting to diversify and expand beyond the audience of journalists brought with me a project we started at the St Petersburg Times called PolitiFact.

Angela Tuell:

Yes.

Neil Brown:

And PolitiFact is now. I was part of the creation of it and we moved it to Poynter because, you know, the Tampa Bay Times didn't have the money or the wherewithal to support it. But Poynter is a national brand anyways, and so it makes sense to be at the National Institute, and so Poynter now owns PolitiFact. Be at the National Institute, and so Pointer now owns PolitiFact. And so, for those of you wondering what Pointer does, it runs PolitiFact and is sort of the headquarters of fact-checking really around the globe, because PolitiFact, in addition to being its own website, gave rise to something called the International Fact-Checking Network, which is based at Pooynter. And so we also provide support to fact-checking organizations in 130 countries around the globe, so we have a staff of five. We help them get grants, we help them fight legal fights in their own countries and you might imagine, in some places facts are even under more assault than they are here in the United States, and so we do that at Poynter.

Neil Brown:

And and media literacy is working again with citizens and consumers. So when they get information, they have some of the tools so they can figure out for themselves whether what they've got on their phone or on their website, on the websites they're looking at is true or false or fact or fiction or out of context or whatever it may be. So I go back to we work with journalists, we fact check politicians and we work with citizens. All rolling up so we hope a little bit more of an environment where you can. I know there's challenges and I know we're all feeling it, but we work into a situation where there's an environment for quality information so that people can participate in democracy or guide themselves in their day-to-day life. It doesn't have to be a lofty democratic question.

Angela Tuell:

Sure, I'm sure you saw as creating it that it was needed, but did you imagine and maybe you did that it would be needed as badly as it is today?

Neil Brown:

You mean PolitiFact?

Angela Tuell:

Yeah, that, and-.

Neil Brown:

Yeah, well, I'll tell you the truth. It's funny you say it that way. So we started PolitiFact little. We said this is a three month experiment and it probably go anywhere. So we fact check the presidential campaign that year in 2007, when Barack Obama was coming on the same scene, hillary Clinton was running and we were going to check the fact check all their statements we dedicated resource and said we're not going to do journalism the traditional way out of Washington. Same way, we told our Washington beer chief don't just write the same thing everybody's writing. Do this fact checking. He was a believer in the idea big time. It came from him and so we dedicated the resource and after three months we realized oh my God, people love it. We kind of used to talk about it almost like it was like the consumer reports, but for information, right, and so something we started as an experiment. Then it did take off, and so the answer is no. We didn't imagine it would be this big a deal, but within about a year we did yeah, but not right away.

Angela Tuell:

How are you reaching the citizens? What does that outreach look like?

Neil Brown:

So you know a variety of ways. So, first of all, politifact itself. If you think of our journalism training as B2B, business to business, where the companies like the Washington Post or small digital news organizations or the Corporation for Public Broadcasting these outfits would hire pointers to work with their journalists, improve their writing, their photography, their video, storytelling, their ethics, that's B2B, right, we reach citizens. B2c that means consumer, but it also means citizens through PolitiFact, which is entirely a consumer based product. It's just a news organization that you know, pushes out its stories online and through text and through social, and is the audience for that work is 100 percent regular people, right, right, whatever the media literacy work that is truly citizen oriented we have.

Neil Brown:

We started that work. It's actually the credit goes to somebody, to Google, which was, you know, feeling the heat about Stanford University, to work with them and do a curriculum in middle and high schools so that kids in those schools would learn how to discern fact from fiction online. And it didn't have to be just about politics, by the way, it could be about entertainment, health, anything. And so do a bit of aula for schools and work with the teachers. And so we created even a teen fact-checking network, feeling like you know what teenagers would probably believe other teenagers more than they'll believe us, right? And so we trained teenagers to work with their teachers and to fact-check.

Neil Brown:

You know, again, all kinds of claims, mostly on social, and we said we're not going to create the website, just do it all on Instagram, do it all on TikTok, where they are.

Neil Brown:

Well, the next thing, you know, aarp wanted it like wait, this is good for 50 and older. And so it just started to blossom into tools for anybody who gets information online to say you don't have to go to a journalism site, you don't have to be a journalism, you're just a regular person who wants to know. Like, can I have some I don't know power in this relationship with information to know what's right and what's not, just so I could learn? So there's a series of tools and we spread them online. We did a course on YouTube and all of it is a way that we did things on college campuses where we trained college students to train other college students in it. So you just kind of have to come at this misinformation challenge with about a hundred ways, right, just keep trying all kinds of things. It's not a single approach, but all of those things back to your question expanded our reach from just journalists to now citizens as well.

Angela Tuell:

Yes, your work is so invaluable. I want to talk a little bit about how you spent much of your career in local media, and we continue to see local newspapers, things downsizing, getting smaller, closing. What do you think has? I mean, we know some of that what has caused that? But what are your thoughts on it? And we're also seeing the rise of independent journalism outlets.

Neil Brown:

Yes, so it's an actually, you know, maybe because I come from Chicago, I'm an optimist, midwest optimist, so so we actually put out a report earlier this year. I'd be happy to send it to you or any of your audience called On Point. The news environment has changed dramatically, including thousands of jobs lost, many fewer news organizations than their local news organizations than there were before, and we do not diminish for one moment the strain and stress caused in part Now this is a business model point with the collapse of advertising in those publications.

Neil Brown:

Collapse of advertising in those publications and so advertising was very lucrative and also allowed a subsidy so that the subscriber or the audience member didn't have to pay very much.

Neil Brown:

Right, it has been a shift, and so we ask now more through either subscription or membership. Reader revenue if you use that term reader, streaming, streaming viewer you know. Subscriptions to pay more, and that has not replaced the loss of advertising dollars. So a third leg of the stool that has emerged both in an excited way, but one we have to be clear-eyed about, it's not a panacea is philanthropy and donor support for journalists. So now there's kind of three legs to the local news model. Advertising still has a lot, but also revenue from the audience members I guess I'll call it that.

Neil Brown:

And then philanthropy and news organizations, for the better part of the last 15 years, have been slow to understand. You're going to have to to understand You're going to have to charge more. You're going to have to go after grants and have people in your organizations that have the skill sets to acquire philanthropic dollars. That takes a particular kind of skill. That's not like you know, and it needs to be honored. And you need to have better marketing and better comms people who can tell your story. You have a very important story to tell, so all of that rolls up into something and that the report that I mentioned we called it On Point P-O-Y-N-T little brand there is to basically suggest you know what we get, how hard it's been, but it's time to let go of what I would call a narrative of loss and it's time to stop a perpetual lament, even as it's a very difficult environment, and it's time to start sharing some best practices and figure out what's the future about.

Neil Brown:

Not how can we go back in the past? And in that spirit, these smaller news organizations you mentioned who are funded by philanthropy or grant, they are starting to fill in and do some very interesting and important local news reporting. New products at some of the more traditional organizations, including podcasting or events, is a way to generate revenue that can help support more local coverage. Working partnerships I know your organizations that listen to you and that you work with Partnerships are extremely valuable in not going it alone in the way we might have 25 or 30 years ago to make all of these things work, and so I say that to sort of say like again yes, I don't celebrate at all that there are fewer local news reporters.

Neil Brown:

We need more, we have to get there more, but it's time to focus more on not how we can go back, but how can we start to build some new opportunities. Now let me add this important point the marketplace still decides. So, whether you're funded by a philanthropist, a donor, an advertiser, your product needs to be relevant, trusted and it needs to provide the value that you say you're going to provide. I think good news organizations do provide that value and I think we ought to make sure we're building relationships with our audiences to show the value and express the value that we can bring, because if you're not bringing value, then I don't care whether the money came from a philanthropist or an advertiser. It's not going to keep coming.

Angela Tuell:

True.

Neil Brown:

You have to. The marketplace does get to decide, and so our products need to be relevant and valuable to our audiences.

Angela Tuell:

Yes, those are great points. I also want to talk about AI, as you mentioned. It's such a hot topic, and is there a place for these tools in journalism?

Neil Brown:

100%, I mean. So I'm not unrealistic about the challenges, but I would say in that same, more optimistic spirit, ai is a story of both possibility as well as anxiety.

Neil Brown:

But, I think there's been a disproportionate focus on the anxiety. Now that doesn't mean there need to be guardrails. We did a LinkedIn Live yesterday, all with our team at Poynter, all about AI in newsrooms. First, assign some people to learn the tools. Don't be afraid of them without even spending some time training and learning them. Two, be very open with both your staff and your audience about some ethical guidelines and your audience about some ethical guidelines. The same ethical guidelines that have guided our business for generations can apply in AI, for example. Don't mislead your audience. Be honest about where did the information come from. This is where AI and human talent could come together. Somebody and I do mean in this case a body, not a machine has to stand by the information. So, and share these guardrails and these policies with your audience, even as you experiment with very interesting and powerful tools. I'll give you an example of a place that's using it.

Neil Brown:

I think, off to an interesting start with it Now. It's a big organization, so they have resource, even though they're a little bit in the news these days, and it's the Washington Post. The Washington Post came up with an interesting product called I think it's called Climate Answers, and the Washington Post knows like we've been covering all these climate questions, weather questions, consumer-related oriented questions in the Washington Post. So the information was created by people, it's been edited, it's been vetted and it's in this huge database. Well, their audience was trying to understand like God, I have so many questions about climate.

Neil Brown:

Well, the Post didn't have the time or the people to answer the questions, so what they did is they came up with an AI tool that audience members can use to ask the Washington Post questions. The Washington Post AI tool will answer the questions only using information that's already been part of the Washington Post. So it's already been sort of human approved, right, but the Post didn't have time to answer every email. The Post didn't have time to answer the phones, if that's the way people wanted to get it. But now it's found a way to engage with its audience on climate in a transparent and way that they can trust at a cheaper cost point. Wow. So if you kind of confine the tool to meet a need and you do so openly and honestly with your audience, now AI has facilitated a relationship. It's not put distance between you and the customer.

Angela Tuell:

Yes, that's exciting to think of it that way. Something else is content creators and the trend of that? How do you feel it's affected the news industry?

Neil Brown:

Okay, and so and you'll see in this report, you know we're pretty big on the content creators, believe it or not. That may seem counterintuitive for an organization that grew out of very traditional, you know, kind of pillars. And let me be clear there's a lot of anything online. There's just there's some great stuff and there's some real garbage, right, I mean, it's just the volume is profound. But I would say that what content creators should be opening our eyes to, from a journalism standpoint, is this fundamental thing that we have been teaching for years, which is tell stories in meaningful ways.

Neil Brown:

And, whether it's a two and a half minute TikTok or an Instagram reel, or a long narrative in the Washington Post online, or an entirely visualization, data visualization story told by, maybe, the LA Times, or a TV documentary told by anybody, storytelling needs to be honest and it needs to be accurate and it needs to be compelling back to that value. Yeah, content creators are coming at things in some new and interesting ways and I think we should follow their mission of accessibility. Now, what they need to do a number of them need to do is learn some of our guardrails around, like why you could trust this or, as a point of view, actually no problem. Just be honest about the point of view right.

Neil Brown:

Take some ownership of your content. It's not. You're not just putting stuff out and don't mislead people. But the fact that it's entertaining, that people get news from TikTok, that's great. It's great. It's just like let's put some guardrails around so nobody's fooled and it can be used. And then when it's just straight up silly or entertaining or what for no particular purpose, that's okay too. Just don't pretend it's something else. Yes, entertaining or what for no particular purpose, that's okay too. Just don't pretend it's something else.

Angela Tuell:

Yes.

Neil Brown:

So I think that there's some good lessons that that sort of long-term models and new models like influencers and creators can learn from each other, and it would be better to bring more of these people together than to kind of separate them.

Angela Tuell:

Yes, I love that outlook. Something else I'm very interested in is your international work. How do you see journalism in the US compared to other countries?

Neil Brown:

So I mentioned the International Fact-Checking Network. We're seeing fact-checking and fact-based expression still being something that's valued around the globe, but also under strain, because governments, whether they're in Europe or you name the region, are finding that sort of press freedom isn't necessarily a core value in their worlds, and yet there are really courageous and interesting people who are trying to do that. We have some of the same strains here in the US, and so one of the things we're trying to support through Poynter is let's bring these folks together. Let's bring them together with the platforms which are distribution models. We do some training on that media literacy stuff that I mentioned on WhatsApp and text-based only, because that's how people are getting information on text.

Neil Brown:

So I think there's like a lot of lessons, but there also have to be an understanding of different cultural mores, different cultures, different approaches, certainly different laws, and so I think it's never going to be, in this world of fast-paced information, in this era we stories in visuals to see what's going on in ways that so, particularly with the decline of resources that news organizations even bigger ones have, we wouldn't know what's going on without them.

Neil Brown:

I mean one of the, and then, of course, you have the power of cell phones and cell phone videos for citizens to be giving us information. Now again, even that has to be seen through a you know the understanding that, well, just because somebody moved a picture doesn't mean it's an accurate picture. It's true. At the same time, it's not important. It's important not to look away either. So you know, I think that you know, look at, there's a lot of just unbelievable difficulty in this world right now, and journalism and fact based work need to be celebrated, protected even. And that's a long, a long game and we're gonna have to do one story at a time, but it's worth. It's worth talking about and thinking about.

Angela Tuell:

Absolutely. I know that you have a very optimistic outlook, but is there anything that keeps you up at night about the future of journalism in our country?

Neil Brown:

So I know this is super current and I don't really I try to sleep pretty well, but I would say in the United States and this is a challenge I do believe that increasingly, records are not open to the public government.

Neil Brown:

That is secret.

Neil Brown:

I believe that, unfortunately, as the revenue I do think optimistically the revenue will start to grow for local news organizations, but, as it has been hit the ability to fight for press freedom, for open government, to protect reporters, the assault we're seeing through lawsuits against journalists, this is an environment that is, I believe, undemocratic.

Neil Brown:

That doesn't mean there can't be differences of opinion, but I do believe that there is a growing culture, fanned by some in our political sphere as well as internationally, to suggest that freedom of the press is not part of our democratic principles, and that is a huge flaw. I think we are finding, unfortunately, less protections in the courts than we once were, and that is emboldening those both who have money and power to try to fight open society and open government in a way that is troubling. So if I have any concern right now, it's that there's a lot of news organizations that are under not just you know harassment, which is terrible and ugly, but they're also under legal threat and they may not have the wherewithal to fight back. And so I think back to partnerships. I think we have to start to see some alliance to begin to push back on some of these challenges.

Angela Tuell:

Yes, I'm sure that's something you're looking at at Poynter for sure, and helping others.

Neil Brown:

Yeah, it's going to take a village.

Angela Tuell:

Yes, a village, that's for sure. Much of our audience is publicists and PR professionals.

Neil Brown:

Do you have any advice for us when interacting with journalists and how best to support them? I know your audience will understand that and you know what goes with relationships, what I would call front end conversation. So you know whether it's lunch or coffee or some kind of, you know, opportunity to get to know each other so that when your worlds intersect, hopefully for a bunch of good reasons good, accessible storytelling, but the occasional, you know, sense of conflict that there is a relationship there. So so that's one thing, which is, you know, reach out and and meet the, the, the journalism professionals in your community, and I encourage journalism professionals to reach out and meet your members of your audience because, again, I think there's a lot more in common there than there's than there's not of your audience, because, again, I think there's a lot more in common there than there's not even as we all have our own jobs to do. I'm not naive. Secondly, I would say here's something we all have in common, which is it's important that we all know how to write.

Neil Brown:

Write and write clearly right and that never gets corny. So finding ways to work together on clear and effective communication is vital, and so we actually a pointer have been trying to reach out and do writing work with PR professionals, and I've met some great folks in that space, and you know, we want some journalists to learn the insides of your business, as you have, as you want to come to do so. That, again, it's all about beat reporting in the sense that if we understand the world you're working with, it'll be more honest and accurate and even, you know, in both good times and in difficult circumstances. And the third thing I'd say is, again, respect. What we both have to do, which is we're all trying to tell a story and be effective for our audiences, and sometimes that lines up well, and sometimes there's going to be some conflict, and so respect is like in both camps, but I think all of that is sort of solid if you sort of develop relationships.

Angela Tuell:

Yes, I could ask you questions forever, but one more before we go. I must ask about your work on the Pulitzer Prize board. It's quite an honor to be on that board, and for nine years, a couple of them being co-chair. I know this isn't a fair question, but are there any awards that particularly stick out or an advice on what makes a piece a Pulitzer Prize worthy?

Neil Brown:

Sure, sure. So yes, I was on the Pulitzer Prize board for nine years and then that's the term limit I had to come off. In the last two years I was the co-chair. It was just the greatest honor of my career, to be honest with you, to see so much good work. And there's a few things I'll sort of note.

Neil Brown:

First of all and I'm not just sort of saying this, but there's work every bit worthy of a Pulitzer Prize that never wins a Pulitzer Prize. I mean tons of great work that just doesn't make it. And we used to always have this kind of little bit of a saying around those in both newsrooms and at the Pulitzer level, which is to win a Pulitzer Prize you have to be both lucky and good, and everybody is a finalist. They all got the good part down. I mean there's a lot of great work. You just have to kind of get lucky, because human nature it's a board of 17 people. People have different interests and different tastes and so you almost you certainly can't say I'm going to do this story so I can win a Pulitzer prize. I guarantee if that sentence ever gets uttered in the process of the journalism, it's not going to win, it doesn't happen, you it?

Neil Brown:

doesn't happen. No, it doesn't happen if you think that. So there is that sort of luck in all of that. Certainly there has been great work that I have been just sort of you know honored, you know sort of to read and to listen to and win. There were certainly very small organizations have won Pulitzer Prizes. A little digital outfit a little digital outfit you mentioned digital journalism. Mississippi Today won a Pulitzer Prize for local reporting a couple of years back for exposing how important and well-to-do personalities like Brett Favre of the Green Bay Pack formerly the Green Bay Packers was getting money that was supposed to go to welfare as a misinformation. There's a podcast from my hometown of Chicago that won in audio storytelling last year about just a profound story of a young black man who was beaten up by a white man in the early in the late 90s and the city couldn't figure out who did it. But it turns out they had an idea who did it and he sort of got away with it, but that members of the Black community were kind of willing to take financial resources to look the other way as well and it just showed you how complex things are and that was one, I would say, where audio storytelling and podcasting is a new form and a new way to embrace things.

Neil Brown:

Certainly, there have been profound public service journalism that was honored throughout the pandemic Frankly, the New York Times' prize on the war in Israel and Gaza in this past year, no matter how divisive and how painful that story is, and the New York Times takes a pile of grief all the time for it, right, whichever side you're on it, you probably know what you think because of the New York Times. So there's just all this kind of, you know, courageous kind of work work. And then there were some books that were like amazing winners. There was a book, uh, called evicted um, by matthew desmond, uh, that I commend to you.

Neil Brown:

That talked about how, you know, in trying to make neighborhoods better and evicting problem tenants, it was having evictions were having a disproportionate and really horrible effect, making it's the definition of structural racism and structural poverty, because it was adversely affecting women and children, and so I commend that book to your, to your audience. So it was a great honor. I got to read cool things like Demon Copperhead, which tells the opioid crisis in a different way, entirely through fiction, better than journalism has ever been able to do. So lots of great, great work that won prizes and it was an honor and, as I say, there's like nothing you don't get to be part of there. That couldn't be worth a Pulitzer.

Angela Tuell:

I'm sure we will link to all of those things that you discussed in our show notes. And how can our listeners support the work you do at Poynter?

Neil Brown:

Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me on and giving me a chance to chat with you and your great questions and the audience. I wasn't kidding. I really admire the work you're all doing. We're all doing it and sharing stories. I would recommend you go to pointerorg and see our news coverage. We try to hold the media world accountable for its work as a way to make sure that you know the best way to build trust and transparency is to do work at a very high and important level.

Neil Brown:

Next year is our 50th anniversary at Pointer and we're going to come out with the Pointer 50. I wanted to plug that and that's going to be a series of stories throughout the year. You will have a ball reading them or watching them. Some of them will be visual, where we're going to look at 50 of the most consequential moments over the last 50 years that have changed the media world and the media landscape. So keep an eye on that. On pointerorg, go to PolitiFact and get your fact checking there. You can support us that way. Obviously, we're happy to receive donations, but mostly if you will engage with us, that's the value we want and all good things will flow out of that.

Angela Tuell:

We will Thank you so much, Neil.

Neil Brown:

Thank you, angela, really appreciate it.

Angela Tuell:

That's all for this episode of Media in Minutes, a podcast by Communications Redefined. Please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe to our show. We'd love to hear what you think you can find more at communicationsredefinedcom podcast. I'm your Angela Tuell. Talk to you next time.