Speaker 1: So joining me now is somebody for many of us
Speaker 1: of a certain age in Washington, is that I would
Speaker 1: deem an institution. It's Paul Glasters, the editor in chief
Speaker 1: of the Washington Monthly. Many of us count the Washington
Speaker 1: Monthly as one of the first magazines that published us.
Speaker 1: That would be me. So when I started seeing could
Speaker 1: I do this? Could I write long form after all
Speaker 1: of my sort of wire copy years at the National
Speaker 1: Journal and doing the hotline. And Paul was an extraordinarily
Speaker 1: generous editor and a great mentor to a lot of
Speaker 1: writers and reporters around Washington. So this is a real
Speaker 1: treat for me. Paul, It's good to see you, Chuck.
Speaker 2: What a pleasure. Thanks for having me on. And I
Speaker 2: remember that story well by John Kerry.
Speaker 1: I think, yes, yes it was, And so I have
Speaker 1: you on because you did something that I love and
Speaker 1: it's something, frankly that I remember. The Obama administer wanted
Speaker 1: to make a bigger deal out of which was how
Speaker 1: can we create a list of best colleges for bang
Speaker 1: for your buck? Essentially, you know what's going to provide
Speaker 1: you the education that you need without making you have
Speaker 1: to go into debt for the rest of your life
Speaker 1: or to do blood oaths to people that maybe you
Speaker 1: don't want to give blood oaths too, because you want
Speaker 1: to get into this Ivy League university, that Ivy League university.
Speaker 1: I will note the irony that you once worked at
Speaker 1: US News and now you have a competing list. But
Speaker 1: this is and look where I want to talk about
Speaker 1: the future of journalism and and sort of and where
Speaker 1: that goes to. But talk to me about the decision
Speaker 1: to do this list and for the Washington Monthly, and
Speaker 1: how would you describe it and what what what motivated
Speaker 1: you to do it?
Speaker 2: Well, you're right that that I used to work at
Speaker 2: US News and the U S News College rankings paid
Speaker 2: my mortgage, all of us Right, there was always a
Speaker 2: kind of undercurrent of concern about the adequacy of the numbers.
Speaker 2: And when my friend Jim Fallows became the editor, he
Speaker 2: commissioned internal study by a very reputable organization that found
Speaker 2: that the use of their metrics, I think the quote
Speaker 2: was something like made no logical or methodological sense. And
Speaker 2: when he reported this to the owner, Mort Zuckerman of
Speaker 2: the US News, and this was the major revenue driver
Speaker 2: of the publication, Jim was shortly escorted out the door.
Speaker 2: And it was not too long after that I quit
Speaker 2: when Jim was fired. And it was a couple of
Speaker 2: years later that, miraculously who knows that in study made
Speaker 2: its way into the Washington Monthly and we did a
Speaker 2: couple of deep dive investigative pieces about US News and
Speaker 2: I determined the idea of ranking colleges is fine, right, often,
Speaker 2: how dare you rank colleges? Nobody can compare us? Well,
Speaker 2: you know, we ranked football teams, we ranked students, we
Speaker 2: can rank colleges. But that basically US News does it
Speaker 2: in a kind of a horrific way. And I'm going
Speaker 2: to simplify their metrics, but it's basically this. They reward
Speaker 2: colleges in their metrics for three things. Number one, exclusivity.
Speaker 2: How few students do you let in? It's sort of
Speaker 2: the idea that, you know, college is like a country
Speaker 2: club lectures instead of golf and velvet rope. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: you know, which is kind of wacky when you think
Speaker 2: about it. If you few restaurants. They don't count country clubs, right,
Speaker 2: They say, the best restaurant in the city is this
Speaker 2: country club. Well, I can't get into that country club.
Speaker 2: Why are you telling me this, it's kind of useless
Speaker 2: information to anybody who isn't you know, at the very
Speaker 2: upper level of the SAT range, and you know the
Speaker 2: way that thing works out. It's mostly people from affluent,
Speaker 2: wealthy families who go to the best high schools, who
Speaker 2: have years of prep. Those are the ones again into
Speaker 2: the IVY League. So for ninety percent of Americans, they
Speaker 2: don't even consider those schools. They're not for them, right.
Speaker 2: Exclusivity is how US News And there's about a dozen
Speaker 2: other rankings out there, and they all, almost all of
Speaker 2: them do the same thing. They say, who do you
Speaker 2: How many people can you say no to? That must
Speaker 2: be you're good. The second thing they reward is spending
Speaker 2: is wealth. How much money do we spend on our students?
Speaker 2: Which if you're only mostly letting in wealthy students, you've
Speaker 2: got a lot of money, right, so you can spend money.
Speaker 2: And then the third is reputation. US News does this
Speaker 2: survey of college leaders and they ask you what do
Speaker 2: you think of that other college, as if that leader
Speaker 2: knows anything about what's going on in the classroom one
Speaker 2: thousand miles away. But it's sort of like, you know,
Speaker 2: high school who are the cool kids. Everybody else the
Speaker 2: cool kids are. So the cool kids are the cool
Speaker 2: kids because everybody say they're the cool kids. We said,
Speaker 2: these are really terrible metrics. They're not useful for most students,
Speaker 2: and they're very bad for the country. Right. They drive inequality,
Speaker 2: they drive snobbery, they drive expense. They make college more expensive.
Speaker 2: Every college president and system wants their college to go
Speaker 2: hire on the US News list. And so they, wellt's
Speaker 2: throw some more money at it. Let's tell you know,
Speaker 2: our constituct our students. No, you can't get in. Let's
Speaker 2: deny people at education. It's crazy. So we said, all right.
Speaker 2: I actually hired the woman who had done the study
Speaker 2: right for Jim Follows, and I said, help me design
Speaker 2: a different set of rankings. And so we said, what
Speaker 2: is it that the average person, not the most affluent people,
Speaker 2: not people who went to Harvard, but the average person
Speaker 2: wants out of their investment in higher education. And when
Speaker 2: I say investment, I don't just mean tuition dollars, I
Speaker 2: mean your tax dollars. Government at every level, Chuck spends
Speaker 2: half a trillion dollars a year on higher ed. That
Speaker 2: is seventeen hundred dollars out of pocket for the average taxpayer.
Speaker 1: Right, whether you go, whether they go to college or not,
Speaker 1: they have contributed, right, they've contributed dollars to the college
Speaker 1: is providing some value for the country and for ourselves specifically.
Speaker 2: So what is that value? And so we came up
Speaker 2: with three alternative metrics. Number one, what you alluded to
Speaker 2: best bang for your buck upward mobility? Does a college
Speaker 2: recruit and graduate students of modest means? Right, working class students,
Speaker 2: middle class students.
Speaker 1: Boards, students, first gen basically first gen college?
Speaker 2: Right? Does it recruit and graduate students of modest means
Speaker 2: with degrees that don't cost you much, don't load them
Speaker 2: down with debt, and that means something in the market
Speaker 2: such that they earn middle class or better incomes.
Speaker 1: They've moved up the latter, they're making more money than
Speaker 1: their parents exactly.
Speaker 2: Number two research, Do colleges create the scholarship and scholars
Speaker 2: that drive new economic growth, solutions to global problems, you know,
Speaker 2: cures for diseases, et cetera. And number three what we
Speaker 2: call service. Open up the mission statement of just about
Speaker 2: any college, and there's going to be a sentence in
Speaker 2: there that's saying point of this university is to create,
Speaker 2: is to educate young people to take their place as
Speaker 2: engaged members of their democracy. So we're the only ranking
Speaker 2: that holds schools to account for their own mission statement
Speaker 2: in that regard. And so a school gets extra points
Speaker 2: in our ranking if they have a robust ROTC program
Speaker 2: serving in the military, if they students go on into
Speaker 2: the Peace Corps, if they are friendly to people financially
Speaker 2: who serve in America Corps. If their voter registration numbers
Speaker 2: are high and they do what they need to do
Speaker 2: to make voting easier for their students. If they use
Speaker 2: some of their work study money to provide community service
Speaker 2: opportunities rather than just you know, free free labor for
Speaker 2: the college, that sort of thing. And so when you
Speaker 2: put those three things together, you get an entirely different ranking.
Speaker 2: All the other rankings, it's all the top thirty or
Speaker 2: all the colleges that are always there, right, they're almost
Speaker 2: never changed, harvardt Stanford, maybe a couple of stories.
Speaker 1: They freak out if they lose a notch er two.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you hear about it. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I think Georgetown got all freaked out that
Speaker 1: they went from twenty five to twenty seven. Yeah, they're like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, you know this guy's falling. No, this
Speaker 1: is huge for these colleges.
Speaker 2: And again, so you go to the top twenty or thirty,
Speaker 2: and they're all schools most people can't get into, right,
Speaker 2: they're all country clubs and look elite schools. They do
Speaker 2: a good job. I wound up, you know, transferring to
Speaker 2: one and got an elite degree after going to state school.
Speaker 2: More power to it. If you can get in, you'll
Speaker 2: make a lot of money, you'll have a great network.
Speaker 2: But most people can't, right, that's the point. So yeah,
Speaker 2: so the top schools in US News this year barely
Speaker 2: budged the top thirty schools in Washington Monthly. Half of
Speaker 2: the worried these elite schools. Well, and you know, Duke and.
Speaker 1: Say your Rice is your Vanderbilts, They're on there. I
Speaker 1: was looking at the South, but then you got a
Speaker 1: school like that's number I was just looking, right, the
Speaker 1: number one school in the South for best bang for
Speaker 1: your buck, and the number one liberal arts college is Brea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the number one school among fourteen hundred colleges
Speaker 2: that we rank.
Speaker 1: That's I mean, nobody would have had that where's Brea
Speaker 1: in the US news rank? Oh?
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, if you off to the side
Speaker 2: and some side ranking, they probably give it, you know,
Speaker 2: some lip service. But we're the only ranking in the
Speaker 2: country that says Berea University in Barrack in breat Kentucky. Berea,
Speaker 2: by the way.
Speaker 1: I mean, excuse me, yeah, I know we're both is the.
Speaker 2: Number one school and and why because they do an
Speaker 2: astonishing job of providing a grant education to students of
Speaker 2: modest means. Most of their students percent of their students,
Speaker 2: by the way, are on pelgrams. That's the federal Where
Speaker 2: is where is Brion? Bria is in Borea and it's
Speaker 2: I don't know, seventy five miles from Lexington, if that
Speaker 2: puts you in the.
Speaker 1: So it's in that side of Kentucky.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Lexington, and almost all their students are from the Appalachia.
Speaker 2: Colige was founded in eighteen fifty five by abolitionists, and
Speaker 2: it was the first college south of the Mason Dixon
Speaker 2: line to educate both blacks and whites and women. And
Speaker 2: for more than one hundred years it's had the aspiration
Speaker 2: to charge no tuition to anybody, and they don't quite
Speaker 2: get there, but the vast majority of the students pay
Speaker 2: little to nothing and they do that. How do they?
Speaker 1: Yeah, how do they do it?
Speaker 2: It's fascinating. I did. We would do a podcast and
Speaker 2: I interviewed the president Cynthia Nixon is her name.
Speaker 1: Number one, that's not that Cynthia Nixon, Yeah.
Speaker 2: A different they think that's her name. A very bright woman,
Speaker 2: and she explained it to us Number one, very what
Speaker 2: really designated work college meaning all of their students get
Speaker 2: work study money, so and then some of that money
Speaker 2: goes to pay their tuition and some of it goes
Speaker 2: in their pocket. Number two h And really the biggest
Speaker 2: reason is for one hundred years they've been building a
Speaker 2: a endowment through small donations that's now like a billion
Speaker 2: and a half dollars.
Speaker 1: Well, they just are really smart investors.
Speaker 2: Smart investors. And if you start a hundred years ago
Speaker 2: and you keep going magical compound interest and instead of
Speaker 2: like using it to build sports stadiums or endow you know.
Speaker 1: Or beautiful dorms, right, that becomes the arms race at
Speaker 1: these universities for dorms that look like they look like
Speaker 1: midtown Manhattan apartments exactly.
Speaker 2: It all goes or not. You know, the bulk of
Speaker 2: it goes to keeping costs down for students and then
Speaker 2: the students. It's it's, it's, it's it's a selective ish university.
Speaker 2: Not everybody gets in. It's not like Yale, but it's
Speaker 2: an academically rigorous institution. When you go look on the
Speaker 2: student reports, it's like, wow, I'm working my tail off here.
Speaker 2: But when students leave, they earn five thousand dollars more
Speaker 2: per year than their peers, their demographic peers who will
Speaker 2: go to colin So you know, that's just our idea
Speaker 2: of a great school. And if you look at like
Speaker 2: just the top five the most the highest ranking elite
Speaker 2: school is Princeton at number five. I think Harvard's down
Speaker 2: at twenty six or something. But above Princeton are three
Speaker 2: campuses of the California State University system. The number two
Speaker 2: Fresno State, which I'm going to guess most of your
Speaker 2: listeners and viewers don't know much about it, maybe have
Speaker 2: never heard of, but it shows up on a Saturday
Speaker 2: night in college football.
Speaker 1: It does bully, you do see that.
Speaker 2: But they are a fabulous institution. They charge very little.
Speaker 2: The students come from that Central Valley of California, many
Speaker 2: of them from very poor backgrounds. The president of the
Speaker 2: university grew up working on a farm in the area.
Speaker 2: The students when they graduate tend to stay in the area.
Speaker 2: They don't jet off to New York and work for
Speaker 2: a you know, hedge fund, and some of them go
Speaker 2: back to work for agricultural companies where as children they
Speaker 2: pick crops. That is upward mobility, my friend. Right, And
Speaker 2: so you know, these are the colleges that are really
Speaker 2: the ones we should all elevate and try to support,
Speaker 2: and unfortunately they are. They are underinvested in. They don't
Speaker 2: get anywhere near the money that schools that you know,
Speaker 2: catered to the wealthier student and it's it's kind of
Speaker 2: a crime.
Speaker 1: You know. It's interesting if there's a pattern, loose pattern
Speaker 1: that I've noticed a lot of colleges, meaning these are
Speaker 1: schools that don't have graduate programs right in many cases
Speaker 1: they are just focused on the four year I assume
Speaker 1: that's not a coincidence and how your rankings work that
Speaker 1: that those that these these colleges that are just focused
Speaker 1: on there are not worried about because many many universities
Speaker 1: it is the graduate programs that pay the bills. Right,
Speaker 1: you know, in some ways undergrad is a loss leader,
Speaker 1: and so is there. Do you get a sense that
Speaker 1: those without the graduate schools, without the the the postgrad
Speaker 1: you know, whether it's med schools, law schools, et cetera,
Speaker 1: that it it sort of concentrates the administration on running
Speaker 1: a better four year undergrad system.
Speaker 2: I think there's a lot to that. You know, there
Speaker 2: are tiers of universities that are classified by an institution
Speaker 2: called the Carnegie H Classification for Institutions for Higher Education,
Speaker 2: and we used to follow them kind of rigorously. Because
Speaker 2: US News did funny you should mention this year they
Speaker 2: really switched up their rankings and that and that allowed
Speaker 2: us to kind of free ourselves from how we used
Speaker 2: to do it. And one of the things we did,
Speaker 2: uh afropop what you said, is we pulled all the
Speaker 2: research data out of our main rankings and just made
Speaker 2: a best Colleges for research because that's where the grad
Speaker 2: programs are really really are and those are those are
Speaker 2: the universities, and there's maybe a couple hundred of them
Speaker 2: that have very big robust med schools, law schools, engineering schools,
Speaker 2: and so forth.
Speaker 1: You look at your list, and it is the big
Speaker 1: These are the school the big schools. It's Michigan, it's Stanford,
Speaker 1: it's Berkeley, it's pur New Texas A and M one
Speaker 1: through five, all of them huge research institutions.
Speaker 2: Right, So we said, let's just put those guys in
Speaker 2: their own category.
Speaker 1: By the way, Texas A and M over. Mit, you
Speaker 1: know how much some Texans would love seeing that.
Speaker 2: They do. They they brag on it, and you know,
Speaker 2: not to get too political here, but these are the
Speaker 2: schools that the Trump administration is really going after cuts
Speaker 2: to research grants. One of the things we found in
Speaker 2: doing this exercise, and it's in the story, is that
Speaker 2: sure he's gone after the big research universities in blue
Speaker 2: cities and states, but the ones that are also being hit.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of big research universities in red
Speaker 2: states and in rural areas, and they're getting hurt. And
Speaker 2: and it's like a lot of Trump administration policy, it
Speaker 2: is aimed at his enemies, but it winds up damaging
Speaker 2: his vote.
Speaker 1: There's a whole Paul I can tell you this. There's
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of lobbyists making money right now off
Speaker 1: of universities who've hired them to say, hey, get us
Speaker 1: off this target list. We're not what I don't think
Speaker 1: he mean. And and what you find out, I happen
Speaker 1: to know of one very public university that that's having
Speaker 1: some success doing that because they got as you just said,
Speaker 1: they lost some stuff that was aimed at punishing a
Speaker 1: Northeastern school and it ended up punishing the southern big
Speaker 1: state school. And that is it wasn't the intent. And
Speaker 1: so like just like the farmers, he's trying, they're trying
Speaker 1: to create carve outs now you know, which of course
Speaker 1: just got gum up the whole works.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, And it's and it's a it's a
Speaker 2: politics truck that we've never seen in this country.
Speaker 1: As the weaponizing college research. Right, Like that's another.
Speaker 2: Level specific targeting of your political enemies on funding that
Speaker 2: was never intended to be anything but given out on merit,
Speaker 2: right given out.
Speaker 1: And it's and not even really political stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, whether it's health funding, whether it's research. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is stuff that is arguably for the masses.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, so so so I hope that people take
Speaker 2: away from our rankings. I mean, I think our rankings
Speaker 2: resonate at this moment, because there's so much fury at
Speaker 2: higher end, and the fury is in all directions, from
Speaker 2: all quarters. And you know, a lot of it is
Speaker 2: political and partisan, and I think, you know, maybe have
Speaker 2: has grains of truth in it, but is also you know,
Speaker 2: kind of hypocritical. People. I'm furious about elite universities and
Speaker 2: college in general, and absolutely desperate to get their kids
Speaker 2: in there. But part of the fury is is real.
Speaker 2: Is it costs a lot of money now to send
Speaker 2: a kid to college or send yourself to college. I
Speaker 2: mean real inflation adjusted spending for two year schools has
Speaker 2: nearly doubled since nineteen ninety four, and more than doubled
Speaker 2: for four year schools. And you know, people are saying,
Speaker 2: you know, is college still worth it? Well, you go
Speaker 2: to the Washington Mother, you see hundreds of colleges that
Speaker 2: are really very much worth it. But in general, you know,
Speaker 2: at Toyota is a great buy at thirty thousand dollars, yeah,
Speaker 2: roll or whatever. At one hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
Speaker 2: it's not worth it. Right, So until we can get
Speaker 2: the cost of college down and prove the quality, because
Speaker 2: a lot of colleges are not delivering quality. You're going
Speaker 2: to have this this fury, this this distrust.
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Speaker 1: Their fee is free unless they win. What's the best
Speaker 1: way to find out? I mean, I'll tell you all
Speaker 1: these rankings where I feel and it's one of those
Speaker 1: things I didn't really appreciate until after I got on
Speaker 1: a campus. But what kind of professors? What kind of
Speaker 1: teachers do they have? How do they hire their professors?
Speaker 1: Do they demand professors that do research and prioritize their
Speaker 1: own work or do they hire teachers real coaches? When
Speaker 1: I mean a teacher, I mean like a coach you
Speaker 1: know who becomes that mentor you know? I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I teach part time. I'm I'm on use USC's campus
Speaker 1: right now, and I did an event last night and
Speaker 1: three of my former students showed up and it it
Speaker 1: brought a ton of joy to me. Right It is
Speaker 1: that there is a joy you get out of it
Speaker 1: when you feel like you've you've been able to pass
Speaker 1: something on, you've been able to inspire a student. And
Speaker 1: not all people are motivated by that or have that.
Speaker 1: Is there a way to measure what kind of because
Speaker 1: you could you look at a resume of somebody, well,
Speaker 1: what a great resume, but you have no idea if
Speaker 1: there are any good at being a teacher and they
Speaker 1: know how to be a coach, you know, that sort
Speaker 1: of mindset, you know, is that researchable? Is that rankable?
Speaker 2: So we've really struggled with this, and there are there
Speaker 2: is some data that you can use to measure the
Speaker 2: quality of student engagement, quality of teaching, but we are
Speaker 2: sufficiently doubtful of it to not We've written stories about it.
Speaker 1: We've you know, is this what sort of the student
Speaker 1: reaction to professors? Is it?
Speaker 2: Using those rate of professors professor? There's something called the
Speaker 2: National Survey of Student Engagement. You know, they ask students
Speaker 2: and you know, faculty, how many times during the course
Speaker 2: of the week have you met with a professor outside
Speaker 2: the classroom? Right? How many ten page or more papers did.
Speaker 1: You have to write?
Speaker 2: They try to measure the degree to which actual evidence
Speaker 2: based practices that we know lead to learning are happening
Speaker 2: on the ground. Not bad, but it's not of a
Speaker 2: quality that we've been felt comfortable to put in our rankings.
Speaker 2: But you're asking the right question anecdotally, Like I went
Speaker 2: to the University of Missouri my freshman year. It's good,
Speaker 2: good school. The flag that I transferred to Northwestern. Honestly,
Speaker 2: the quality of the teaching at Northwestern wasn't any better
Speaker 2: than the quality teaching that I had at MISSOI I
Speaker 2: bet that's.
Speaker 1: Just how to pay higher rent that they did.
Speaker 2: I've given lectures to, you know, many at many colleges.
Speaker 2: I've been doing this college ranking thing for twenty years.
Speaker 2: And you landed some small, Bucolic, you know, not well
Speaker 2: known college in the middle of nowhere, and you know,
Speaker 2: you meet these professors who are just wonderful, and they're
Speaker 2: very smart, and the students adore them, and they have
Speaker 2: degrees from very prestigious universities. The thing is, we overproduce
Speaker 2: academic talent in this country. Right. Most people that get
Speaker 2: PhDs struggle to find teaching jobs. And that's tough if
Speaker 2: you're in that profession. But it's great if you're a
Speaker 2: college in some far flung place. Sure you got your
Speaker 2: pick a great talent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you get a Harvard train, Princeton train, Michigan train
Speaker 1: at you know, at a small college in the middle
Speaker 1: of Canthus. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the less research they're doing, the more time they're
Speaker 2: all right, I'll just put my my my mission is
Speaker 2: to is to educate these kids. So I do think
Speaker 2: that the quality of teaching between elite schools and non
Speaker 2: elite schools is very narrow, is very similar.
Speaker 1: So one of the challenges that's coming. I say this.
Speaker 1: I serve on a board at GW, so I hear
Speaker 1: these admissions concerns, meaning it's the so called demographic cliff
Speaker 1: that we are at the beginning of that. I guess
Speaker 1: it's I guess it's my generation's fault. I didn't have
Speaker 1: enough kids. I only had two, right, we didn't have
Speaker 1: there were and you did your job. Yeah, I replaced right,
Speaker 1: we replaced.
Speaker 2: The environment i'd had to, and we can better close
Speaker 2: them back.
Speaker 1: So but there's I look at a lot of your
Speaker 1: the colleges that made the rankings, and I know many
Speaker 1: of them are financially strapped, and I think there is
Speaker 1: going to be a a you know, in the next
Speaker 1: ten or fifteen years, we're gonna see colleges. I have
Speaker 1: a friend of mine who is the former well somebody
Speaker 1: you know Hobart who worked in the Clint administration yep,
Speaker 1: back in the day. And I remember Mark gearan great guy.
Speaker 1: And I remember Mark telling me this fifteen years ago
Speaker 1: when he was at Hobart and then he left and
Speaker 1: then he came back that there's real financial challenges for
Speaker 1: these smaller basically the schools that performed best in your list.
Speaker 1: You know, Bria has sounds like they have a good endowment.
Speaker 1: Many of these smaller colleges do not. And if you
Speaker 1: take away international students and you take away some of
Speaker 1: these things, there's gonna be some good colleges that go
Speaker 1: bankrupt in the next ten years that just disappear. What
Speaker 1: are you sensing, you know, have you been able to
Speaker 1: pick up on how are some of these smaller colleges
Speaker 1: trying to survive in this in this tightening financial climate.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll add one one more piece of news for you.
Speaker 2: In the big beautiful Act that got passed, Uh, there
Speaker 2: is uh statutory language that is saying colleges that don't
Speaker 2: demonstrate bang for the buck, that don't demonstrate a good
Speaker 2: return on investment will eventually get cut off from federal financing.
Speaker 1: Mmm.
Speaker 2: So there's going to be in addition to.
Speaker 1: The interesting reckoning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and honestly, the Washington Monthly has been calling for
Speaker 2: something like this for years. You know, whether this bill
Speaker 2: got it quite right, we can debate, but the the the.
Speaker 1: Spirit you like the spirit of it a hundred. Look,
Speaker 1: I remember the Obama administration couldn't get anything passed, so
Speaker 1: they decided they were going to put out their own
Speaker 1: best bang. It never really took you remember.
Speaker 2: That, the kind of they we're going to make it
Speaker 2: a ranking, and in the end they said, no, we'll
Speaker 2: just put out.
Speaker 1: The data that I both know what happened. You know,
Speaker 1: I both know what happened. There so many of those
Speaker 1: they all had connections to some higher institution, like don't
Speaker 1: you rank us? Don't you do that? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Exactly. They went about as far as they politically could.
Speaker 2: But uh so, so if you look at our fourteen
Speaker 2: hundred plus schools and our best best uh colleges for
Speaker 2: your tuition and tax dollar ranking. We talked about the
Speaker 2: good ones, the great ones, the you know uh you know,
Speaker 2: uh President, there's a lot of colleges down on the blow.
Speaker 1: That really should go, should disappear. Huh. They need some
Speaker 1: radical reform.
Speaker 2: They charged too much, their students don't make that much money,
Speaker 2: they don't graduate a there there almost predatory.
Speaker 1: Now, let's let's name some names. What's what's a what's
Speaker 1: one that.
Speaker 2: People but you know, you know, liberty University, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: just a terrible college too late, right, people think is
Speaker 2: a terrific Yeah.
Speaker 1: My kids loved that was on the list.
Speaker 2: At least by our reckoning. Right, I'm sure if you're yeah,
Speaker 2: you know it has its But but so there's a
Speaker 2: lot of schools you hadn't heard of, a lot of
Speaker 2: you know, the arts schools and the music schools where
Speaker 2: you know, students go knowing they're never going to make
Speaker 2: any money.
Speaker 1: Berkeley School of Music, Yeah, one of those very expensive
Speaker 1: and and and selective and no guarantee you're going to
Speaker 1: make it all right. Look, I was a I was
Speaker 1: a musician, yeah, and I did get a music scholarship.
Speaker 1: But I remember toying with Berkeley and thought, man, I'm
Speaker 1: not that that's a you're you're, you're, you're going for
Speaker 1: the dream. And literally it's one percent that makes it
Speaker 1: exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: But so there are a lot of towns kept alive
Speaker 2: in part by their university, and those are the places
Speaker 2: my heart goes out to because one of the great
Speaker 2: things about the American system of higher education is it's dispersed.
Speaker 2: It's all over the country, and you know, you think of.
Speaker 1: The every European marvels at this. Yeah, you just marvel
Speaker 1: at it that we have these institutions everywhere.
Speaker 2: And I think we need a new deal. And we've
Speaker 2: written about this. Kevin Carry, one of our guest editors,
Speaker 2: have written extensively about it. We need a deal, a
Speaker 2: new deal for higher ed. We need to reach out
Speaker 2: to colleges and say, on a voluntary basis, if you're
Speaker 2: willing to control costs, to share your data so that
Speaker 2: we can monitor what's going on and improve quality and
Speaker 2: charge little to nothing to students of modest means, we're
Speaker 2: going to cover you all your costs up to a
Speaker 2: certain modest amount. This is an oversimplification shot, but the
Speaker 2: average cost spending on a student, non accounting, room and board,
Speaker 2: it's about ten thousand dollars a year to.
Speaker 1: Go to college.
Speaker 2: To cost to college. If you offered colleges ten thousand
Speaker 2: dollars per student, that's the deal. And oh, by the way,
Speaker 2: any credit at any college from a class transfers over
Speaker 2: if that student goes to another college in the network.
Speaker 2: That could save thousands of hundreds of these schools anyway,
Speaker 2: And I think a lot of state schools would join in.
Speaker 2: The elites would never do this, but that way you
Speaker 2: could deliver free college or virtually free college to the
Speaker 2: working middle class American. Save these schools, save these towns,
Speaker 2: save these regions, have better quality at lower cost, and
Speaker 2: I could be transformative for the country.
Speaker 1: Well look, I mean I can already hear you essentially
Speaker 1: making this pitch so that left and right both could
Speaker 1: embrace it. Which is that's as much as to save
Speaker 1: these rural towns that do love that.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's funny, you know, there's this sort of war on
Speaker 1: higher ed on the right, but locally they love you know.
Speaker 1: It's like, frankly, it's like you're a member of Congress.
Speaker 1: I can't stay in Congress, but I like my guy,
Speaker 1: you know, right, I don't like these higher ed guys.
Speaker 1: But you know, we got a nice little university right
Speaker 1: down the street here. It's a good you know, you know,
Speaker 1: they produce really good people. I get my babysitters from there,
Speaker 1: you know, type of mindset.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And they have they have the local radio station,
Speaker 2: and they have right a lot of times they provide
Speaker 2: the local news exactly exactly. And you know, there are
Speaker 2: a lot of these regional public universities. The Fresno States
Speaker 2: the northeast Missouri state or Southeast Missouri state. These colleges
Speaker 2: that are known regionally but have no national profile. That's
Speaker 2: where most people get their BA degrees, right, and they're
Speaker 2: underinvested in I think they get about one thousand dollars
Speaker 2: per student, less than the flagship universities in those states,
Speaker 2: and maybe half or a third of what gets spent
Speaker 2: for these elite schools. And they're doing the yeomen's work.
Speaker 2: They are the up the engines of upward mobility in
Speaker 2: this country.
Speaker 1: If we had had a conversation in the early nineties
Speaker 1: the question, I would have assumed back then that we
Speaker 1: were going to get what I call mandatory thirteenth and
Speaker 1: fourteenth grade, meaning that the first two years of if
Speaker 1: essentially community college was going to be free, that it
Speaker 1: was going to be available the way public Essentially, we
Speaker 1: were going to extend public education two more years. It
Speaker 1: seemed inevitable. It's where I remember, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the smarter strategic things that Bill Clinton did in ninety two,
Speaker 1: I remember was prioritizing campaign events at community colleges. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, it was just you know, that could
Speaker 1: why do you do that? That's where the people are right,
Speaker 1: like it was a you know, and he was. He
Speaker 1: was making an economic argument, and what better place to
Speaker 1: do that where people are looking to make it to
Speaker 1: the middle class than there, And he took.
Speaker 2: The he began the process of getting the banks out
Speaker 2: of student financing because they were making a footload with
Speaker 2: no risk and making it some college could offer directly. No,
Speaker 2: he was absolutely right. And I don't know if you were, but.
Speaker 1: We're not there. I don't know. I was. I was shocked.
Speaker 1: I am shocked that we didn't get the and I
Speaker 1: know it was in the I think it was in
Speaker 1: the initial draft of one of the bills, Bill Better Yeah, Back.
Speaker 2: It was one of those different versions. It was doing
Speaker 2: for community colleges what I just said we should do
Speaker 2: for colleges. It was. It was basically a set of
Speaker 2: funding and regulatory UH offers that said we're going to
Speaker 2: make community college free in America. And it came very close.
Speaker 2: No Republicans voted for it. I think Joe Manchin voted
Speaker 2: against it. But what really killed it was the four
Speaker 2: year elite schools didn't want all that money because it's
Speaker 2: a fixed pie. They thought they wanted the money for themselves,
Speaker 2: and so they quietly but non publicly bad mouthed it,
Speaker 2: and it didn't make it became mack close.
Speaker 1: Where what is the state the state of the community
Speaker 1: college system? You know, I grew up in Miami, and
Speaker 1: I grew up at the time Miami Day Community College
Speaker 1: was almost a model community college. It except it's now
Speaker 1: a college. It's a four year college, you know, but
Speaker 1: it is a tremendous I mean, it is your path,
Speaker 1: you know, out of out of struggles, and it really is.
Speaker 1: It's a I'm you know, I think it's it's I'm
Speaker 1: glad to hear it. Still it hangs in there because
Speaker 1: I have always been really proud of how successful it's been.
Speaker 1: What is the state of the community college system in general?
Speaker 1: Because it still is the best path out of the
Speaker 1: out of poverty.
Speaker 2: I'm going to answer that question, but before I do,
Speaker 2: one to say, I hope you'll go back to the
Speaker 2: Washington Monthly and read the story about I think we
Speaker 2: call it Florida's Fresh Squeezed Universities. It's about Florida, all
Speaker 2: about the history of how Florida managed. When you think
Speaker 2: of Florida, you don't think higher education, right, No, And.
Speaker 1: I've always been personally frustrated that Florida doesn't have a
Speaker 1: UT system, a Sunni system or the UC system. And
Speaker 1: it's been they've they toyed with it a few times,
Speaker 1: but they never they never quite you know, built those
Speaker 1: type of systems like Texas and California New Art.
Speaker 2: I invite you to read the story, because what Florida
Speaker 2: doesn't have is Harvard level prestige schools. You know, for
Speaker 2: Florida's good school but nobody thinks of it as elite.
Speaker 2: But the system that they do have is more like
Speaker 2: UT or the California system or the New York system
Speaker 2: than you realize. And I'll give you one example. First
Speaker 2: of all, the end result is you can go to
Speaker 2: Florida and go to a four year school. And the
Speaker 2: Florida schools do extremely well on our rankings.
Speaker 1: By the way, they did really well in the US
Speaker 1: News Wrean Kings this year too. Yeah, because they are
Speaker 1: a good price.
Speaker 2: They are a very good price, and that is engineered
Speaker 2: into the Florida system. They give you one example. In
Speaker 2: nineteen the nineteen sixties, they passed a system whereby every
Speaker 2: course at every public university in Florida was had the
Speaker 2: same course number and if you pass that course, you
Speaker 2: passed that course at any other school in Florida. Right.
Speaker 2: As you may know, when you go to community college,
Speaker 2: you take English one oh one and then you transfer
Speaker 2: to a four year school. The four year schools like
Speaker 2: you to say, we don't think that the coge No,
Speaker 2: but you're right.
Speaker 1: In Florida, Santa Fe Community College, which is next to Gainesville,
Speaker 1: it's automatic TCC Tallahassee Community College automatic to Florida State.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Florida has more as I think a percentage
Speaker 2: of its students getting the first two years at a
Speaker 2: community college and then transferring than any other state in
Speaker 2: the Union.
Speaker 1: Well, it's it's more affordable. I mean, look, if I
Speaker 1: didn't get a scholarship, that was going to be my path. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you do the two years and then transfer because you know,
Speaker 1: it's a more affordable way to get a four year degree.
Speaker 2: I got a son, you know, at Montgomery College on
Speaker 2: and off, so it is a great way. And to
Speaker 2: answer the question, community college has benefited some in this
Speaker 2: big beautiful act because they're going to get they freed
Speaker 2: up money for short termsificates.
Speaker 1: These are kind of trade schoolish type of right, they.
Speaker 2: Do trade school stuff as community college. That's where most
Speaker 2: trade school stuff happens. And you know, people don't quite
Speaker 2: get that, but it's been the case for decades. But
Speaker 2: these are usually the federal government won't give you a
Speaker 2: PELL grant if it's not at least a year long
Speaker 2: program or two year long program. This is for six weeks,
Speaker 2: eight months. I can forget what the timeframe is. We'll
Speaker 2: see if it works because the quality, there's a question
Speaker 2: of quality. But this is a potential gusher of new
Speaker 2: funding for community colleges. But community college is like four
Speaker 2: year There's just a vast range of quality. Some of
Speaker 2: them have very low graduation rates, some of them much higher,
Speaker 2: even holding demographics studies. Some of them are well supported
Speaker 2: by their regions and states, some of them not so much.
Speaker 1: So it's a wide disparity, is what you're saying. There's
Speaker 1: not a consistency to it.
Speaker 2: Correct, correct, And there are some states just don't have
Speaker 2: a lot of community colleges. So it's they are fantastic
Speaker 2: as an institution. We need to do more for them,
Speaker 2: we need to ask more of them. But I completely
Speaker 2: agree with you. They are they are the working end
Speaker 2: of higher education.
Speaker 1: Talk about community connection. I mean, I just you know,
Speaker 1: we had a the way the Miami Dade Community College
Speaker 1: has multiple campuses all around Dade County, and those campuses
Speaker 1: also served as sort of host for community events. You
Speaker 1: might you know, you might take a yoga class there,
Speaker 1: you might take a quilting class there, like you know, look,
Speaker 1: because they had to make money, right, they would offer
Speaker 1: sort of classes not for degrees, but just sort of
Speaker 1: community interest classes to yeah, make a couple of bucks
Speaker 1: to support the education part of things.
Speaker 2: And the partnerships you find between community colleges and employers,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, find these at some of the regional public
Speaker 2: universities too, but even more at the community colleges. If
Speaker 2: you're an employer, you're you know, an airline, right, and
Speaker 2: you need people you work with the community college to
Speaker 2: structure your classes such that they're getting the certificates that
Speaker 2: they need to then work you know, in the logistics
Speaker 2: part of your airline or in the accounting or whatever.
Speaker 2: And you know, maybe they have a paid internship program.
Speaker 2: So that's where a lot of that academic to employment
Speaker 2: connection happens or doesn't happen, again, depending on the leadership
Speaker 2: and the quality of the community college.
Speaker 1: Well, look, I want to pivot now a little bit
Speaker 1: to sort of where the state of journalism and nonprofit
Speaker 1: for profit all that stuff. But I will just say,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think this is this is what I
Speaker 1: call service journalism, and it sort of gets at something
Speaker 1: that I think is overall missing in the conversation that
Speaker 1: we're having about the future of journalism, and I think
Speaker 1: sort of where we lost our way collectively, which is
Speaker 1: just this, there's not enough service journalism. We you know,
Speaker 1: I'm curious what you think of this statement, But I
Speaker 1: have a friend of mine named Richard Gingris who used
Speaker 1: to run the Google News Initiative, and he said, you know,
Speaker 1: the worst thing that happened to journalism was all the
Speaker 1: president's men. And you know where he's going, because ninety
Speaker 1: percent of the work of a journalist is in service
Speaker 1: to their community if they're doing it right. It's ten
Speaker 1: percent of your work over a lifetime. That is that accountability, right.
Speaker 1: That is the stuff you want to put in your resume,
Speaker 1: the stuff you might show up at your obituary, right,
Speaker 1: the stuff that, yeah, you might apply for an award for,
Speaker 1: but it's not what most people are going to know
Speaker 1: you'rejournalism for. And it's not the impact, right, it's and
Speaker 1: it's it's one of these where this ranking system is
Speaker 1: more helpful to the average person than doing a a
Speaker 1: h an audit of of just how campaign spending is
Speaker 1: working these days between the NRCC and the NRSC. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it's an unimportant story, but it's it's
Speaker 1: not service journalism. And I will tell you in my
Speaker 1: conversations with young aspiring journalists, they're getting in not to
Speaker 1: help people figure out how to save money in their life, right,
Speaker 1: They're getting in because they want to get Joe Biden
Speaker 1: or get Donald Trump. Right that that they're gonna you know,
Speaker 1: they're gonna be the next Bob Warder. How do we
Speaker 1: inspire people to to to want to be in service
Speaker 1: that that journalism is both a service and that part
Speaker 1: of the public service gets you to the point where, yes,
Speaker 1: you you're trying to build some trust so that when
Speaker 1: you do the accountability they believe you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, there's always been a hierarchy in journalism. The
Speaker 2: people who are out there doing the yeoman's work, right,
Speaker 2: covering the school board, covering you know, government agencies, covering services.
Speaker 1: You know, snap benefits. How is that going to work?
Speaker 1: You know things like this. Yeah, you know, the.
Speaker 2: Beat reporters, they get their they get their share of
Speaker 2: love from the editor. But who rules the roost. It's
Speaker 2: the political reporters, right, It's the big time investigative reporters.
Speaker 2: That's where the glory is. That's where you know, you
Speaker 2: make your most money. And when you compound that by
Speaker 2: the utter devastation that has taken place in the last
Speaker 2: really ten years but really more like twenty of local journalism, Chuck,
Speaker 2: it's dead. They've it's been deoyed.
Speaker 1: I think it's the single I think it is the it.
Speaker 1: If you look at the proverbial house of journalism, it
Speaker 1: turned out local was a foundational right, and you knock
Speaker 1: out that it collapsed the entire structure. Right, nobody trusts
Speaker 1: anything because they lost that community tether and that turned
Speaker 1: out to be the single most important connection we had
Speaker 1: with the public.
Speaker 2: So so you know, there's good publications, you know, online
Speaker 2: nonprofit publications trying to bring back local reporting, bring back
Speaker 2: not just accountability reporting like political and bureaucratic, but as
Speaker 2: you say, the service journalism.
Speaker 1: Where do I save money? Where can I take my
Speaker 1: family out of four out to dinner without breaking the bank.
Speaker 1: I know that seems not like the greatest scoop, but
Speaker 1: that's actually how you help your community.
Speaker 2: You know, what are the scores at the high school
Speaker 2: basketball game? People care about that, and you know it's
Speaker 2: you can't just get the data there. There was a
Speaker 2: game there, Somebody tell me, tell me what happened. Uh,
Speaker 2: you know, weather Best drives within three hours of my town.
Speaker 2: I mean there's a thousand things that people want and need.
Speaker 2: But again, the economic underpinnings of that kind of work
Speaker 2: have disappeared, primarily because of Google and Facebook, and you
Speaker 2: know there's other reasons for it, but it is primarily
Speaker 2: the advertising dollar has been hoarded by the Silicon Valley platforms,
Speaker 2: and without advertising, it is really hard to make it
Speaker 2: in this in this business. And I run a publication
Speaker 2: that for a while was doing very well producing online
Speaker 2: content that was supported by advertising, and then it disappeared.
Speaker 1: So I've lived, and you don't even know why it disappeared, right,
Speaker 1: because they never were transparent about how the algorithm worked, right.
Speaker 2: Correct, But you know, in a general sense, we know,
Speaker 2: right they monopolized. I mean Google has lost an anti
Speaker 2: trust case this year monopolizing the ad tech infrastructure, and
Speaker 2: and they you know, the connection between readers and advertisers
Speaker 2: at the local level has largely disappeared. There's still some
Speaker 2: and I think you can come back with the right policies,
Speaker 2: but boy, it's tough out there. And anybody doing local
Speaker 2: service journalism I agree with that. My hat's off to them. Well,
Speaker 2: you know, it's interesting the what what I've discovered. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm trying to throw.
Speaker 1: Myself into this issue a little bit and working on
Speaker 1: a few projects of trying to is it possible to
Speaker 1: bring back a to create a for profit local news environment,
Speaker 1: And what you do find is, you know who else
Speaker 1: hates the Google ad network? Local businesses. Yeah, they don't
Speaker 1: like it either. They prefer a personalized connection. They prefer
Speaker 1: to advertise in an entity that they that they know.
Speaker 1: Rather there's quote unquote programmatic advertising, you know, et cetera,
Speaker 1: or you just sort of find people that stumble upon
Speaker 1: your stuff. And I do think that, But the I
Speaker 1: don't know whether this is whether you can do this
Speaker 1: without the help of government, And I'm and I'm torn
Speaker 1: on it because I don't know how much we want
Speaker 1: government involved.
Speaker 2: So there's two ways government can help. Government can and philanthropy,
Speaker 2: right can underwrite some of the costs, or government can
Speaker 2: change the rules of the marketplace from the ones that
Speaker 2: wrote yesterday or ten or twenty years ago that destroyed
Speaker 2: the AD dollars two new ones that bring the AD
Speaker 2: dollars back.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, you can. You can incentive. You know, there
Speaker 1: is some work being done on the state level trying
Speaker 1: to you know, you might give a tax break to
Speaker 1: a local business that advertises in a local publication. So
Speaker 1: it's not a it's not a direct subsidy to the media.
Speaker 1: It actually you're helping the small business. So it's a frankly,
Speaker 1: it's a way to write, it's a way to make
Speaker 1: it a bipartisan ia to be frank Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I hope you know the work of my friend
Speaker 2: and maybe yours, Steve Waldman.
Speaker 1: Oh well it's Steve. Yeah, Okay, Yes, it's Steve's work.
Speaker 1: He's he's been he's been going legislature by legislature, making
Speaker 1: this argument.
Speaker 2: On my board. He's one of my best friends. His
Speaker 2: organization is Rebuilt Local News, and and you know, I
Speaker 2: think he's making real progress in this.
Speaker 1: No, he has, I mean, I I we we've been
Speaker 1: at a couple events together as we sort of are
Speaker 1: pied pipering this stuff, and it is it is. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: there is a I do think it's still seen through
Speaker 1: a political lens, right, He's not making the case politic
Speaker 1: through a political lens, but it's unfortunately local media is
Speaker 1: being punished for the perception of cable news. You know,
Speaker 1: I used to scream about this that. You know, actually
Speaker 1: the state of journalism is quite good over the last
Speaker 1: ten years. It's amazing some of the work that's out there.
Speaker 1: The problem is our curb appeal, you know. Right, the
Speaker 1: most prominent news organizations were the three cable channels that
Speaker 1: really gave journalism a bad reputation. All right, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to sit here and say one is bad. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to get into that. It just the the
Speaker 1: opinion debate drove the perception of all journalism and it
Speaker 1: really harmed local more than anybody else.
Speaker 2: I think that's right, And I think what happened is,
Speaker 2: you know, when I was a kid, when you were
Speaker 2: a kid, I'm a little older, you you lived in
Speaker 2: a medium sized city or a small town or rural area.
Speaker 2: My parents, you know, I grew up in Saint Louis.
Speaker 2: They read both the Saint Louis papers, and you were
Speaker 2: getting a lot of local news, and you were getting
Speaker 2: political news if you if you had a sizable town
Speaker 2: like Saint Louis, you had your own reporters in Washington
Speaker 2: covering the industries, covering government.
Speaker 1: But through the prism of somebody that lived in Saint Louis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and that's important.
Speaker 2: It's important to know what the you know, localizedeers going
Speaker 2: to do to the rivers, right, And so the best
Speaker 2: guy covering the Army Corps of Engineers was a Saint
Speaker 2: Louis Post dispatched reporter. But every town in Missouri, you know,
Speaker 2: was carrying a p They were carrying Post dispatch reporting
Speaker 2: and then they were doing local reporting. And a lot
Speaker 2: of those small towns they were very conservative, datorially sure, right,
Speaker 2: but but the news that they were covering, the national
Speaker 2: news that they were covering was whatever every you know,
Speaker 2: it was kind of everybody else read differences from writers
Speaker 2: from from ape, from you're I'm it's back, and it
Speaker 2: was allitable checked. Those small towns no longer have national news, right,
Speaker 2: they can't afford it, and and a lot of them
Speaker 2: just disappeared completely. And so where do people small towns
Speaker 2: get their news. They go to Fox right, or maybe
Speaker 2: they go to MSNBC, and that's not news. I mean
Speaker 2: they're getting bits of reformation, but in a package of partisanship.
Speaker 1: No it and it's so in some ways when you're
Speaker 1: trying to salvage local news, people look at it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but if you have an agenda right like that, you know,
Speaker 1: they've been convinced that that that every if the media
Speaker 1: is manipulated, it must be up and down the entire
Speaker 1: ecosystem of media, not just on the on the on
Speaker 1: the national cable side.
Speaker 2: But you're I'm really fascinated about what you said, Chuck,
Speaker 2: that businesses want a relationship with their customers. If you
Speaker 2: run a hospital and a you know, rural or vault
Speaker 2: in area, uh, you know all of your business or
Speaker 2: most of it comes from the region, right, you run
Speaker 2: an HVAC company, if you you know, uh, a grocery business,
Speaker 2: you need that relationship with the local and and the
Speaker 2: local papers aren't there to provide it. And I think
Speaker 2: there's an opportunity there. I keep following that trail.
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, I I am, and look, I'm a
Speaker 1: huge believer that that look we've got. As I joke,
Speaker 1: a man named Craig decided classifies ought to be free. YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: The entire local news industry got destroyed every big But
Speaker 1: I still think that it's possible local sports and even
Speaker 1: youth sports below high school could be the connective tissue
Speaker 1: that starts the rebuilding process. It may not be the elixir,
Speaker 1: I mean, might it'd be as helpful as classified advertising is,
Speaker 1: but boy, the one I just look at it as
Speaker 1: what can bring red and blue together kids? Right, and
Speaker 1: we love sports in this country, and now sports is
Speaker 1: going to be a pipeline to college more than ever before.
Speaker 1: Right with the variety of you know, with this, with
Speaker 1: this nil, we're making a limp. We're sort of it's
Speaker 1: possible this new world of nil and sports might actually
Speaker 1: expand the opportunities of people paying for college with sports
Speaker 1: the way frankly the arts were used to pay for college,
Speaker 1: you know, previous generations. And and that's maybe that's a
Speaker 1: good thing, let's hope. So I know, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to sit here and say it definitely, but it's possible,
Speaker 1: well that this is a that this is a it's
Speaker 1: a hand up the ladder not necessarily. Uh uh. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying some universities aren't going. I mean, what
Speaker 1: we're seeing in college football is a little insane, but
Speaker 1: if you go to that next level down, you know
Speaker 1: it's really serving as an opportunity for young women. Yep,
Speaker 1: you know in ways that we've not seen before.
Speaker 2: And and you know, the Silicon Valley keeps throwing punches.
Speaker 2: And right now, what's happening to local news is their
Speaker 2: contents being scraped by AI. Right and and there's a
Speaker 2: pretty fascinating movement happening, uh with a company by the
Speaker 2: name of cloud Stream. I think it's called you may
Speaker 2: have looked about it, where they host media sites. It
Speaker 2: holds all kinds of sites and they give you the
Speaker 2: ability to say, I don't want AI scrape in my side,
Speaker 2: and you don't have to do anything. It's done automatically
Speaker 2: for you. Well, that's got the AI folks freaked out
Speaker 2: because the inability to have real time, fact checked information
Speaker 2: in local areas turns AI into mush. Right, they've already
Speaker 2: scraped all the old stuff and so they've got a lot.
Speaker 2: But things change, right, Downtown's changed, roads change, people move,
Speaker 2: and if you can't get that information, and that's what
Speaker 2: the local you know, press has, so they've got more
Speaker 2: leverage than they think.
Speaker 1: No, it's it's look, I'm not you know, I'm one
Speaker 1: of those who just views AI neutrally. It can be
Speaker 1: weaponized for good or weaponized for bad, or frankly, probably
Speaker 1: a little bit of both. We just have to be
Speaker 1: smart about how we use it as a tool. Okay, Yeah, Paul,
Speaker 1: this was great. Washington Monthly is as innovative as ever,
Speaker 1: and what I like about it is that there's always
Speaker 1: it's a home for sort of different ideas. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it's not always the conventional, not just in some ways
Speaker 1: left right debates get conventional. And I hate to say this,
Speaker 1: but there's certain editorial pages that, ah, the editorials new,
Speaker 1: but I've read it one hundred times.
Speaker 2: You kind of know where they're coming from and play
Speaker 2: in a different version of the same song.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you do seem to have a you know,
Speaker 1: what is it that makes a Washington Monthly story that
Speaker 1: doesn't make it into the Washington Post? What would be
Speaker 1: your what's the secret ingredient in your mind?
Speaker 2: We're not afraid to put the same reporting energy into
Speaker 2: figuring out solutions as slothing out problems and conventional journalism,
Speaker 2: you know, the opinion section may have a piece or
Speaker 2: two on some new policy idea, some new way out right,
Speaker 2: but mostly they feel that that's not their job. No,
Speaker 2: let me find problems, and we find problems. There's no
Speaker 2: politics there, you know, every but solutions have a kind
Speaker 2: of political valance, or they might. And we do this
Speaker 2: twenty four to seven. That's what we did. We're more
Speaker 2: guided by figuring out how to fix things than slew
Speaker 2: the outw I mean, obviously we uh, you know, one
Speaker 2: of my colleagues says, you know that the problem with
Speaker 2: the monthly is we provide solutions to problems people don't
Speaker 2: know they have. Oh, there's not much of a market
Speaker 2: for it. But yeah, and I think that's the big,
Speaker 2: the big difference. Yeah, No, I know.
Speaker 1: It's like, I think one of the big solutions to
Speaker 1: some of our political distrust is to expand Congress. Many
Speaker 1: people don't think that's a problem that needed to be solved.
Speaker 1: I've I've had a hard time getting lay people to
Speaker 1: see that right a way. And it's like just you know,
Speaker 1: but but I take your point. And yet, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of Times, what you read today in the
Speaker 1: Washington Monthly will be a solution that government eventually agrees
Speaker 1: to in about five years.
Speaker 2: That's how it works, and we have a lot, we
Speaker 2: have a long record of that.
Speaker 1: Yes you do, yes, you do well, you recognize it.
Speaker 1: Paul Glaster is always pleasure. Thank you, sir. Great to
Speaker 1: see it.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: Buddy H.