Something in media that's giving me hope right now

Plus, the bizarre aftermath of the Trump-Harris debate

Because I spend a lot of time criticizing the practices of the mainstream press — false equivalence, sanewashing, normalizing, horserace coverage, over-reliance on polls — I’m sometimes asked what gives me hope. What’s going right?

It’s always easy for me to answer. I talk about the inspiring work of young people who are practicing journalism, in many cases at student newspapers or outlets.

Here are some example of memorable student journalism in just the past couple of weeks:

• An eye-opening investigation by the Columbia Spectator about how the university is surveilling and disciplining students following last semester’s protests and arrests.

• The digging by the student-run Independent Florida Alligator who revealed how University of Florida president Ben Sasse (a former Republican senator from Nebraska) was using his position. They broke stories about how spending had tripled in Sasse’s first year in the academic job, and how he gave contracts to his Republican allies in Washington, DC. Investigations and national media coverage followed; Sasse stepped down in July, citing concerns about his wife’s health.

There has also been outstanding student journalism at Stanford, at Northwestern, and at high school publications. On the high school level, the student newspaper at Townsend Harris High School in Kew Gardens, Queens helped uncover a sexual misconduct scandal at their school; as they did their reporting, they filed a Freedom of Information request — a first for them. And students at Rangeview High School in Aurora, Colo. revealed a social media scam that involved the alleged blackmailing of children who were threatened with the publication of explicit images.

A student journalist covering the protests opposing the war in Gaza at Columbia University in April / Getty Images

In order to help encourage and support young journalists, I’m making a commitment to send the proceeds of new subscriptions to this newsletter to an organization I admire: the Student Press Law Center. I’ll do that through the presidential election in November. You can read about the center’s work here. The core is legal advice and help to student journalists and their advisers; thousands of them have called the SPLC hotline as they try to exercise their First Amendment press rights — often with significant opposition.

So if you’ve been thinking of upgrading your subscription to American Crisis to a paid one, now might be a good time to do that. (You can, of course, also donate directly to SPLC.)

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Thanks for considering it, and thanks for subscribing in any way you choose. I’m glad to have you with me on this tumultuous journey; each new post from this newsletter now lands in more than 15,000 email in-boxes.

I got my start as a high school journalist at Buffalo’s Nardin Academy, where I was editor in chief of the student paper, the Kaleidoscope. In college, I covered the Georgetown medical school for the Georgetown Hoya, and was the arts editor of the Georgetown Voice. There’s no chance I would have become a professional journalist without that experience.

Now for some other media-related things.

Here’s Mary Trump, former president Donald Trump’s niece, talking about what she sees as her uncle’s obvious plans to try to overturn the election if he loses a close race to Vice President Kamala Harris in November. Mary Trump blames corporate media for continuing “to normalize a deeply unwell traitor just so they can preserve the horse race of it all.”

Here is the audio of my interview with Katherine Maher, chief executive of NPR, from earlier this month at the Texas Tribune festival in Austin.

A reporter for Fox News asked a question during the Q&A section and wrote this story; I thought that Maher handled his challenge well. I also got Maher to commit to continuing, for as long as she is in charge, the role of public editor (or ombudsman) at NPR. As you know, that’s a role that publications including the Washington Post and the New York Times have discontinued. As a former Times public editor myself, I think that’s unfortunate, especially in this era of low media trust. I’m glad that Maher sees the value, both to NPR itself and to the audience; she talks about that during our conversation.

Speaking of Fox News, David Folkenflik of NPR, has a good look at what’s happening in Murdoch World this week.

Finally, here’s my Guardian column that praises David Muir and Linsey Davis of ABC News for their fact-checking and followup questions in the recent presidential debate. They did an exemplary job and proved that fact-checking can be done by the moderators without interrupting the flow of the debate.

What are your thoughts about that memorable debate and its aftermath? Are you as sickened as I am about what has happened to the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio after Trump’s lies during the debate? Or by J.D. Vance’s commentary about how he finds it necessary to concoct false stories, like the one about immigrants eating dogs and cats, in order to make a political point? Or by Trump’s trashing of Taylor Swift, who has urged her followers to register to vote, and said she plans to vote for Kamala Harris?

This — any of this — should be disqualifying. But we’ve been saying that for a long time. Voters, it seems, are going to have to do that work.

As always, I welcome your comments, and I benefit from reading them. Thanks again.