Eckhartz Press is proud to add a distinguished journalist to our stable of authors, the Daily Herald’s managing editor for opinion, Jim Slusher. We recently sat down with Jim and asked him a few questions about his brand new book To Nudge The World: Conversations, Community, and the Role of the Local Newspaper. (Available for pre-order now! Ships in mid-August).
EP: This month marks your 25th anniversary of the “Letter to Readers” column you write for the Daily Herald. You’ve titled your book “To Nudge the World.” Have you?
Jim: Valid question. I have certainly tried. But considering the tenor of our times and public attitudes toward media, the goal I expressed in my first column 25 years ago to help people trust us more by explaining the reasoning behind our actions and introducing readers to the people who do our work sounds more than a little naïve. Still, I’ve found in exchanges with readers and public presentations over the years, that people do believe we’re sincere and we’re trying to deserve their trust and earn it. Even our severest critics sometimes tell me they think I’m full of it, but at least they acknowledge the objectives I express – for civil, open, factual and objective examinations of issues in our community – are valid.
EP: This country is such a different place than it was when you started writing it last century. I noticed a common theme in some of the more recent pieces, maybe best symbolized by the one called “Don’t believe every word – but consider them all (September 25, 2014)”. Is the fight for real news versus fake news one of the most difficult struggles we face today?
Jim: It has always been difficult. I think it’s made more so today by the vast array of news sources that set out not just to entertain, engage and inform, but primarily to persuade. But it’s important to remember that this environment in itself is not that different from that which has existed since people began writing words and stories, and certainly not since the early days of the American republic. The press of Thomas Jefferson’s and Ben Franklin’s day could be as cruel, manipulative, false and unscrupulous as almost anything coming out of Facebook, X or any podcast or social media. What troubles me most is that in addition to all the distinctly selfish voices we have today, we have a strong field of legacy community and national print, online and broadcast media that sincerely strive to provide truthful, contextualized reporting and analysis, yet so many people are content to find one voice that seems most comfortable to them and just trust it, without critically analyzing and comparing a variety of points of view.
EP: I admire that you aren’t just focusing on the very best of your columns. You are telling a story. And part of that story is admitting mistakes. When you look back at some of what you’ve written, have you ever gotten it totally wrong?
Jim: I mention a couple of cases in certain columns in the book. One in particular that stands out for me was a case when we were very insensitive and thoughtless in a headline that described Diana Ross’s hair. It wasn’t racist so much as naively insulting, and many people were rightly offended. Another involved a situation in which we included some truly reprehensible terrorists and criminals under a year-end listing under a headline suggesting a list of the most influential people of the year. It made it look like we were suggesting certain evil people deserved celebration along with people who made positive impacts in the world.
EP: I have a favorite (A Baby Boomer says a prayer of thanks for the ‘quiet Beatle’). I realize that when you’ve written as many columns as you have, it’s impossible to pick out one favorite, but what are the ones that give you the most pride?
Jim: Ah, thank you for noticing that one. It’s also one of my favorites. I felt it expressed fairly accurately in, what, my 50s, I guess, how I felt about a phenomenon of my teen years, and I hope took a little different approach to the individual Beatles than was common at the time. There were several I wrote about 9/11 that I thought did a good job of expressing the shock of the time and the role that played in the psyches of the men and women trying to report on it. A particular favorite is one I wrote that compared the way we remember the Battle of Midway to the way we remember D-Day. I felt that one captured the essence of why such remembrances are important, a theme I revisited in a more-recent column in the book about why the attack on Pearl Harbor remains important to commemorate even as so many of the folks who experienced it first hand are disappearing. Then, a couple of the personal ones especially stick with me. One is a description of my young sons and their friends trying to save the life of an injured rabbit they found. Another, and this was one of the most personal and meaningful to me of them all, dealt with the near death of one of my closest friends in the earliest days of the COVID outbreak. I really had written that one just as a means of dealing with my grief and fear at the time never intending to offer it for publication, but when I showed it to John Lampinen, his reaction was strong and gratifying and we ended up carrying it on Page 1 instead of my usual place on the Opinion page. I could go on but – as my wife said when I told her I had a goal of 70 or 80 columns that seemed appropriate for a book of this nature and was struggling with the field narrowed to just over 200 – “I guess you really think you’re something.” So, perhaps I’d best stop there. Never being one who knew when to quit, I will add, though, that I also rather like the last column in the book, from which the book’s title is taken. I hope it helped explain why it’s so important for all of us to do our little part in improving the lives around us.
EP: The cover shows the changes in newsrooms since you started in the business. It’s pretty stark. Have you noticed a change in the news consumers as well?
Jim: Yes and no. The starkest change to me seems to be that in the earliest days of the column, from that late ‘90s to around 2010 or so, people liked having a newspaper that gave them a little bit of everything – comics, food, real estate, financial, sports, entertainment, autos, classifieds, advertising – all in one place where they could focus on what really interested them and still maybe run across some feature or tidbit on a topic they didn’t know they cared about. Many of today’s news “consumers” seem to be overwhelmed with the vast amount of information and entertainment available online and so get captured in silos limited to their interests and viewpoints. That is perhaps a bit of an oversimplification, but I think there’s something there. In a way, the internet has become one big, gigantic newspaper, so people find themselves scrolling endlessly, primarily just in the areas of their natural interest. I’m not sure this is horrible, by the way, but it is something I think we’re still in the process of getting used to.
EP: The Foreword to your book is written by John Lampinen, the retired editor of the Daily Herald. The blurb on the back cover is written by Jim Baumann, his successor and eventual retiree himself. That leaves you, Jim. How much longer would you like to go on writing this column?
Jim: Well, I do think about that question from time to time, naturally. But I just haven’t yet been able to see myself stepping away from this. I love newspaper work. I love newspaper people. I still get chances to interact with everyday people as well as community leaders and activists who are often really kind of inspiring in their interest in the community and world and national affairs, and I like to think my column helps them a little bit to understand the nature of mass information and entertainment and to challenge their own thinking about the world. And I think their interactions with the paper go a long way toward making our work more reliable and meaningful. So, I hope I’ve still got a few good years in me – and that there will still be an audience for some time to come for the kind of work we do even if that audience’s approaches and expectations are a little different from what I grew up with.
To Nudge the World is available for pre-order now at Eckhartz Press.
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