海角大神

Episode transcript

Mark Sappenfield: The more you look into almost anything that鈥檚 going on in the world today, trust is such a driver. We are confident that trust is such a major force behind the news that we will find our way there if we do our reporting fairly.

Clay Collins: 鈥奣hat鈥檚 Mark Sappenfield, editor of 海角大神.  

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Collins: 鈥奙onitor journalism has a founding mandate to think big 鈥� really big. The founder鈥檚 charge in 1908: 鈥淭o injure no man, but to bless all mankind.鈥�  

Building that aim into the reporting of world news calls for holding fast to that mission outlook. But the work also calls for refinements that take into account emerging delivery technologies and new audience behaviors. 

When Mark last joined this show in October 2022, it was to talk about a sharpening that we then were beginning to try at the Monitor. This idea that since news is really about the values we all share, we might more openly make that our lens. Today, we sort stories using 28 different values 鈥渢ags.鈥� 

We focused very intentionally on a couple of those, respect and resilience. Now we鈥檙e beginning to lean in on trust. 

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Collins: 鈥奧elcome to 鈥淲hy We Wrote This.鈥� I鈥檓 Clay Collins. Mark joins us again today. Hi, Mark.

Sappenfield: Hello. Thanks for having me.

Collins: 鈥奍n that 2022 episode, you said: 鈥淚f you really focus on what matters in the news, you get to this idea that values are driving the news.鈥� So my question now: How do you get from values, which might sound subjective, to universality, to the yearnings that really unite us all in the human experience?

Sappenfield: When you hear 鈥渧alues,鈥� especially in the United States, that has a certain meaning. You think of values being imposed on someone, or [of] someone saying, 鈥渢hese are my values.鈥� The job of the Monitor isn鈥檛 to tell you what values to [adopt]. It isn鈥檛 to tell you what to think. What it is 鈥� is to recognize that these values are hugely important to how we think about news, what we value in news, what we prioritize in society. It鈥檚 more as a welcome, to say: 鈥淗ey folks! You think the story is about this, but it鈥檚 really about this deeper thing that鈥檚 going on.鈥�

And what we found is that if you can do that without imposing your own opinion, and we know that鈥檚 hard in today鈥檚 journalism, so that鈥檚 something we all have to work on, that actually creates more space for other people to come into the conversation, because then it鈥檚 not just about a policy and it鈥檚 either this way or that way or I won鈥檛 talk to you.  

Collins: 鈥奟ight. And readers seemed receptive to the two concentrations so far: respect, resilience鈥�. 

Sappenfield: Yes.

Collins: And in general, they seem to have embraced the values orientation. So now we go to 鈥渢rust,鈥� and you鈥檝e written about trust being a counterforce to uncertainty. It also counters fear. What else makes it the right focus right now?

Sappenfield: Well, I think the more you look into almost anything that鈥檚 going on in the world today, trust is such a driver. There is ample evidence worldwide that people are losing trust in core institutions. People have talked about a democracy recession here in the United States. I see the same thing going on in Germany. You can see it in lots of different places. People losing faith in capitalism, in free-market societies. People losing faith in each other. That鈥檚 something that we see in politics on a more kind of grassroots level, is that it used to be that your opposition politically was someone with whom you disagreed. Now, increasingly, they鈥檙e your enemy. Not only do you think that they鈥檙e wrong about their policy, you think they are going to lead the country into ruin. That鈥檚 trust. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 trust.鈥� If you think about it, democracy is the ability to lose, and not blow things up because you trust the other person won鈥檛 do something that will destroy you, will hurt you.

When you lose that trust, the whole foundation of democracy shakes a little bit. And I think that鈥檚 what we鈥檙e feeling today. So, trust seems to be a core issue in so much of the news that we鈥檙e reporting today. 

Collins: 鈥奩eah. I want to ask about how we operationalize this as a news organization because the exploration of any value or attribute is going to prompt different starting-point ideas from different writers and editors. 

At one recent meeting we had, we talked about whether trust was something to be gained through work toward solutions or whether it was a precondition from which to build. So it鈥檚 a both/and, right? You can have an absence-of-trust story. 

Sappenfield: Absolutely, I think one of the things you never want to do with any approach to journalism is to impose a narrative. The journalist always needs to go in with a spirit of inquiry and say, I鈥檓 going to do my reporting, I鈥檓 going to research all the different angles I can find, and where do these things lead me. That鈥檚 the job of the journalist. We are confident that trust is such a major force behind the news that we will find our way there if we do our reporting fairly. And there will be some stories where we start off [by] saying 鈥淭his is a trust story,鈥� and the reporting is going to say: 鈥淣o, it鈥檚 really not.鈥� And there鈥檚 going to be some stories we start off thinking it鈥檚 something else entirely and go: 鈥淵ou know what, this is actually a trust story and it just happens organically that way.鈥�

In the conversation you talked about, it does seem there are two main ways to go about it. One is just to say: 鈥淚s trust an issue in driving this news?鈥� And that can be a lack of trust. That can be a false trust. But that might be driving something that鈥檚 going on in the news. And the other way is, where is trust being built? And that鈥檚 a harder one to find because, to be honest, the media is really bad at finding stories where good things are happening. So that鈥檚, again, kind of the Monitor鈥檚 form of investigative journalism. But it is happening. You see examples. They might be small examples. But those small examples have a lesson in them. So looking for those two different approaches: Where is trust an issue, and where is trust being built? I think we build our series that way.

Collins: 鈥奩eah, to your point 鈥� whether it鈥檚 trust or another value, we talk a lot at the Monitor about how we can deploy resources toward this pretty specialized, boutique approach to the work, while also sometimes just 鈥� covering the news. Can you talk a little about that challenge, and also about what it means for staking out a distinctive identity?

Sappenfield: Yeah. And you and I have talked a lot about this just in conversations in the newsroom, and I have to say my viewpoint on that has evolved somewhat. I would say you and I tend to be more in the boutique, kind of, let鈥檚 do something totally different. You know, for me, if I was just doing the Monitor for my happiness, I would probably do the values approach all the time, because I find it really insightful and I think you can cover. Everything through the lens of values because values are ultimately the driver behind everything.

But we do find readers who just, [seem to be saying], 鈥淚 just need to know what happened. You are a daily newspaper. You need to keep me updated on that.鈥� And there what the Monitor can bring to it is it can bring a calmness. It can bring a thoughtfulness. And it can bring a fairness. All three of those things can kind of go away in the hot takes of today, clearly on cable news, but [also], even in respectable newspapers, that calmness, that thoughtfulness, and that fairness can attenuate a little bit when you鈥檙e just talking about news. So I think it鈥檚 ... you鈥檝e got to be ambidextrous. That鈥檚 a balance we鈥檙e still trying to work through.

Collins: 鈥奟ight. Well, witness this early success of 鈥渘ews briefs鈥� [a new feature of the Monitor Daily], which is basically the outsourcing of breaking to organizations that make breaking their stock and trade. But we can pair that, in a way, with our own offering.

Sappenfield: Yeah. And there was a reader who wrote me back, actually, before we launched the news briefs and said, 鈥渢he Monitor has gotten a lot less newsy.鈥� And I kind of had to look in the mirror and say: 鈥淲ell, that鈥檚 probably something I鈥檝e done.鈥� And recognize, again, listen to your readers. What do they need from you? 

Collins: 鈥奟ight, right. The time is always right for constructive thinking. And this new/old Monitor approach feels like something that can reflect the kind of agency, uh, [that] I think you鈥檝e said can be a balm to the hopelessness that the news can make people feel. 

Globally, things feel more dire maybe even than they did when you were here last in 2022. How do you hope readers can use the Monitor to improve not only their own outlooks, but [also] to collectively improve the world?

Sappenfield: Yeah, I probably have a little bit of a counternarrative take on this, in the sense that it feels to me that so much of what we think is worse in the world today is a result of how we are thinking about it. And that might seem very meta, but I kind of think about, OK, we have these pictures of this awful war that鈥檚 going on in the Middle East right now. We have what鈥檚 going on in Ukraine. But then I think back, you know, we鈥檝e had wars before, this is not new. Are these so much worse than the wars that happened in the past? I鈥檓 not sure they are. I think we see them more closely, and I think on some levels we probably care about them more, and that鈥檚 good.

OK, we鈥檝e got inflation. But we鈥檝e had much worse inflation in the past. We got through that. You know, is there a sense that what we鈥檙e facing economically right now is something outside of the realm of normal economic variations? I don鈥檛 think so. 

You know, you look in the United States where, OK, we are dealing with new challenges to democracy that we probably haven鈥檛 faced in a century or more. OK, that feels real, but where does that come from? One of the big topics is immigration. Yes, we have large numbers of people coming across the border. But if you put that aside and look, is this an existential threat to the country? I don鈥檛 think there鈥檚 much evidence to suggest that this is going to overthrow the country or ruin the country or.... 

And I鈥檓 not saying that you can鈥檛 have a wide variety of opinions on the value of immigration, and we can debate it. But this kind of apocalyptic rhetoric that we have around everything today, whether it鈥檚 immigration, whether it鈥檚 the economy, whether it鈥檚 abortion, we鈥檙e now talking about these things in apocalyptic terms. And then the result is we get apocalyptic politics. That鈥檚 what鈥檚 new. This inability for us to see each other in a way where we can work together toward a goal, because that鈥檚 what a democracy demands. That鈥檚 what America has always done so well. 

And to me, that鈥檚 where this trust project can come in, is can we help put things in context, give credible counternarratives? We can make huge progress, because I do think there is a different narrative there to tell, and I do think that there is a way out of it that begins with changing how we see the world and how we think about others.  

Collins: 鈥奣hank you, Mark, for articulating this current refinement of our journalism, and for your leadership of The Monitor.

Sappenfield: You鈥檙e welcome. 

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Collins:  Thanks for listening. You can find more, including our show notes with links to Mark鈥檚 previous show appearance and to stories in which he has explained the genesis of the Monitor approach, at CSMonitor.com/WhyWeWroteThis. This episode was hosted by me, Clay Collins, and produced by Mackenzie Farkus and Jingnan Peng. Our sound engineers were Tim Malone and Alyssa Britton, with original music by Noel Flatt. Produced by 海角大神. Copyright 2024.