Teammates

Over the past 50 years one of the most notable changes in journalism was that reporters started to work in teams.

In school in the 60s, we were taught that the way it worked historically was that a series of great men -- and a few great women -- achieved journalistic success individually. Partnerships were rarely mentioned.

The big names were John Peter Zenger (1697-1746), Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1912), Walter Lippmann (1889-1974), Walter Cronkite (1916-2009) ... and more recently Barbara Walters (1929-2022) and Tom Wolfe (1931-2018).

There were investigative reporters too, mainly lone wolves like Upton Sinclair, Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, Jacob Riis in the early 20th century and then Jessica Mitford, Seymour Hersh, Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein in our time. (These are the famous ones, there were many others.) They too mostly worked alone.

Some modern scholars credit the Center for Investigative Reporting and Mother Jones for establishing the non-profit model of investigative journalism. (Note: Investigative Reporters and Editors deserves major credit as well.)

But concentrating on those two organizations, CIR and MoJo, which encapsulated so much of the first half of my own career, what’s true is that we produced our muckraking reports in teams(*) much more than as individuals. Maybe this was a Baby Boomer thing; after all, we were such a huge generation numerically that we rarely did anything in life completely alone.

(*) In 2024, CIR and Mother Jones have merged into a single team.

Woodward & Bernstein are a tad older than our generation, but they are the most famous co-authors in American journalism history. But they didn’t work together very long, given the length of their careers.

I’ve worked with many partners. Some of us specialize in interviews, some in documents, some as investigators, some as writers or story-tellers. But what can be most valuable in a team is the ability to collectively arrive at an unusual perspective on the facts.

It’s not the kind of working style that suits every temperament. People who get too easily frustrated and who give up easily tend to drop off teams. People who worry more about process than results rarely work out in these kinds of projects. Egos can all too easily rear their ugly heads; competing egos are poisonous.

But for those of us who do stick it out, team stories yield a large percentage of the best journalism out there today.

(NOTE: I published the earliest version of this essay five years ago.)

HEADLINES:

• Trump Personally Intervenes to Block Release of January 6 Documents (TNR)

• Trump’s speech on combating inflation turns to grievances about immigrants (NPR)

• The Enfeebling of the President (Atlantic)

• DOJ attacks judges for criticizing Halligan appointment (Axios)

• Supreme Court probes campaign finance limits challenged by JD Vance (NBC)

• Takeover bid of parent company means limbo for CNN and some fellow cable networks (AP)

• Sacked agents sue FBI, saying they were punished for taking the knee (BBC)

• With immigration paused, Afghans in the US and abroad urgently seek options after the National Guard attack (CNN)

• Illinois Governor Signs Bill Imposing New Limits on Immigration Enforcement (NYT)

• NYC Mayor-elect Mamdani spells out immigrants’ rights when facing ICE agents (CBS)

• Noem claims Mamdani could be violating Constitution with advice to migrants (The Hill)

• What to know about the massive defense bill that seeks release of boat strike videos and more (AP)

• Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) is running for the U.S. Senate, shaking up the Democratic primary in a red state the party has sought to flip for several cycles. Prior to her announcement, Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas) dropped out of that race to run for a newly drawn House district. [HuffPost]

• Millions of Australian teens lose access to social media accounts as ban takes effect (BBC)

• Honduras Issues Arrest Warrant for Ex-President Pardoned by Trump (NYT)

• The EPA is wiping mention of human-caused climate change from its website (WP)

• They Killed My Source (Atlantic)

• Fighting between Thailand and Cambodia spreads along their contested border (Reuters)

• How China Wins the Future (Foreign Affairs)

• The War Room newsletter: A truly radical document (Economist)

• The Only War the White House Is Ready for Is Culture War (Foreign Policy)

• This musician taught an octopus to play the piano (WP)

• Here’s what Canadian provinces are doing with all the US liquor they pulled off shelves (BBC)

• Adolescence lasts into your 30s, and other surprises about the brain (WP)

• OpenAI, Anthropic, and Block Are Teaming Up to Make AI Agents Play Nice (Wired)

• Google’s first AI glasses expected next year (TechCrunch)

• U.S. military to use Google Gemini for new AI platform (Axios)

• Have you seen this (AI-generated) man? Police swap suspect sketches for AI. (WP)

• A.I. Videos Have Flooded Social Media. No One Was Ready. (NYT)

• Terry Gross Conducts ‘Fresh Air’ Interview On Bluetooth During Uber Shift (Onion)

MUSIC VIDEO: 

Deana Carter - Strawberry Wine (Official Music Video)

Mutual, Competing Truths

“You’re right from your side / I’m right from mine,” Bob Dylan wrote in One Too Many Mornings, which is among his lesser-known songs. Similar sentiments from many other artists try to capture the convoluted nature of mutual, competing truths.

And this raises a dilemma for journalists attempting to cover corporate and civic affairs. 

Comes now an incident from our “Circle of Poison” investigation in the 1970s and 1980s. At first we were focused on the moral aspect of U.S. companies shipping banned pesticides to Third World countries, which exposed farmworkers and their families to health risks, and polluted the environment.

At an international gathering sponsored by the UN about this issue in Mexico, a representative of Dow Chemical approached me and said, “I understand your concern but what’s wrong with helping a hungry world eat?”

His point was that even if the pesticides were considered too dangerous for us here in the U.S., food scarcity was such in poorer countries that such compromises made sense. After all, at least in the short term, pesticides boost food productivity.

His comment got me thinking and back home at the Center for Investigative Reporting we started looking more closely into what crops the hazardous pesticides were being applied to. That research led to a breakthrough in our analysis, as almost all of the food crops sprayed in Third World countries did not go to local people at all but were exported right back here to the U.S.A..

This was the final piece of the “circle,” and it guaranteed the book would cause more waves than had we solely focused on the impacts overseas.

When I looked back on it, years later, that guy from Dow was right, but we were right too. And in this case of mutually competitive truths, I hoped that the pen would prove to be mightier than the sprayer.

HEADLINES:

• Alina Habba, a Trump Loyalist, Resigns as New Jersey’s Top Prosecutor (NYT)

• Millions of children and teens lose access to accounts as Australia’s world-first social media ban begins (Guardian)

• War is hell, but that should never excuse war crimes. (The Hill)

• Supreme Court Appears Poised to Expand Presidential Power (NYT)

• Supreme Court conservatives poised to back Trump in FTC firing case (Reuters)

• Trump’s plans to shatter the bureaucracy have a green light at the Supreme Court (Politico)

• Trump pardons major drug traffickers despite his anti-drug rhetoric (WP)

• Donald Trump Lashes Out At Paramount Owners In Rant About Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Appearance On ‘60 Minutes’ (Deadline)

• How the new H-1B visa fee is upending health care in rural America (WP)

• For Gen Z-ers, work is now more depressing than unemployment (NYT)

• Trump Border Czar Seems Totally Fine With Detaining Citizens (TNR)

• Mamdani tells New Yorkers, ‘We can all stand up to ICE’ (WP)

• Trump’s National Security Strategy: Atlas Shrugs (The Bulwark)

• EU slams critical US security strategy, notes ‘changed relationship’ (Al Jazeera)

• Zelenskyy heads to London for more Ukraine peace talks. (NPR)

• China’s Trade Surplus Climbs Past $1 Trillion for First Time (NYT)

• A year after Bashar Assad fled, Syria struggles to heal (AP)

• Thailand launches airstrikes at Cambodia as border tensions reignite (Reuters)

• Paramount Makes Hostile Bid for Warner Bros. Discovery (NYT)

• Scientists discovered a powerful new way to combat the effects of aging. (WP)

• AI boom fuels “environmental justice” fears in communities of color (Axios)

• More than 200 environmental groups demand halt to new US datacenters (Guardian)

• ChatGPT’s Self-Serving Optimism (Atlantic)

• Don’t make this age-old mistake on AI (WP)

• Oprah Pursues Dr. Phil On Ship Through Arctic (Onion)

The Ghosts of Wounded Knee

Pine Ridge Reservation, site of the Wounded Knee massacre, was an eerily beautiful place of wind-swept plains that seemed haunted by the voices of the dead echoing from the Black Hills in the distance.

Home to the Lakota (Sioux) people, Pine Ridge was central in the 1970s to a concerted effort by Native Americans to demand their rights and reclaim their land from the U.S. government.

The American Indian Movement (AIM) emerged as the leading voice of the activists in that uprising. I went to Pine Ridge to look into the unsolved murder of AIM activist Anna Mae Aquash, a 30-year-old mother of two and member of the Mi’kmaq tribe who had traveled from Nova Scotia to join the rebellion.

Aquash had organized demonstrations and spoke publicly on behalf of native rights. She also was AIM co-founder Dennis Banks’ lover at a time when AIM had been placed under FBI surveillance by President Richard Nixon.

“These white people think this country belongs to them,” Aquash wrote in a letter to her sister at the time. “The whole country changed with only a handful of raggedy-ass pilgrims that came over here in the 1500s. And it can take a handful of raggedy-ass Indians to do the same, and I intend to be one of those raggedy-ass Indians.”

Violence haunted AIM and by 1975, more than 60 Indians had been killed, mostly in unsolved cases. Activists accused the U.S. government of waging a deadly war against their people. Tensions between AIM and the FBI on Pine Ridge reached a boiling point in 1975 when in an armed battle with AIM members, two FBI agents were killed.

(AIM’s Leonard Peltier was later convicted of these murders. His sentence was commuted by President Joe Biden — a move widely criticized by Republicans.)

During their investigation of this case, authorities detained Aquash and grilled her but then released her, leading some of her AIM colleagues to suspect she might be an informer.

In February 1976, her decomposed body was discovered by a rancher working his property line; she had been killed execution-style by a single shot to the head.

For Rolling Stone, Lowell Bergman and I traveled to Pine Ridge to try and find out who was behind her murder. With investigative stories of this kind, sometimes you solve the mystery but usually you don’t.

In Anna Mae’s case, we did not solve the mystery. We did write a long story about the case, which may have helped raise awareness of the crisis at Wounded Knee.

Over the years, the mystery bubbled to the surface from time to time until finally (in 2004 and 2010) authorities were able to convict two low-level AIM members of her killing.

But according to a piece in the New York Times Magazine by Eric Konigsberg, these two were essentially the fall guys for the crime, which was in fact engineered by a group of AIM women known as the Pie Patrol.

Almost certainly, according to Konigsberg, higher-ups ordered the Pie Patrol to have Anna Mae murdered. If so, the guilty parties apparently went to their graves with their secret.

According to Lakota legend, when the body of a murder victim is moved, a strong wind will blow. When you stand out on Pine Ridge today, you can feel that wind and hear the voices of ghosts echoing around you.

One of those is that of Anna Mae Aquash.

(I published this originally in December 2020.)

HEADLINES:

• Marjorie Taylor Greene Says GOP Colleagues Made Fun Of Trump Behind His Back, Now ‘Terrified’ (Forbes)

• Hegseth defends action in the Caribbean amid mounting questions (CNN)

• Not All Targeted Killings Are the Same. Hegseth’s Boat Strikes Are Illegal. (NYT)

• The Trump Administration’s Chaos in the Caribbean (New Yorker)

• Is redistricting backfiring on Republicans? (Silver Bulletin)

• The Supreme Court weighs another step in favor of broad presidential power sought by Trump (AP)

• ICE has arrested nearly 75,000 people with no criminal records, data shows (NBC)

• How Crypto Could Trigger the Next Financial Crisis (Atlantic)

• Trump’s plans to shatter the bureaucracy have a green light at the Supreme Court (Politico)

• Trump Weighs Moving on From Noem (Bulwark)

• New US security strategy aligns with Russia’s vision, Moscow says (BBC)

• US may end support for Ukraine war effort, says Donald Trump Jr (Guardian)

• Inside Trump’s small national security team (Politico)

• Chernobyl radiation shield ‘lost safety function’ after drone strike, UN watchdog says (BBC)

• The Legacy Media’s Not Dead Yet (National Review)

• Lifeguards save dog swept nearly a mile out to sea by rip current (WP)

• Alabama, Miami in, Notre Dame out and Indiana No. 1 in College Football Playoff rankings (AP)

• Miley Cyrus Gives Update on Godmother Dolly Parton Amid Country Music Star’s Health Trouble (US Weekly)

• A Grand Social Media Experiment Begins in Australia (NYT)

• OpenAI goes from stock market savior to burden as AI risks mount (Bloomberg)

• The People Outsourcing Their Thinking to AI (Atlantic)

• ’d Sooner Let My Family Starve Than Exaggerate My Marketing  Experience On My Resume (Onion)

 

Guitar Picker With a Smile

Molly Tuttle is one of those artists who catches my eye for her bluegrass-style guitar picking, sweet singing voice and her smile. Many people can perform but fewer seem so genuinely happy while they are doing it.

She first came to my attention a few years ago with her appearance at the Ryman in Nashville on New Year’s Eve, and again it was her smile that stood out. She was among a dozen or more musicians on stage on that occasion but she was the only one smiling.

Molly Tuttle was diagnosed with alopecia areata when she was three years old, which quickly progressed to alopecia universalis, resulting in total body hair loss.

She wears wigs during her performances, but sometimes before the right crowd she rips it off at the end, to cheers from her fans.

Here’s to Molly Tuttle and singing with a smile.

HEADLINES:

• National Park Service overhauls free admission days to include Trump’s birthday (CNN)

• Trump strategy document revives Monroe Doctrine, slams Europe (Reuters)

• America has a new clash of civilizations — with European liberals (Vox)

• Trump’s Security Strategy Focuses on Profit, Not Spreading Democracy (NYT)

• Experts react: What Trump’s National Security Strategy means for US foreign policy (Atlantic Council)

• India tries to avoid slipping on Russian oil (Reuters)

• Gaza ceasefire deal at a ‘critical moment’, mediator Qatar says (Al Jazeera)

• The Gaza Flotilla Story You Didn’t Hear (Reveal)

• Russia hits Ukraine as US reports progress in talks with Kyiv (BBC)

• Plotting Syrian uprisings… from Russia (Reuters)

• Under RFK Jr., the CDC provides a megaphone to the anti-vaccine movement (WP)

• West Virginians question National Guard deployments after attack on 2 of their own (NPR)

• Rules of War: An Interview with the Man Who Wrote the Book (Journal of the Plague Years)

• Netflix-Warner Brothers deal will face antitrust resistance (Reuters)

• Can AI help forecasters better predict destructive hurricanes? (ABC)

• Pete Hegseth Invokes ‘Fog Of War’ After Pissing In Break Room Refrigerator (Onion)

MUSIC VIDEO:

Molly Tuttle - That’s Gonna Leave A Mark (Sailboat Sessions)

Relics

 

(This is an excerpt from 2007.)

Today I was thinking that I maybe should be in the salvage business -- rescuing the castoffs of this throwaway society, restoring them, and preserving them as artifacts. 

I’ve been collecting things for at least half a century. Old bottles, coins, stamps, magazines, books, photos, postcards, baseball cards -- the list goes on — not to mention the memories they evoke.

Today’s find was this old portable typewriter -- the laptop of its time. I used to work on a machine like this, and in fact, I still had one until recently, when in a weaker moment I discarded it.

Thanks to one of my neighbors, it didn’t get far. And today, following the local custom of putting whatever you don’t want anymore out on the sidewalk for anyone passing by to claim, I now have retaken possession of this portable Remington. 

It makes that old comforting sound that a century ago came from the open windows in Rudyard Kipling’s compound in India, as he pounded out his stories on tropical nights.

Or Conrad, Hemingway, Faulkner, all warm-weather writers, take your pick. For many decades, this was the sound of literature and the sound of journalism. Even as recently as the Watergate scandal of 1974, the signature film made of Woodward and Bernstein’s legendary reporting that ended Richard Nixon’s presidency, closes with a sequence of headlines typed on an old manual typewriter.

Relics. If I ever write a memoir, I should do it on this. On second thought, strike that, but its photo might make a good book cover.

HEADLINES:

• Trump administration National Security Strategy claims Europe facing “civilizational erasure” within 20 years (CBS)

• A 19th Century Strategy Can’t Solve 21st Century Problems (Forbes)

• Donald Trump’s bleak, incoherent foreign-policy strategy (Economist)

• Trump can’t save Hegseth now — no one can (The Hill)

• Video of Boat Strike Shows Survivors Waving Before Fatal Follow-Up Attack (NYT)

• Democrats call for Pete Hegseth’s resignation amid scrutiny over deadly boat strikes and Signalgate: ‘a disgrace to the office he holds’ (Guardian)

• Why US actions in Venezuela could backfire across the globe (The Hill)

• New Orleans residents in fear as immigration crackdown descends on their city (BBC)

• ‘Creating fear and chaos’: ICE officials target Somali neighborhoods, scoop up U.S. citizens in sweep (MPR)

• Grand jury declines to charge Letitia James after first case dismissed (BBC)

• Accused DC pipe bomber told FBI he believed the 2020 election was stolen, sources say (CNN)

• Suspect in DC pipe bomb case said to have confessed in interviews with investigators (AP)

• Supreme Court hands Trump a victory in fight over Texas congressional map (WP)

• The Supreme Court just made gerrymandering nearly untouchable (Vox)

• ‘Constitutional hardball’: National gerrymander battle turns the heat up in Missouri (Politico)

• Supreme Court’s Texas Map Ruling Could Be Good News for California (TNR)

• What Putin and Modi got out of Delhi meeting (BBC)

• Kash Patel Yelled at FBI Agent to Be the Designated Driver for His Girlfriend’s Drunk Friend: Report (Yahoo)

• Netflix to acquire Warner Bros. studio and streaming business for $72 billion (AP)

• Netflix has reportedly won a contentious bidding war to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery’s film and TV studios and the HBO Max streaming service. The news of the potential deal is a major blow to the Ellison family, which had submitted a rival bid for the company. [HuffPost] 

• The World Cup draw comes to Washington, with Trump as the star (WP)

• You Had to Be There (Atlantic)

• Mark Kelly Says This ‘Exciting’ Scientific Find Raises Questions Of Life Beyond Earth (HuffPost)

• New York Times Sues A.I. Start-Up Perplexity Over Use of Copyrighted Work (NYT)

• When Chatbots Break Our Minds (Atlantic)

• Transformative AI is coming, and so are the risks (Axios)

• Before Your Doctor Uses AI to Record Your Visits, Ask These Questions (WSJ)

• The Strange Disappearance of an Anti-AI Activist (Atlantic)

• ChatGPT started the AI race. Now its lead is looking shaky. (WP)

• Vatican Formally Recognizes First Gen Z Demon (Onion)

MUSIC VIDEO:

Kris Kristofferson - Why Me Lord

Free Press Battlefield

As for yesterday’s post about young people and their news consumption habits. Bruce Koon reminded me that our generation, the Baby Boomers, also had our own ways to access the news when we were aged 18-29.

It was called alternative media and places like SunDance, Rolling Stone, the Center for Investigative Reporting, Mother Jones were right in the middle of it.

Just like today’s youth, we distrusted mainstream media and so sought other ways to stay informed.

Maybe the single most important event that brought us back to the conventional media was the Washington Post’s coverage of the Watergate scandal. But equally significant was the success of our alternative channels in broadening the range of outlets devoted to uncovering the stories that mattered.

In today’s context, I’m not aware of very much serious news reporting yet within TikTok, Instagram, etc., but such efforts are probably underway.

One way or another the news will find people. And that truth is a major problem for authoritarians who would vastly prefer to ban any news outlets they cannot co-opt. The current wave of controversies surrounding Pete Hegsmeth are a case in point.

It has been solid reporting that has brought the drug boat strikes and Signalgate to light, and in response Hegsmeth has gone to great lengths to ban honest journalists from the Pentagon.

In the fight to resist the further centralization of power by Trump, Hegsmeth and company, two great American institutions — the press and the military — are allies. Today’s top link matters, as it’s the latest salvo in the battle between a petty warlord and a determined fourth estate.

HEADLINES:

• New York Times Sues Pentagon Over First Amendment Rights — The lawsuit said the Defense Department’s new set of rules for journalists “violates the Constitution’s guarantees of due process, freedom of speech and freedom of the press.” (NYT)

• ‘New York Times’ lawsuit creates a new headache for Pentagon chief Hegseth (NPR)

• Lawmakers see video of second strike on boat survivors, say admiral testified there was no kill order (CBS)

• Accused DC pipe bomber told FBI he believed the 2020 election was stolen, sources say (CNN)

• Who is Brian Cole? FBI identifies suspect in Jan. 6 DC pipe bomb case (USA Today)

• Anxiety grips Minneapolis’s Somali community as immigration agents zero in on the Twin Cities (CNN)

• Most immigrants arrested in Trump’s D.C. crackdown had no criminal records (WP)

• Republican Anger Erupts at Johnson as Party Frets About Future (NYT)

• How a Man Convicted of Running a Latin American Narco State Landed a Pardon (WSJ)

• Trump has waged an unprecedented campaign against the International Criminal Court, seeking to end its work on the war in Gaza. Events this week have suggested his pressure campaign is falling apart. [HuffPost]

• America’s peace initiative has stalled in Moscow (Economist)

• America’s Magical Thinking About Ukraine (Foreign Affairs)

• As global negotiations continue for a peace deal in Ukraine, the country is facing another battle: who will still be there to rebuild the war-torn nation? (Reuters)

• ‘Never seen anything like this’: alarm at memo from top US vaccine official (Guardian)

• The Man Who Was Supposed to Kill Martin Luther King Jr. (Slate)

• Drunk raccoon found passed out on liquor store floor after breaking in (BBC)

• OpenAI in open panic over Gemini’s sudden dominance (Boing Boing)

• The Chatbot-Delusion Crisis (Atlantic)

• Crying Sounds Coming From Inside Suit Of Armor (Onion)

 

Finding the News

The latest report on the news consumption habits of young adults reveals that only 15 percent of those aged 18-29 follow the news closely, as opposed to 62 percent of those aged 65 and above.

Young people also tend to be less likely than older adults to get news about government and politics, science and technology, and business and finance.

But they are more than twice as likely as older Americans to follow entertainment news. (Both groups are roughly the same when it comes to sports news.)

As for political news specifically, younger adults say they often just happen to run across it on social media or from influencers, while older people seek it out by deliberately tuning in trusted news channels.

So the generations have completely different habits, I get that. But maybe we’re not all that different in how we feel about the news on those occasions when our consumption habits overlap. 

Yesterday, when my 14-year-old granddaughter and I both encountered this story — “Sabrina Carpenter to White House: Don’t use my music to tout ‘inhumane’ agenda” — we were in complete agreement that Sabrina Carpenter rocks.

When we talked about the issue involved — exploitation of an artist’s work by a politician without her permission — we agreed on that too.

I’ve noticed for a while that though my 20-something children and my teenaged grandchildren don’t tune into the news the way I do, they usually seem well-informed anyway.

That’s one of the reasons journalists need to continue to do the hard work of digging out the truth and getting it published — because your youngest news consumers will find it once its out there in the universe.

To read the entire report from the Pew Research Center, follow this link: Young Adults and the Future of News.

HEADLINES:

• Suspect arrested in January 2021 D.C. pipe bomb case (NBC)

• Pete Hegseth faces deepening scrutiny from Congress over boat strikes (AP)

• U.S. Military’s Boat Strikes Planning Takes On New Significance (NYT)

• Exclusive: Watchdog finds Hegseth risked endangering troops by sharing sensitive war plans on Signal, sources say (CNN)

• Hegseth risked a U.S. bombing mission in Yemen in March, new report says (NPR)

• Lawmakers demand answers about Pete Hegseth’s boat-bombing campaign (Economist)

• How Palantir shifted course to play key role in ICE deportations (WP)

• Now Trump Is Threatening Naturalized Americans (The Bulwark)

• Trump Calls Somalis ‘Garbage’ He Doesn’t Want in the Country (NYT)

• Condemning Millions for One Man’s Crime (Atlantic)

• US cancels citizenship ceremonies for migrants from travel ban countries (BBC)

• A GOP Win Foretells Midterm Trouble (WSJ)

• House Democrats release new images of Epstein’s private Caribbean island (Guardian)

• What latest Ukraine talks reveal about Putin’s state of mind (BBC)

• Sabrina Carpenter to White House: Don’t use my music to tout ‘inhumane’ agenda (WP)

• Marine robotics firm will resume deep-sea search for MH370 plane that vanished a decade ago (AP)

• Young Adults and the Future of News (Pew)

• OpenAI has trained its LLM to confess to bad behavior (Technology Review)

• AI frenzy is driving a memory chip supply crisis. (Reuters)

• Trump Appears To Doze During Stroke (Onion)