Margaret Sullivan

L- let's come back to what you said earlier, which is how other media should be reacting and, and this involves The Guardian.

I, I mean, um, I was reading Margaret Sullivan, she's a Guardian US columnist, a- and she thinks the White House press corps should just ban White House events.

Like, d- basically take a stand.

Yeah, I, I read the same column.

But she'll be editing this episode, and she will be back on our next podcast.

Today's guest is Margaret Sullivan, who spent the last decade or so doing the toughest of jobs, telling the country's most powerful newsrooms that they're getting it wrong.

She was the fifth public editor of the New York Times from 2012 to 2016.

Someone once called it the worst job in journalism, and she took it anyway.

I'll have a second quick take on Ellen's behalf on the new impact report from the American Journalism Project, a philanthropic organization that turns out to be one of the biggest funders of nonprofit news in the country.

AJP makes the case that nonprofit news as a business model has moved past the experimental stage.

But now, let's hear from Margaret Sullivan.

Margaret, six or seven years ago, you took a detour from your work as a high-profile critic of national news outlets in order to write a book about the local news crisis called Ghosting the News.

Simplify it and then make it your constant message.

This brings us to Margaret Sullivan's newsletter, quote, American crisis can journalism save democracy from September 14th.

That's yesterday of this year.

Short answer is yes, if journalism existed, which does not in numbers large enough to matter.

It appears several of Trump's most loyal aides were transferred to the secret plane with him, even as reporters were not informed about any of this and were left on the decoy plane as well.

All this neatly symbolizes Trump's abusive and authoritarian relationship with the media, so to dig into all of it, we're talking to Margaret Sullivan.

She regularly calls on the press to treat Trump as the abnormal threat he truly is on her excellent Substack, American Crisis.

Margaret, nice to have you on.

Well, we'll see if they apply it here.

[chuckles] I don't know.

Well, folks, if you enjoyed this, make sure to check out Margaret Sullivan's excellent Substack, American Crisis.

Please subscribe to that.