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Max Chesnes

Max Chesnes

Oct 9, 2026

11:24
do you know when the audience needs needs a slightly different angle or needs something hopeful? Do you sense a momentum with hope or more of a momentum with backlash against corruption or against the bad stories? If it bleeds, it leads, but what do you see from a momentum of hope from a news-telling perspective?
11:46
Yeah, I mean, that's a great question.
11:47
I think, too, the philosophy at the Times has really changed recently, where we are now spotlighting more solutions-based journalism.
11:58
And one of the reasons, there's a number of reasons, but one is we, a couple years back, had worked with a couple researchers, actually, at the University of Pennsylvania, who had analyzed a lot of our work and found, and then interviewed, I think it was 200 or 300 of our readers, and interviewed them and said, what are your main motivating emotions when you read the news.
12:18
And overwhelmingly, the answer was a sense of agency.
12:21
Like, people want to read the news and then be told what to do with that news.
12:26
So when you present audiences with a solution, you know, over here on one side, we have a problem in Florida, right? We have water quality issues or overdevelopment.

21 MINS LATER

33:50
So thank you.

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