Strengthening Our Democracy: Monthly Newsletter

Hello, Friends.

 

This week is the 248th birthday of our nation – something that feels worthy of celebration. Being blasé about any birthday is foolish, especially one that celebrates freedom. As you commemorate the Fourth, I hope you reflect on the good we see in our fellow Americans.

I got to see some of that goodness in our newest cohort of the Stand-To Veteran Leadership Program Scholars last week. These accomplished leaders come to us from a wide range of sectors and are working to improve outcomes for veterans and military families through professional and/or community engagement.

I’m an unabashed fan of another American leader and thinker Arthur Brooks, and I recently had a conversation with him on The Strategerist, the Bush Center’s podcast. Brooks has been researching happiness for decades, and his work is as urgent as ever: American happiness just hit an all-time low, and Americans broadly remain discontent with politics, the economy, and the media.

We covered a lot of ground in 30 minutes including that we must transition from a political culture of contempt to a political culture of love, willing the best for even our staunchest political adversaries. This is a bold challenge, but one that I’m taking seriously as we consider how to maintain civility during a time of intense polarization.

In today’s newsletter, we spotlight award-winning local journalists, share insights from Ken Hersh, President and CEO of the Bush Center, and call attention to solutions and paths forward — toward a happier, more democratic America.

We send good wishes to you for an enjoyable and safe Fourth of July.

 

Best,
Anne

Local journalism in action:

Not all is lost in local journalism, even though more than half of American counties have no local news source or only one outlet – often a weekly newspaper, Bush Institute Senior Editorial Advisor William McKenzie recently reminded us. Small local outlets won Pulitzer Prizes this year with hyper local stories with deep community impact.

The staff of Lookout Santa Cruz won the "Breaking News" award, a real victory for local news everywhere contending with the 24/7 coverage of major news networks. With six reporters and one photographer, Lookout Santa Cruz covered the flooding and mudslides that wreaked havoc on the Santa Cruz community in January 2023. Their coverage was viewed 500K times (in a county of 300K residents), further evidence that local news is critical for the safety and awareness of local communities.

Sarah Conway of City Bureau and Trina Reynolds-Tyler of the Invisible Institute won the "Local Journalism" award for their joint coverage of missing Black girls and women in Chicago. Their in-depth research and detailed reporting are a reminder that local news often delivers high-quality, investigative journalism, bringing daylight to issues otherwise hidden from sight.

Insights from the Bush Institute team:

 

• History teaches us to be more optimistic about the future: "One of the reasons we should be hopeful about America’s future is that we have mechanisms for progress, and a history of using them," writes Bush Center President and CEO Ken Hersh and Dallas Morning News Commentary Editor Ryan Sanders in a recent op-ed. They observe that previous generations transformed political discontent into progress and suggest that we should feel similarly hopeful about younger generations.

• Bush Institute's Director of Global Policy Chris Walsh sees pluralism as our strongest antidote to civil war. For pluralism to be effective, Americans must agree on certain core values and principles, despite their many other differences. The good news is that most Americans still share the same core values, such as the right to vote, equal protection under the law, and religious liberty — we just don’t necessarily acknowledge these shared principles.

• William McKenzie, Senior Editorial Advisor at the Bush Institute, provides a history of "performative" journalism and its impact on our relationship to news media. The more performative and opinionated journalism becomes, the less trust Americans have in the media. When news organizations prioritize entertainment over information, they risk further splintering and disillusioning citizens. McKenzie makes a case for engaging, yet fundamentally informative, journalism.

• AEI’s Yuval Levin’s new book outlines how the Constitution itself gives a path forward from political rancor to political civility. He recently discussed the important role disagreement plays in a free society on C-SPAN.

• In a worrying trend, partisan outlets disguised as impartial news organizations now outnumber real local news organizations. These misleading news sites, supported by both conservative and progressive dark money, target swing states in particular. This finding is all the more reason to continually champion and fund local news.

• As misinformation continues to spread, we need more tools to identify and combat it. A recent article in Nature, penned by an international set of professors, suggests several such as "friction elements" that slow down the pace of online information sharing and social norms that insist on evidence to support claims.

• Stephen Buckley, Public Editor at the Dallas Morning News, explores how the newspaper is doing at capturing both sides of every story. “Here is my take: Having read The News cover-to-cover every day for the past few months, I know that our reporters do get all sides of the story. They just don’t do it consistently, which isn’t good enough.”

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