Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation, and the media hosted by Eric Schurenberg, longtime journalist and media executive, now founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media.

Any listener to In Reality is aware of the crisis in local news. It’s a five alarm fire. It’s the news desertification of rural America. And so, we can admire the problem forever.

But one of the goals of this program is to highlight the people who are attacking journalism’s problems of trust and sustainability. So let’s do that. Eric's guest is Erin Millar, the journalist-turned-entrepreneur behind Indiegraf, equipping news entrepreneurs with the tools and services that media businesses need to grow and thrive, but that most startup newsrooms haven’t the time, money or expertise to assemble on their own. If you think of Indiegraf as a media business in a box, you’re not too far off.

In the process of building Indiegraf and its clients, Erin has some definite ideas about how local newsrooms can build trust, how advertising is an important part of not just revenue but also trust, and why reports of the death of local news are not just exaggerated, they are missing the trend.

We think you’ll get a lot out of this. Maybe even hope. Now here’s Erin Millar.

Website - free episode transcripts
www.in-reality.fm

Alliance for Trust in Media
alliancefortrust.com

Produced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapien
soundsapien.com

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation, and the media with Eric Schurenberg, long-time journalist and media executive, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media.

We’ve been trying to suss out the future of media for the past few weeks by talking about the present of it. The rise of influencers, the decline of local media, the mercurial psyche of audiences. Okay. So where does journalism go from here? How does it fulfill its role in a democracy rebuild trust and sustain itself economically—assuming it’s even possible to do all three at once. That’s the big topic for today’s guests, which is fine because they basically spend all their time pondering just those questions: Tom Rosenstiel, professor of journalism at the University of Maryland and co-author of the profession’s bible, The Elements of Journalism, and Richard Gingras, former head of Google’s Local News Initiative and now chair of Village Media.

They don’t spare journalism. They’ll discuss why the long, slow rebuild of trust depends not just on accuracy, but on empathy. Why reporters should start with human-centered design. And why local journalism, despite the current five-alarm fire in the category, may offer the most scalable model for renewal in the long run.

This episode was recorded live at Eric's University of Chicago class on the future of media. We hope you enjoy the episode!

Website - free episode transcripts
www.in-reality.fm

Alliance for Trust in Media
alliancefortrust.com

Produced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapien
soundsapien.com

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation, and the media. I’m your host, Eric Schurenberg, long-time journalist and media executive, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media.

You cannot talk about the future of media, or the future of anything for that matter, without talking about AI. What generative AI does is pretty much exactly what journalism does: digest information, highlight what matters and render it to an audience in a fetching, attention grabbing way. For journalism, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Well, judging from history, it’s both or either: all depending on how it’s used. There’s already alarming evidence that Google’s pivot to AI summaries in its search, rather than links, is decimating referral traffic to newsrooms. It’s also undeniable that those same newsrooms are using AI to automate the grunt work of information gathering for journalism.

To explore both the peril and promise, I’m joined by two guests who approach this upheaval from opposite sides of the media-tech divide. Jessica Chan is head of publisher partnerships at Perplexity.ai, a rising player in AI-powered answer engines. Troy Thibodeaux leads AI strategy at the Associated Press, a legacy newsroom that’s long been a leader in automating journalism with integrity.

This conversation—recorded live at my University of Chicago class—dives into the licensing dilemmas facing publishers, the safeguards newsrooms are building around generative content, and the hopeful ways AI is being used to personalize, streamline, and even monetize trustworthy journalism.

Website - free episode transcripts
www.in-reality.fm

Alliance for Trust in Media
alliancefortrust.com

Produced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapien
soundsapien.com