John Adams

Um, so we were friendly competitors, um, you know, much as I'm sure you kind of experienced, you know, in DC, you know, you, you want to beat them on a scoop, but you also, you know, have fun conversations in the basement of the team press score against those, those, uh, partisan, you know, guys left and right.

Yeah.

And then a few months after I, uh, after I was let go from the tribune, um, Mike and Chuck were, uh,

basically forced into retirement from Lee.

And so within just a matter of months, three of the most experienced state house reporters in the Capitol were out on the street, so to speak.

And there was just a lot of concern about who was gonna cover what's going on.

And we were still in the midst of all this dark money stuff.

And the need for legislative coverage certainly hadn't gone away.

And that's what I really understood.

Montana Free Press was founded on the belief that this journalism has value, whether or not it is clickbait, whether or not it is the kind... As news models had really kind of focused on views over news as sort of like the main value proposition to advertisers, I still believe that there were people... There might not be...

as many advertisers who are interested in it, but the individuals still cared about that kind of reporting.

So I founded Montana Free Press as a nonprofit kind of focused on state house coverage with the idea that those who understood how important that coverage is would support it through their charitable giving, their philanthropic support.

Including the one, my hometown daily that my mom worked for.

And I think that, you know, I really kind of cringe and roll my eyes.

You'll hear some folks talk about, you know, the need for media literacy.

And I don't disagree that they're, you know, that that's a real challenge.

But I think it also really sort of undersells the general public's like desire to be informed.

And I don't think it's just that

And I don't suggest that that's what you're saying, Chuck, but it's not just that the news industry didn't do a good enough job bringing readers along.

Part of it is I think audiences were distracted.