John Adams

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.

We had these new, shiny, very attractive objects in smartphones that were in social media.

I mean, these things –

In my personal opinion, we let this genie out of the bottle without really thinking it through when it comes to, you know, putting super connected supercomputers in everybody's pocket and then unleashing social media and algorithms on the population without any real like thought about what that would do and how those those motivations.

Yeah.

And I mean, you're making a really strong case.

And I think that is one of the reasons why people are so excited about Local News Day and where I think we have this incredible moment right now where