How Newsmakers Became SB's Most Robust Pro-Democracy Site (Hint: Trump Made Us Do It)
In our own 100 days assessment, Newsmakers' co-founders reflect upon the massive impact of the new mob boss president and what it means for the future of our humble enterprise. Plus: a modest ask
By Jerry Roberts and Hap Freund
“There are decades where nothing happens,” it’s been said, “and there are weeks when decades happen.”
Take the past 15 weeks, for example.
Let’s be blunt. In 100-plus days, Donald Trump has transformed American politics into a conflict between two divided camps: authoritarian vs. pro-democracy.
As a practical matter, the first 100-day segment of Trump’s reality TV presidency has been a stressful, enraging and exhausting time for the majority of the nation, our community, and every American who deplores his cruel, corrupt and constant attack on the values and institutions of liberal democracy.
As a political matter, Trump has sought to disrupt and destroy everything all at once -from government agencies, global business, historic law firms and universities, to educational, social welfare, science, health care, cultural, and immigration programs on which millions depend — not to mention due process, the separation of powers, free and fair elections, free speech, and other fundamental principles of the rule of law that nurtured U.S. citizens for 250 years. And, oh yeah: empathy.
As a journalistic matter, the onset of Trump 2.0 has meant big changes for Newsmakers, both in substance and in schedule.
As he’s moved with aggression and speed to implement an autocratic playbook made familiar by authoritarians from Brazil to Hungary, Russia to Venezuela, we felt a distressed and anguished need, in our semi-arid news desert, to shout about it from the rooftops, and so began to augment our longstanding local content strategy with a whopping dose of pro-democracy national journalism. Instead of once-a-week, we started posting daily. Oy.
All this coincided with a big, instrumental change for us, as we carried out a long-planned move to Substack, from our old text platform, where we’d been for eight years (following two years at our old broadcast home at TVSB). The switch was intended to be merely one of form, not function (full disclosure: we moved to Substack largely to stop paying monthly fees to send out our newsletter. So there’s that).
Once Trump got rolling — starting with the unspeakable pardons of the Jan. 6 felons and cop beaters, snatching immigrants off the street and dispatching them to gulags, without hearings or regard to their legal status, while enlisting the ketamine oligarch Elon Musk to humiliate and sack tens of thousands of public employees — we realized that we also needed to adjust and expand the lens of our journalism, from local, local, local to content that offered our growing list of subscribers deeper thinking and insights into what he is attempting to do to our country.
Clearly there was no shortage of content.
Against all good judgment, self-interest, and psychiatric advice, we waded into it, obsessively and neurotically, if not pathologically, aware that many people were (understandably) retreating from the news while others (even more understandably) felt totally overwhelmed by it; that calculus afforded us the opportunity to serve, by reviewing, selecting and curating from a vast amount of editorial material from a pro-democracy perspective - and then presenting readers and viewers with one post a day that probed one of the countless tentacles of Trumpism.
This new iteration of Newsmakers has three elements:
The pro-democracy conflict with authoritarianism. Amid the countless hours we’ve spent tracking this stuff, we’ve found a batch of strong and consistent voices that combine historic perspective, insightful analysis and sharp commentary to bring to your attention (always with links to their subscription) like Protect Democracy, The Bulwark and Press Watch, and smart and insightful writers like Robert H. Hubbell, Timothy Snyder, Heather Cox Richardson, Joyce Vance, and Jonathan V. Last.
We’ve also published original documents and raw video that spotlight key events and controversies, from the explosive resignation letter of U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon in New York to federal judge J. Harvie Wilkenson’s castigation of Trump’s extra-legal immigrant extraditions, and the slashing denunciation of his anti-democratic attitude and behavior, by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and the sublime, eight-minute takedown by French Senator Claude Malhuret
To insure a Santa Barbara perspective, we’ve regularly published the columns of our genial host, who brought a half-century of experience to analyses of Trump’s Cabinet, his Inaugural address, and his big speech to Congress , while chronicling the slow but steady rise of a popular opposition movement locally, from its first green shoots to its alignment with organized national protest, and its ability to gather hundreds angry over Trump-Musk Social Security actions with little notice.
We’ve also exposed local MAGA disinformation, assembled our own Reader’s Guide of recommended sites for pro-democracy writing, and been blessed with a talented intern, Shelby Appice, who churns out weekly updates on Trump’s local impact.
The Newsmakers interviews. Truth be told, on Election Night, and the days following, we felt that there was a widespread lack of clear-eyed, public discernment of how dangerous and vicious an untrammeled Trump was going to become. So we quickly produced a series of “Standing Up to Trump” interviews with key leaders in our community - Rep. Salud Carbajal, Senator Monique Limón, Assembly member Gregg Hart, Sheriff Bill Brown and Board of Supervisors Chair Laura Capps, among them - to hear the viewpoints and contingency plans of those tasked with being face-to-face with the consequences of the new Administration’s policies.
Reaching beyond the ranks of elected officials, we’ve also published extended conversations with journalists, like the L.A. Times’s' esteemed Mark Z. Barabak and our house pundit panel; advocates, like Linda Krop of the Environmental Defense Center; and UCSB economist Peter Rupert, about the real-world impacts from their unique perspectives of this dramatic shift in American political leadership.
Local, local, local. Newsmakers also consistently cranks out the kind of Santa Barbara-centric print, podcast and video that has been the cornerstone of our content since we launched Newsmakers as the old “City Desk” program on TVSB, 10 years ago (amazing but true: Hap and Jerry collaborated on an even earlier public access show, “Real Talk,” 10 years before that. But we digress).
The premise and purpose of our weekly all-star panel discussions of top local journalists on Newsmakers TV, featuring media stars like Nick Welsh, Josh Molina and Gwyn Lurie, and up-and-comers like Callie Fausey, Ryan P. Cruz and Margaux Lovely, has always been two-fold: a) to highlight and underscore the best reporting being done in Santa Barbara while b) providing a platform for free-flowing discussions among and between those on the beat, thereby contributing value-added analysis and commentary to the community conversation about local news.
In the past 100 days, we’ve also featured on our Newsmakers blog other local writers - mainstays Melinda Burns (and her sui generis coverage of cannabis and other complex issues) and Cheri Rae (her reporting on the science of reading was decisive in forcing a change in local curricula - she also writes baseball!), along with other distinct voices, from Randy Alcorn to Jana Zimmer, Lannie Ebenstein to Hillary Hauser, Stewart Kasdin to Natasha Todorovic.
And we’ve kept a close eye on other key community matters, from the rebirth of the Santa Barbara News Press (we scooped on that one) and the impact on the local insurance market on the L.A. fires (kudos to SB’s own Pedro Nava) to the dispute over raises for the Board of Supervisors (Capps vs. Alcorn) and a debate about the city’s latest rent control law (that pitted city council member Meagan Harmon against Board of Realtors chief Brian Johnson).
Plus: Yeshiva Wins! Yeshiva Wins! Yeshiva Wins!
A final word. All told, at last count we’ve published 106 pieces since Trump’s inauguration. Only 1,356 days until the 2029 Inauguration!
Amid the flood of appraisals of his first 100 days, we decided to do this one about our own, as a kind of self-assessment of the effort to help readers and viewers make sense of the chaotic and nerve-racking times through which we’re living.
Newsmakers has never been a commercial venture: we’ve always considered the enterprise a way to use our professional skills in retirement to give something back to the community, while having some laughs along the way (caveat: world much less funny than 100 days ago).
We appreciate you taking the ride with us, always welcome your feedback and sincerely thank you for subscribing. A shout-out too, to our media partners at TVSB, KCSB-FM and Edhat, all invaluable colleagues in helping spread the word.
A modest ask: we’d be much obliged if you’d pass along to a friend or family member anything of special interest you read or watch by using the “Share” button below, and urge them to sign up for a free subscription as well.
And if you’re of a mind, hit the blue “Pledge” button below to let us know you’d be willing to pay for Newsmakers content. We have no plans to charge right now, but are noodling about whether there is a pathway to hiring a young journalist, or two, to keep our creaky ship moving into the future.
Your co-founders collectively are 157 years old — not that much younger than the USA, which is 249. We somehow always assumed we’d be gone long before the nation.
Now we’re not so sure.
Image: Journal of Democracy.