Episode description

Ellen and Dan talk with Jeffrey Schwaner, executive editor of Cardinal News, a nonprofit digital news outlet covering Southwest Virginia. It also covers something called Southside Virginia, which is an area south of the James River, near Richmond. Since we're taping this in Boston, we'll ask him to explain their coverage area in more detail.

Jeff joined Cardinal News in September after nine years as a storytelling and watchdog coach — including five years as editor — of Gannett’s two Virginia newsrooms, the News Leader in Staunton and The Progress-Index in Petersburg. 

Dan has a Quick Take that explores a key question: Does a lack of local news correlate with support for Donald Trump? A new study by the Local News Initiative at Northwestern University’s Medill School finds that it does, although the writers caution that correlation is not causation. 

Ellen's Quick Take is on a mysterious website that popped up in Oregon after a 147-year-old paper called the Ashland Tidings folded. Called the Daily Tidings, it recently published story after story by a reporter named Joe Minihane, who supposedly skiied, hiked and ate his way through Southern Oregon. Except Minihane is based in the UK and doesn't know how his byline got hijacked. The stories are made up, perhaps by AI.