Scott Lewis: Journalism, Democracy, and the Future of San Diego
Stop. Talk to me.
Scott Lewis:Hey, Grant. Hey, Crystal.
Crystal Page:How are you?
Grant Oliphant:I am I'm really good. Thank you.
Crystal Page:Awesome. I heard we had The Voice of San Diego in for this interview.
Grant Oliphant:Yes. So we had Scott Lewis, who is the editor in chief of The Voice of San Diego, which is a nonprofit news outlet in in San Diego, and really the first in the country that initially put together the model of publicly supported media with an an online publication.
Crystal Page:Yeah. Well, I'm excited to hear what he has to say, so perhaps we should just jump in.
Grant Oliphant:Let's do it.
Crystal Page:Alright. Alright.
Grant Oliphant:Scott Lewis, thanks so much for joining me.
Scott Lewis:Thanks for having me.
Grant Oliphant:This is a treat. I have, I've actually known you for a long time even though really only gotten to know each other in the last three years since I But moved to we met a couple of decades ago when you came to Pittsburgh to talk to to us in Pittsburgh about doing nonprofit media, and San Diego is at the forefront of a movement that you came to talk to us about. What what stuck with you about that, that visit with us aside from, obviously, the brilliant people you met.
Scott Lewis:Yeah. The brilliant yeah. What was his name? John Ellis. Yeah.
Scott Lewis:Yeah. That was fun. Pittsburgh, just getting to know Pittsburgh. I've never been there. We were on a high for a while of we were we weren't the first nonprofit news organization, we weren't the first online news organization, but we were the first to put those together for a local community, and now there's hundreds out there.
Scott Lewis:And so when that sort of started spreading and we got a lot of publicity for it, I was just loving all these opportunities I got to go to different places to speak and talk and learn about them. I would have had, I think, no drive to Pittsburgh, and I loved the place. The number of foundations there. There was a lot of civic culture, I think, that is different than it is here, and I learned, I took that away. Like, there's just kind of an institutional presence and concentration there that's just different.
Grant Oliphant:Yeah. Every every town has its pluses and minuses. Right? So, yeah, the civic culture there was great, but we were looking at you because, yeah, you were the first, and San Diego was doing something Mhmm. That we weren't and that we envied.
Grant Oliphant:You know, I think you were modeling a path that a lot of communities, as you pointed out, then followed, including including ours there. Yeah. But now I'm here.
Scott Lewis:Yes, you are.
Grant Oliphant:And Do you like it? Oh, I love it. I'm sorry
Scott Lewis:the weather's not good as it is.
Grant Oliphant:Yeah. Get it. Weather is weather is a complicated thing, but not no. It's it's extraordinary being here. This is a you know, there was a transition that but it it really is an exceptional place.
Grant Oliphant:And part of what I love is this ongoing commitment to what you do. And it's fascinating having seen you back then and heard from you back then when you were the pioneer to now where you're you're still at it and still working the model. What attracted you to this work in the journalism space and the Voice of San Diego space in the first place?
Scott Lewis:Well, I just needed a job.
Grant Oliphant:That's That's often a
Scott Lewis:Yeah. That's often a motivator. My wife was in the Navy, and that was what brought us to San Diego, and so I left the jobs I had and came here. I was able to get an $11 an hour job covering real estate and water at the daily transcript in 02/2003. And I thought those were terrible beats, but it turned out covering real estate in 2003 was really educational and important.
Scott Lewis:And covering water has influenced my knowledge and the things I care about. And and I think it's really important part of San Diego, and it's been great to know. And about a year and a half later, Boy San Diego was coming together. They offered me a job. I said no, and one of my friends got the job, and I stayed in touch and came aboard in 02/2005.
Scott Lewis:So I was just a Navy wife or spouse and came here and wanted to be part of the culture and just get involved in reporting, and this was the opportunity that came up.
Grant Oliphant:Why do you think it was that San Diego became, as you said, the first to put these two models together of publicly supported journalism and online journalism.
Scott Lewis:It's a really interesting story. So Buzz Woolley and Neil Morgan. Buzz Woolley's a philanthropist, venture capitalist, kind of right of center politics. Neil Morgan, longtime editor of the Evening Tribune, longtime journalist in San Diego. And they were friends.
Scott Lewis:They knew each other. And when the Union Tribune fired Neil Morgan, it's the kind of guy you should have a party for and give him a watch or something, but instead they just sort of pushed him out. There's lot of that in
Grant Oliphant:journalism at that time. Yeah.
Scott Lewis:And they got together, and they just wanted to solve the problem of journalism and funding it in the most simple way possible, and they stumbled on. A lot of people say like, oh, Voice started because the newspaper industry was falling apart. 02/2003, 02/2004, the newspaper industry was doing fine. The newspapers were selling for a billion dollars, $800,000,000 the Union Tribune could have sold for at that time. They they had a lot of Mhmm.
Scott Lewis:Still capitals, you know, sort of inertia from the previous decades. They wanted to figure out how do we have a professional organization with the most, you know, diverse sources of revenue possible, and we don't need to make any money. And so they settled on this, and that became, I think because they were going at it with that model, or with that problem in mind, settled they on the nonprofit model which served and became, like, the model that so many other people then said, oh, that's a great idea.
Grant Oliphant:Yeah. Seemed obvious in hindsight.
Scott Lewis:Yeah. Think the Union Tribune's monopoly is what really sort of kinda festered that, right? It was just like, oh, how we how do we provide another voice, literally another voice that would, you know, be able to survive, and you know, in the most efficient way possible, and that's what they settled on.
Grant Oliphant:Fast forwarding to today, do you see San Diego now as still a hotbed of this type of journalism? Mean, there's, of course, Voice, but you also have iNewsSource here, you have a multitude actually of other organizations that have entered the space. Is that unique to San Diego in your opinion?
Scott Lewis:Yeah. Absolutely. I think we created a cluster of sorts. Right? Like, and I'm proud of that as well, and I don't think it's disputed that we set the model up that you can do professional journalism in a different way without the sort of institutional, you know, history.
Scott Lewis:Mhmm. And I think that, yeah, iNewSource came along, Times of San Diego, saw the opportunities. There was others that came and went during that time. And then, you know, I think people realized that we can take this challenge. So, just quick history, you know, the newspapers used to do public service journalism as like a ancillary benefit to this business they were running, right?
Scott Lewis:Right. It was like a side thing. Right. And they made so much money that they could fund that public service independently, and it wasn't a big deal until they stopped making money. And so what we've what we sort of pioneered wasn't just the nonprofit model, it was the idea that, like, that should be funded directly as opposed to an ancillary benefit of a business.
Scott Lewis:It should be, like, directly funded by standalone. Exactly. Yeah. And so I think that thought, like, oh, we can just directly pay for and figure out how to fund that kind of journalism is is what the real lesson of what we created here was.
Grant Oliphant:So did you have any, highfalutin ideas about the role of journalism when you were when you were getting this going? Or I mean, you joke about just having wanting a a job, but that's not how you talk about the role on the mission. So what were your ideas that were motivating you at the time?
Scott Lewis:The biggest thing that we set in motion was sort of two parts. One was we weren't gonna do anything that anyone else was doing. We have to be better or different than everybody else. And that was that was just key to, like, a business surviving. If we're just doing the same things that the paper is doing or that the TV stations are doing, then what are we even here for?
Scott Lewis:Why would anybody fund us? So that was a really important so if a plane crash, we had to teach our reporters, like, you don't go cover that. Like, you're not gonna be able to add any value to that. You need to
Grant Oliphant:Oh, wow.
Scott Lewis:You need to maybe spend some time investigating why it happened or figure out something that you can do in a couple days, a slow food kind of thing, a slow news kind of thing. The other thing we did was really attack the news voice. There was a voice that developed over decades in the objective journalism world of authority of, like
Grant Oliphant:Everybody was Walter Cronkite
Scott Lewis:and Edward
Grant Oliphant:r r Morrow and Exactly that. Yeah. Like, this is
Scott Lewis:the way it happened. And Yeah. And, you know, a crowd of people gathered in downtown. It it was just this and it created a distance between the public and the journalist, where the journalist was able to say, like, act as an authority, almost a superior entity. And the public suspected that there was more to that person, that they were seeping through their voice, sometimes their own.
Scott Lewis:And what we wanted to do was just be candid, conversational, and so we would even play on it. Unit Tribune for a while would refuse to recognize our work. They would pull off something we had figured out, and then they would write an editorial about it. Reportedly, this happened, and so, or even when they would do it, they would say like, oh, you know, Voice San Diego, a local news website would do this. And so we started doing the the Union Tribune, a local newspaper.
Scott Lewis:So we would just have fun with it and try to like talk to people normally Yeah. And in a conversational voice. And people really responded to that, they felt like I think that was a better way to create trust with them was to just talk and write in a way that we would talk.
Grant Oliphant:You know, the issue of voice, I'd I'm so glad you brought that up because I I did wanna ask you about that. Yeah. And the voice certainly has a distinctive voice, you know, and it's, irreverent.
Scott Lewis:Yeah.
Grant Oliphant:I I I probably shouldn't share this, but I'm going to anyway because you invited it. Sure. So, you know, in the questionnaire that we do for our guests, one of the questions we ask is, is there something that we shouldn't be asking you about? Because we're this that's not the point of the podcast Right. Is to put them on the spot.
Grant Oliphant:But your answer was some version of, if there's any question I don't want you to ask me about, you should ask me about it.
Scott Lewis:A 100%. So
Grant Oliphant:Which I loved. I thought that was that was great. Not everybody loves that, you know, and and and so have have you gotten a lot of pushback from the community about being irreverent, what some might call snarky? And how do you balance that with the obligation to also try and do real news?
Scott Lewis:I think the most pushback I get is that we're not that as much anymore, maybe. Oh, really? We're not living up to it sometimes when we should, and maybe we're getting too, you know, serious and too part of the the system. I think the, for a while, I think we thrived on that sort of surprising people more spicy, irreverent headlines, as you said, and stuff that just kinda caught people's attention. But I really did just wanna lean into like, no, let's just talk.
Scott Lewis:Let's just share and write. Everybody, because I think that part of the problem in San Diego was that we hid behind a discomfort of conflict, a discomfort of just not being part of the status quo. And so I think this town is a little bit, and has been, too afraid of being real with each other in a way that holds it back from progress. We need to be able to battle. There's always somebody that's upset that a councilman asks too many questions or something, and it's like, Oh, you should have been nicer to them.
Scott Lewis:No, let's just have it out. I know that we're on the same page and that we can make progress out of that. And I think, to the contrast actually, I think we're having, we only had success because we were able to surprise people. This is our twentieth anniversary this year.
Grant Oliphant:We had a a great year.
Scott Lewis:We have a lot of members. And I think people really value that and want to have real conversations, and that's what I wanted to foster.
Grant Oliphant:Which which makes so much sense. You know, you and I are talking on a day when the senate, has just voted to defund public media, so NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. And I suspect that will stand. So I suspect by the time this podcast comes out that we'll be living in a world where the government has backed off of public support for public media, which in a way makes those platforms analogous to you. Yeah.
Grant Oliphant:Given the work you do, how do you feel about that, and how does it reflect on the role of an an outlet like like Voice in contributing value to our society?
Scott Lewis:I guess I'm gonna test myself about how real that can be here. Yeah. The
Grant Oliphant:Be be real.
Scott Lewis:Go on. Be brave. Everybody's watching. So I think a couple things. To the extent that the cuts hurt access to information, in particular in rural areas, I know there's a lot of people in Alaska really worried about their access to some of these, beloved public radio and public broadcasters.
Scott Lewis:I think that to the extent that it hurts the availability of educational programming, that's a crisis and that's bad. I think that relying on government funding was always a dicey proposition, and it was always uncomfortable to, I think, have a system that wanted to report effectively and irreverently on, you know, these institutions to know that deep down they they also relied on them. I mean, and I think that the only silver lining would be that maybe NPR and some of these entities now can even feel more willing and able to develop a voice of accountability, of not have to always be vulnerable to that punching bag they've been for decades, where like, oh, you're government funded, you're government funded, maybe they'll find more freedom and more voice if they if they have that release.
Grant Oliphant:So the potential for a more authentic
Scott Lewis:And I don't wanna dismiss the pain and the and the loss of jobs and the the, you know, the cutbacks will have to occur. I know that KPBS is worried and will have to plan multi years in advance about how to deal with some of these things. And, again, the to the a lot of the funding went to just making sure that some of these rural rural areas had the antennas and the infrastructure to reach people. And I think that's a to just look past that, when you're talking about the need to access information for flooding or catastrophes or other things, like, you can't have that.
Grant Oliphant:And in many communities, public radio was the only source of that. Right.
Scott Lewis:And I think, but this will be an opportunity for them to make their case to individuals, to respond to the market, and to try to create something that is potentially more interesting out of this. And I hope that it's a scary proposition, and I don't wanna dismiss it, but there is an opportunity after that.
Grant Oliphant:To what extent, this is a this is a macro question about the state of journalism in our country and our democracy, but the I have noticed, basically under the new administration that, and I'm an NPR listener, that increasingly, the Republican side of the aisle has just refused to answer calls from their reporters and to acknowledge calls from their reporters. So they're having to say in every story, we reached out to the office of so and so and did not get a callback. Or are you concerned at all about this, what's happening with public media as an expression of increasing disregard for the role of journalism in society, and is it becoming easier just to brush it off Regardless of where people are in the political spectrum.
Scott Lewis:100%. I think we're in an environment, especially in the national discussion Mhmm. Where you you never have to interact with a silo that you're not a part of. And that when we try to make deals out of that, or we try to have conversations about shared problems or collective solutions, that's almost impossible because you're just listening to different people, you're working off a different story, you're a completely different reality. And yeah, that's awful, and I don't know how to deal with that.
Scott Lewis:I think that at the heart of that is this need for, your audience to be truly diverse across the spectrums, your audience to have built that trust. That's why I'm so passionate about the news voice. You have to be communicating with somebody that even if they're, if they think you're off in different reality, that they have to listen to you, that they wanna listen to you, and if they haven't, if that separated so much that they don't feel that obligation, that they're not gonna suffer electorally, that or they're not gonna feel the blowback in their community, then, yeah, that's a severe crisis for a a national entity like NPR. Locally, we have the benefit of being able to see and talk to people directly and see leaders and talk to them directly. If we say there's a sinkhole on a street, like, that's something that people can go see is true.
Scott Lewis:And if there's a politician around the corner, like, we can talk to them and we can present them, and then somebody can go see that they're a real person and humanize them. That's just not possible on a national scale, and I think it is really causing a chasm that I don't know how to address.
Grant Oliphant:So I know you and I both believe that Yeah. You can challenge me. Sure. But but I think we both believe that journalism is a critical part of democracy, you know. And and if everybody's living in their bubble and it's possible to just blow off an entire news organization because they have an inconvenient way of coverage covering the news for you, Is it is it still true that journalism can play the role that we all hoped it would in in advancing democracy in the way that our founders, I think, believed that it would when they included the freedom of the press in the First Amendment?
Scott Lewis:It has to be. I don't think journalism can survive without democracy, and I don't think democracy can survive without journalism. We we see other societies where journalists are killed or persecuted or otherwise removed from their positions, whether it's Russia or Mexico, where you can't report on certain things without getting in the in the hairs of paramilitaries or something. So in those societies, that's not a functioning open democracy. And if if you're not right now, I can say anything I want about the mayor and know that I will survive, that my family won't get kidnapped, that there won't be, you know, jail down the the road.
Scott Lewis:That's just not the case in other places, and vice versa, they have to respond and deal with the public outrage, or just the public voice, in a way that if that was removed, they wouldn't have to, and thus not an open society. And so to the extent we get to a federal system where the federal government doesn't have to deal with the storytellers and can otherwise dismiss them, or even worse, yeah, I think at that point we can say a version of the democracy that we know is done. Now, does that mean it's over, or that journalism can't figure that out? No, I think that what we have to be able to do, what journalists have to be able to do, is write and speak and present things that are so powerful and so interesting and so able to create trust with everybody that might be interested that they can't be ignored. And to the extent that NPR or other places aren't doing that right now, that should be their primary challenge is figuring out how to speak and say and create content that traverses that in in a way that can't be ignored.
Scott Lewis:That's our really our only hope.
Grant Oliphant:I think that's a really powerful answer. Let's bring it down to the local level. Yeah. You know, let's come because this is where we're focusing and you're focusing, and I I loved what you said a moment ago, which is, you know, about the fact that on the local level, people can still see problems in not abstract terms, but as real things like sinkholes or or real personalities that they encounter in public life or on the streets. So how do you how do you see this whole fight for democratic principles in our society playing out on a local level?
Grant Oliphant:When you go to work every day and you're putting on your your Superman costume. What is it what what is it that is motivating you around that set of ideals?
Scott Lewis:I think it's super healthy right now, frankly. Like, I think there's a lot of places that need more covers, that need more engagement. There's no question about that. But the the ability for people on the local level to raise their voice and be heard, I think is as strong and vibrant as it ever has been. I think the participation's more diverse.
Scott Lewis:I think that storytelling and the power of storytelling is as impactful as it ever has been. I think what worries me is that the city and the county of San Diego are facing some challenges that are not being addressed and we're not fixing to the point where we're gonna start to see some rather catastrophic outcomes. The
Grant Oliphant:Yeah, name them. We just did
Scott Lewis:a story this week about enrollment in San Diego public schools down 25,000 students. Some of these, there's a lot of places, elementary schools in particular down 50%, down 25%, down 30% over the last ten years. This is an outcome of A, declining birth rates, and B, the cost of living. It's impossible for so many families to picture raising their kids here, or building a family here, or having more kids. And how do we get to the other side of this cost of living crisis?
Scott Lewis:I don't Right. And the infrastructure's crumbling. I was surfing the other day in Ocean Beach, and thousands of pelicans took over the Ocean Beach Pier, and it was the coolest the Ocean Beach Pier has looked in months because it is just a symbol of decline. It's a crumbling, you know, 500,000 people used to go there every year, and now it's just crumbling. The Civic Center, you you guys are working on that.
Scott Lewis:Is so awful. It's just an awful place. And there's so many things like this around the community of, we're gonna have to start closing schools. We have so many people struggling with mental health breakdowns and behavioral health crises in the streets. We have campers and tent encampments everywhere.
Scott Lewis:So we might be doing a great job telling the story of San Diego and people responding to it, But those big problems are only getting worse right now, and I don't know. I can't tell anybody there's there's a lot of optimism right now that it's gonna be fixed.
Grant Oliphant:One of the things that you have said in other place is that you believe it's really important. I I and I completely agree with this, by the way. It's really important for a community to have a shared story. Yeah. And you view part of your role as telling a shared story.
Grant Oliphant:Yeah. So as I think about the examples you just gave, they're terrific examples because they're real, number one. And there are multiple ways you could cover them. You know, you could you could approach those issues as from an explanatory journalism standpoint and say, okay, we're gonna explain to people what's going on here. And this is about cost of living and and the fact that people can't find housing, and so kid you know, families with young kids leave the area, and that has these downstream effects for for tax receipts.
Grant Oliphant:And probably 30 words into that story, people's eyes glaze over. Yeah. Another way of writing that story is to go after the politicians in a in a kind of incendiary way and say, this is their fault. Why aren't they fixing it? Another way is to blend those approaches and try and when you're trying to tell the shared story of San Diego and and get the community and its leaders to acknowledge some of these hard truths, how do you calibrate what your coverage is gonna look like so that you're adding value and and light and not just heat?
Grant Oliphant:Or do you worry about that?
Scott Lewis:Yeah. Absolutely. I think the primary criticism we get is like, oh, you're just pointing out everything is wrong, like where's the hope, where's the solutions, all this. So we've been trying to really figure out how our role is with that. One of the things we did is we created a document called What We Stand For.
Scott Lewis:It's like the, I think, 12 principles of voice. Because we wanted, when people say like, what's your bias? We wanted to say like that, literally Yeah. Those are our bias. And the idea is like, everybody should have access to a great education, for example.
Scott Lewis:Now whether that's a charter school, private school, or helping the current school get better, like, are going to be fierce about, hey, this school is letting people down. What are we gonna do about it? And I think that's the best way to go. We the best experience and the example I always use is we did some investigative reporting about ten years ago about areas of town where emergency response times were really high. And they just happened to be historically underserved, you know, neighborhoods that have, you know, traditionally dealt with all of the problems of areas like that.
Scott Lewis:And we presented that in such a way that it was really a dramatic show of inequality. And what we decided is like, we're not gonna take a stand on the solutions. And so there was a very robust debate about, hey, should the fire department put new fire stations there with fully unionized firefighters, or should there be paramedics out of because 80% of the calls are are medical. Right. And they could have, like, a storefront or something.
Scott Lewis:So there was a big debate about that. Yeah. But that's what I try to say is like, hey, you guys gotta be fierce about the problems. You gotta be clear and candid about the problems. But then you have to like let the solutions and try to be fair about them.
Scott Lewis:And I think that's the only way I've figured out is to is to be that sort of force people to deal with the problems in a way that I think is still fair. And and so I don't other than that, I I haven't figured out how to get the city to to tackle or to leaders to step up to tackle these issues. Look. The city council just spent four months arguing about, like, $5,000,000 in cuts when the city all of these infrastructure challenges are coming and all of these, you know, housing costs and everything, and it's just it's really kinda depressing that the low level of conversation happening still.
Grant Oliphant:So I'm, you know, I'm curious. I in some ways, I see this as endemic to cities and regions that, especially complex regions where there are multiple cities and multiple units of government, and leadership gets diffused and there are plenty of other people to point fingers to.
Scott Lewis:Yeah.
Grant Oliphant:That, you know, there's a tendency everywhere to want to minimize the problems because you don't wanna depress people. Yeah. And yet, you know, I I I think what you and I share among other things is a belief that you can't get better unless you name the problem. So you mentioned the Civic Center. I'm sorry.
Grant Oliphant:It doesn't take a rocket scientist. Walk around the Civic Center and you see the problem. And you understand intuitively why it became that way because of how it was created and designed and the need for a city to have a different image of itself. Yeah. I think similarly with the Tijuana River Valley, the idea that that was just dismissed as an inconvenience to beachgoers and surfers when it's a literal public health crisis and an economic justice issue.
Grant Oliphant:Not not okay. So it's important for and I think one of the roles that journalism plays is in drawing attention to those things. On the other hand, you know, it you do come up against that that next thing of, okay, well, what are you gonna do about it? And in a case like our foundation, we typically try and answer that question because that's really what we're in the business of doing. Do you view that as the role of journalism though?
Scott Lewis:A 100%. I think journalism hasn't been good at that though. Yeah. Like, part of why we did the the what we stand for document is because journalists have been really good at handling and addressing small problems. Mhmm.
Scott Lewis:Somebody gets paid too much or has a conflict of interest or, you know, these little things that sort of drive outrage because that was the only thing they were willing to be outraged about, that they their their sort of objectivity lens had put them in a place where they didn't have values. They couldn't display values. And so I think what what I try to get across is like, no. The big problems have to be in our scope because that's what people are worried about, the cost of living, homelessness, all these things. And so we have to be able to figure out how to force those conversations.
Scott Lewis:And it's not easy. And but I think the answer I always give to your point about, like, oh, we don't wanna depress people. I think it's the height of optimism to to think that a community is strong enough to deal with its biggest problems and to not be shy about talking about them. And I think that that's what's really unfortunate, I think, when a mayor or somebody gets elected and they start feeling defensive about the entity, like anything negative about it is like something they see as a personal attack, when it should be like, they should embrace the biggest problems because that's their only way to ever provide big solutions.
Grant Oliphant:Right.
Scott Lewis:And I I want to create a culture where people are more willing to do that, but I still am a part of a culture that knocks them down for, you know, stumbles along the way or little things that they get in trouble with where they're they're gun shy to do that kind of thing. And I recognize, you know, my role in doing that as well. And so I think it's about creating a story where, like, these are the big problems, nothing else really matters unless you're dealing with them constantly and providing solutions to them constantly. And I hope to get better at met forcing that and making sure that they that they're that they see participating in those big conversations as rewarding as the little sort of takedowns.
Grant Oliphant:Alright. So I have this thesis Yeah. Which is and this has been a this has been an issue for me since coming to town. And the thesis is that San Diego has these amazing assets and amazing people, amazing opportunities, and it should set its high sights higher on the possibility of what can happen here. We should be a leader in the state.
Grant Oliphant:We should be a leader in the country. The tendency is to look at problems, and and this is not unique to San Diego. But the tendency is to look at the problems we have and obsess about those and say that, you know, we should take what we can get by way of a solution, and the truth in life is that you you get to big ideas by making the problem bigger, not smaller. Yeah. Kind of exactly what you were saying.
Grant Oliphant:But a thesis that we've been following is that part of our role should be to help inspire San Diego to take on bigger ideas and bigger challenges. What I'm curious about is, do you see that as, given the history that you've seen in San Diego, as an important inflection point for us culturally as a community, and can it happen?
Scott Lewis:It's tough. This isn't like other places. People a lot of people came here to be comfortable and not to build a city. This isn't like a you know, I grew up
Grant Oliphant:in Utah. Heard anybody say that, but I guess that's I guess I guess that's true. Yeah.
Scott Lewis:Yeah. I grew up in Utah where the even whether it's right or left, there's always progress. Like, it's just building constantly. It's always growing. It's building new thing, infrastructure, Olympics.
Scott Lewis:It's just constantly progressing. Pittsburgh, I felt, was similar. It's just this, like, always, what are we gonna do next? How are we gonna get there? And and I think the the San Diego is not that.
Scott Lewis:San Diego, a lot of the population of San Diego is transitory military, or coming, going, or people who came here to leave that race, or to leave that progress and just be here. This community has always struggled with the two faces that it has. One is the people who just want it to be the way that they know and the way that they feel is comfortable, and leave me alone, and just don't mess with my neighborhood. And then the other group that's trying to build these industries, and the biotech, and the military industries, and the desalination technologies, and all of the, like, things that the tech world that's creating all these jobs, and the university system that supports it. And so we have, they used to call it, Geraniums versus Most Smokestacks.
Scott Lewis:It's the same fight we've always had, where the one group wants to build and create jobs, the other group wants to just make things nice and stop bothering us, be Santa Barbara. And I think that they always fight. And guess what? They both always win. They always create the jobs, and the other side always stops the creation of housing and other things to accommodate all the people that come here.
Grant Oliphant:But don't you think that balance has to, at some point, change if the city is gonna move forward?
Scott Lewis:I absolutely do, but it doesn't, and that's why we have so many thousands of people living in homelessness here. And it's the same thing, same reason why we had so many thousands of people living in homelessness in the forties. Yeah. It's because that imbalance is just not reconciled. And I think it's really hard to get people to agree with it.
Scott Lewis:So you can say to them, oh, you're gonna close schools in Point Loma and in Ocean Beach if you don't allow more families to live here. And I think they're maybe fine with that. I don't and that's what scares me is, like, if you say to them, hey, if we don't change this, our birth rates and our trajectory as a population is gonna start to come down for the first time, and we we've never seen that happen. And it's and it's gonna be more like Santa Barbara than I'm playing. They'll be like, great.
Scott Lewis:Santa Barbara's great. You know, I think there's a lot of people still there. I remember we tried to build a new airport, 02/2006.
Grant Oliphant:I've heard the story.
Scott Lewis:Yeah. Do you mind? No. Please, go ahead. I love this story because I think it's true that they flew out the guy who the the mayor, Federico Pena from Denver who had built the airport there.
Scott Lewis:And they're like, hey. What do we do? And he has this big meeting and he's like, well, you you first of all, all need to decide that you need a new airport. Like, in Denver, it was unquestioned. The Stapleton Airport was terrible.
Scott Lewis:It was a mess. It congested. We all knew the whole community in Colorado knew we needed a new airport. But here, we didn't. And and I don't think you all do agree that you need a new airport.
Scott Lewis:I think a lot of you are just fine with how convenient it is and where it is and how small it is. And he was exactly right. This community was not on the same page there. And I don't think that's the problem. It's like, I don't think this community there's a lot of people who are very comfortable here.
Scott Lewis:And and so I don't think they they want to go through the challenge of seeing that big. And then there's a lot of incentive to play to them in politics, and and that's what what sticks us sometimes.
Grant Oliphant:Interesting. I think that that really describes for me the battle that is going on for what the future of San Diego is going to be shaped by. Yeah. And okay. As you think I I'm I'm running out of time.
Grant Oliphant:I got too many questions. Oh, I gotta I gotta get through a few here. Sure. But as you think about the role of nonprofit local journalism to disrupt equations like you just described and dynamics like you just described, This is a very complicated landscape, and there are multiple players. Yeah.
Grant Oliphant:You did create something here.
Scott Lewis:Yeah.
Grant Oliphant:And how do you state the case for why The Voice and nonprofit journalism generally is really important at a time when people are struggling for over over issues around housing and food and shelter, and that's gonna be worse in the coming months, I think, as a result of federal policy. How how do you think about continuing to make the case for journalism? And in asking that question, I should acknowledge that you would want me to acknowledge that we are a funder of voice.
Scott Lewis:Yeah. Thanks.
Grant Oliphant:We believe in the role of it. We also expect that if you had something critical to say about us, you would say it. So I just need to put that on the table. But tell me why you matter in this context.
Scott Lewis:I think that a community cannot do anything to make progress on its challenges unless it it it knows the facts and stories behind it. Our brains don't work without stories. And so in the absence of official professional journalists telling those stories, then there's gonna be some really weird ones being spun by people that maybe aren't as committed to the integrity and ethics as as we are committed. Now, that doesn't mean we're better. There's often all kinds of people who can contribute to that conversation.
Scott Lewis:But I think having an investment in that is a tiny investment compared to the return that could come. You could have an investigative journalist in every neighborhood of the San Diego's sort of 60 mega neighborhoods, you might call them, across the entire region, you would have one in each one of them for about $9,000,000 a year. And that's not as much as the opera or the symphony. It's a tiny investment. And yet the savings in avoiding corruption and and making better decisions and credit ratings.
Scott Lewis:And we we helped recover almost 10,000,000 for the city in the investigation of of the conflict of interest in the Ash Street, problem. There's that's a massive benefit that the public gets from from having that sort of system going on. And so in my view, like, we have so few journalists, just a few more of them in a community like this is an easy investment for individuals, for grant makers, and for corporations to make that, to to in in the civic culture of the community, the return is just enormous. Mhmm. And then you get the benefit of a community.
Scott Lewis:You talk about purpose and belonging all the time. Like, we have live podcasts or our off the record event or others where it's just these it's it's a community, and it's a shared experience. Like, if you go and have a softball game with your friends, and then you go to the beer the go have beers afterwards, you're all talking about the game. Right? That's the power of a shared experience or a book club.
Scott Lewis:You read the same book, you have a great conversation because of it. If you can create shared experiences like that, you create community, and people have something to talk about. They have something to be a part of, and that's community. Everybody for happiness needs purpose, belonging, and community. Right?
Scott Lewis:You guys are big on that.
Grant Oliphant:Yeah. So, like I was even gonna ask you about that, so thank you for bringing it up.
Scott Lewis:And and so I think it's a tiny investment in in that. Yeah. And Well, and it goes back to your shared story
Grant Oliphant:Right. Point that that the community develops a sense of itself.
Scott Lewis:Yeah. And if it doesn't think of its its past and its future and and kinda understand the same things about why the Chargers left or why the you know, why we're we're we can't build housing in certain areas or anything. Why the airport is where it is. Mhmm. Know, these these kinds of things help us go forward and and talk to each other, frankly.
Scott Lewis:Yeah. And I think that we we having more people do that is great, and I've just had to tell my my staff, like, there's Arizona State's in town now. They own, you know, the time of San Diego, they bought a bunch of papers. And I had a lot of people like, well, are we in trouble? Are they gonna take our support?
Scott Lewis:And I was like, I talked to a donor and I was like, yeah, I'm kinda worried about this. What are you worried about? And I said, well, I don't know, I guess that you might give money to them instead, because they've got a website and they've got journalists they're hiring. And he's like, well, I'm not gonna give money to Arizona State, but what does it matter? Have more people doing this work, it's great.
Scott Lewis:You should just keep doing what you do well and make a difference, and you'll have plenty of support. And that's what I've had to rely on, through recessions, through presidencies, through whatever. If I can keep making the case, and if people still wanna listen to the podcast, and they still wanna read what we do, then we'll be okay.
Grant Oliphant:Yeah. Which makes sense, and I think I think your donor is probably probably correct. You've let's let's talk about a couple of moves you've made at The Voice lately. Yeah. You've you've made some bold moves recently with shifting Lisa Halverstadt to cover the county, adding Mariana Martinez Barba as the San Diego City Hall reporter, and Jim Hinch to cover South County for The Voice.
Grant Oliphant:So what's the story behind these changes? Why why now are you are you making these moves?
Scott Lewis:Well, so I used to do a lot of events and such in South Bay, and, even going back ten years ago, and people would be like, well, why aren't you covering us the way you cover the city? And I'd be like, I'm coming, I'm coming. And every year, I have to go back, and was getting to the point where I was truly ashamed. Finally, had a donor give us $5,000 and she said, Hey, would you cover South Pay more? And I was like, Yeah, that's great, but I can't do it on 5,000.
Scott Lewis:We And were able to put together an initial funding that helped us actually put an investigative reporter there. And it's gone so well that I think the support has come out of the community, the members, the readership that came out of it. He is he went in there the perfect way. He said, I don't know anything. Talk to me.
Scott Lewis:And he's met thousands of people. He's just brought in, like, this stream of story ideas and conversation that wouldn't have happened and explanation and investigation that wouldn't have happened without him. And so it was the perfect expansion. It was I've never had such a immediate expansion that turned out so well that now the funding is much more reliable and and something I can count on going forward. And so, you know, now we wanna we we are well known for our city hall coverage, but we haven't actually had an investigative reporter at city hall covering city hall stuff for for almost ten years.
Scott Lewis:Mhmm. And so I I said, like, we gotta get that back, have somebody, because we were all doing a piece of it. I was doing some stuff like that. Now we have her, Mariana, and that's been, she's already starting in same thing. The mayor's already gotten mad about something she's done.
Scott Lewis:And I'm really excited to see that go. And now that has freed us up to take Lisa, one of the best homelessness and behavioral health and just reporters in town, and put her on the county, which is gonna go through a massive, disruption with the the federal government's changes and the big beautiful bill and their responsibility. The mayor got up in front of the entire community in January and said, if you see somebody having a mental health breakdown in the streets, I want you to think of the county. Like, that's what he said in a state of the city speech. I want you to think not of me, but of the county of San Diego, which was a remarkable, like, version of leadership.
Scott Lewis:Like, not my fault, like, big version. But also
Grant Oliphant:He was making a point, right?
Scott Lewis:He was making a point the about
Grant Oliphant:the county's role and their need to step up.
Scott Lewis:And so I I felt an incredible calling to say, like, okay, let's vet that. Like, let's see. Like, are they doing their part? Are are like, what do they need to do? Why are people struggling so much in the street without having access to services?
Scott Lewis:What can we do about that? Lisa being on that on that beat is gonna be amazing. So I'm excited. I think we can get readership out of those in such a way that we can convert a portion of those readers to donors, and all we need is about 10 to 15% of them to become donors at an average of $150 each, and we'll be able to fund them into perpetuity.
Grant Oliphant:So it deepens your storytelling about the community, and it helps build support Yeah. Over time. Let's talk about PolitiFest, because PolitiFest, I think, is is one of the unique kind of things you do. Yeah. And and I think it's probably because of who you are and your interest in politics, and so tell us about how that came about and
Scott Lewis:and So it's
Grant Oliphant:really you are with it now.
Scott Lewis:So I I'm always influenced by the last book I read or about the situation I'm in. I had a kid, you know, fourteen years ago, and I realized like, oh, having kids changes your ability participate in public stuff. I was Just a bit. Yeah. So I was like, well let's do a big field day.
Scott Lewis:You know, Lincoln and Douglas used to debate at a fair, right, in front of all these people that were having fun doing other stuff. I thought, let's do something like that. We'll have a big fair type thing, and then we'll have debates about politics there. And I said, like, let's have a dunk tank and a tug of war
Grant Oliphant:and everything. Seems like a really bad idea.
Scott Lewis:It was so bad. It was really bad. But we did have a great debate, and people did come out to have that debate or to watch that debate. So we ended up morphing it into just, okay, let's just have debates. Yeah.
Scott Lewis:And that's been going really well. Every year we have a series, you know, a dozen or more panels and discussions. It's just a day where you can just go and like, learn about everything going on, all these marriage races or different debates about the sewage crisis or water policy or whatever. This year, though, with this calling about solutions, we were worried, like, gosh, there's so many problems. We just keep talking about the problems.
Scott Lewis:So we created this sort of tournament. So it's solutions showdown. Each
Grant Oliphant:one Kinda of like a civic competition. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Scott Lewis:And somebody actually suggested that the winner should get a grant from the Previs Foundation, so maybe we should talk
Grant Oliphant:to somebody. Let's talk after But the
Scott Lewis:the idea is that they have a session, say about the Tijuana River sewage crisis, and you'll have one person gets 10 to present their solution, and one person gets another ten minutes to present their solution. And then they can have a little debate discussion and facilitate a conversation. And then we'll go to the audience, both online and in the public at the event, and say, okay, now vote. Which one do you think should advance? Which one's the one?
Scott Lewis:And then, so it's like a, it gamifies it a little bit, and then at the end of the day we'll have the winners come and present and talk about
Grant Oliphant:all That's
Scott Lewis:of cool, very cool. And so we think that that appetite for solutions is there. So there's a lot of people who have radical solutions to homelessness, or to behavioral health, or to, we have one about utility prices, think, and stuff like that. I think it could be really interesting. It's And a way to bring in diverse solutions and be fair about them Mhmm.
Scott Lewis:In that way, but not be fair about the problem. I'm not gonna be objective about sewage coming over the border. That's bad. Mhmm. The objective journalism of the past would have said, well, maybe it's good in some way.
Scott Lewis:Maybe it's bacteria helps feed the the algae or something. I don't know. But no, like, there's no good side to that. Like, let's accept that that's bad. Mhmm.
Scott Lewis:But we can be fair about the solution.
Grant Oliphant:Do you do you think that the public is engaged by this?
Scott Lewis:We'll see. I think, you know, we we get a pretty good turnout for a Saturday in September or October at PolitiFest. I think we're promoting this and involving them early enough that it might be our best yet. Yeah. But we'll see.
Scott Lewis:I mean, to the a lot of people dismiss or say, oh, you got a small audience or something. We have a really good and involved audience. And our challenge is making that bigger and make getting more people, you know, more diversity involved in in all of those conversations so that the solutions are even better. But we're doing we're doing great. So I knew this was gonna happen.
Scott Lewis:We would run out of time before I even, you know, I'm half halfway through all
Grant Oliphant:the things I've But I I I do wanna wrap up by asking you, in a way, it's coming back to the question that we talked about earlier. But when you think about where San Diego is right now, what's the story we need to be telling ourselves as a community right now?
Scott Lewis:I think that this community is stronger than it's given credit for. I think that it can address these big problems and that it can be inspired by big solutions. And I think that a lot of people bemoan, like, the leadership crisis or the leadership shortcomings. And I don't wanna be another one just saying, like, where are the leaders? But I do think if you are out there thinking like, hey, this is an opportunity.
Scott Lewis:This is I would like to be part of this discussion that we need people, and we're always benefiting from those who stand out. And, you know, Larry Lukino says, we're gonna build a new stadium or a new downtown ballpark. Like, people that can pull together and weather weather the storm and try to pull something together to make something special happen that I'd like to see more of them come up. And why they won't, I think is something we should be talking about and understanding better. Because it used to be, well, it doesn't pay enough to be on the city council, so we doubled the pay of the city council, and it's still not quite there, you know?
Scott Lewis:So what is it that's keeping visionaries and really interesting people from trying to pull together really big changes and just bigger solutions to the conversation? And I don't know how to tell that story better or how to inspire people to be part of it, but that to me is is the core of of of how we're gonna get out. Because I think we have reinvented ourselves over the centuries. We've we've handled housing crises in the past. We've actually handled public health crises.
Scott Lewis:And like, twenty years ago when I started reporting here, sewage bills happened all the time. Like, it was a constant thing. They would shut down beaches with thousands and thousands of gallons of sewage would pour into La Jolla or into Point Loma area or in the Bay, and it was just like a normal thing, and now it's not. And so what are the things that we think of as normal now, the people on the streets or something, and and that we could get past that? And I I it comes down to people willing to, like, dedicate their public service experience to pulling something off.
Scott Lewis:Maybe not change the whole city, but pulling something off. And and we haven't seen a lot of people really try to pull something off lately.
Grant Oliphant:Mhmm. Well, Scott, I think I think I think that's a brilliant place to to stop. I I do think there's evidence all around us that San Diego can do great things Yeah. You know, as you said. And that that's sort of the focus that you wanna have at at the heart of of your journalistic enterprise is a wonderful contribution to the life of this community.
Grant Oliphant:So you have a hard job. It's a hard industry and kind of thankless because everybody's always mad at you.
Scott Lewis:I get off on that. No.
Grant Oliphant:That's fun. But I I really you know, I appreciate the time to talk about all of this and and and more importantly, the work you do to move San Diego forward. So thank you.
Scott Lewis:Well, it means a lot. And and for you guys to provide a platform for people to come and talk and and and also just be willing to talk about these big issues is a big and important, I think, new thing for San Diego. And so thank you. Alright.
Grant Oliphant:What'd you think?
Crystal Page:You know, I know Scott is such a thoughtful person, but but I really appreciated hearing all the thought behind what goes into their work, their values, and their vision. It was pretty pretty insightful.
Grant Oliphant:Yeah. I such a good way of framing the interview because I I think on subject after subject, he's a deep thinker who's trying to figure out how this organization that he leads in San Diego can do important work for this community and in the context of the country. I I love, for example, our our discussion about the role of journalism in democracy and and how challenging this moment is. And we all know it is, but to hear somebody who's doing that work on the ground in a local context really wrestling with how does how how what they do relates to the challenges confronting public radio and the challenges confronting media more generally in the country. I I found that fascinating.
Crystal Page:Yeah. Like, we know that these federal cuts on other parts of the nonprofit landscape are gonna be incredibly hard. Mhmm. But it sounded like he believed that a greater accountability, responsibility could come out of not having that revenue stream as part of
Scott Lewis:Yeah.
Crystal Page:The work.
Grant Oliphant:I I appreciated what you well, what you just said is points to one of the things I most appreciated about this interview is that Scott has framed a very hard path for the voice of San Diego, but it's great that they are trying to do it. And that hard path is telling the truth about what they see. So calling out challenges and problems and pointing out where they think leaders and community are falling short, and at the same time, trying to raise the bar on what solutions are possible and how we might move forward in a more promising direction. Now I say that's hard because it it's just hard for journalism to get that right, but the fact that they want to wrestle with that here in San Diego is, is a testament to the to the positive role they wanna play here.
Crystal Page:Absolutely. And I think I was reminded that these journalists wanna make a difference. Right? They want to, at the end of the day, help people better understand, better engage. And it actually, it reminded me of a time when Scott and his team did, a piece on sidewalks in Encanto and what it meant for kids walking to school.
Crystal Page:And so now, like, I don't know. I think it, makes me wanna approach what they're doing with Grace instead of if I don't like a piece or I do like a piece, it's really like, what can I glean from this to engage better? So I I really appreciate how he framed that.
Grant Oliphant:That's such a good point. And I, you know, I think it it for me, this will be one of the takeaways that it is a hard it is a hard time to be doing this work because even in a local context, you're not popular all the time for what you do or say when you're a journalist. And we are living in this era where journalists are increasingly treated globally and nationally as objects of scorn. So the fact that we have this group trying to play a positive role in telling the story of our community through the rigorous eye of journalism is a pretty cool part of the San Diego landscape. And I am I'm really proud that we're affiliated with them.
Crystal Page:Me too. And, just great job on that interview, and and thanks to Voice of San Diego for lending their voices to stop and talk.
Grant Oliphant:Thank you, Crystal.
Crystal Page:Awesome. See you next time.
Grant Oliphant:This is a production of the Prebys Foundation.
Crystal Page:Hosted by Grant Oliphant.
Grant Oliphant:Co hosted by Crystal Page.
Crystal Page:Co produced by Crystal Page and Adam Greenfield.
Grant Oliphant:Engineered by Adam Greenfield.
Crystal Page:Production coordination by Tess Karesky
Grant Oliphant:Video production by Edgar Ontiveros Medina.
Crystal Page:Special thanks to the Prebys Foundation team.
Grant Oliphant:The Stop and Talk theme song was created by San Diego's own mister lyrical group.
Crystal Page:Download episodes at your favorite podcatcher or visit us at Prebis FDN dot org.
