Reflections on mixed success in 25 years of nurturing trust

Today, forgive me some self-indulgence. But significant anniversaries do deserve acknowledgment, no?

In June 1999, I served a variety of newsroom functions at the Daily Herald under the title of administrative editor when John Lampinen, then-managing editor and my direct supervisor, asked me to take on an additional assignment.

We were aware of growing concerns in the public involving trust and news media. John wanted to do things to address those concerns as they applied to the Daily Herald, and among his ideas was a weekly column in which a senior editor could make a personal connection with readers and discuss our news decision process, our practices for separating pure information from opinion, our policies and practices when dealing with complex subjects or sensitive stories and any other topics that might be useful to generate conversations and help people get to know us better. He asked me to take it on.

On July 15 of that year, I published my first “Letter to Readers” column, expressing a twofold goal of striving to understand you and your interests better and to “help you understand us better and, in understanding us, trust us more.”

Looking back on that objective 25 years later — the anniversary of that first column having passed last Monday — I must acknowledge a mixture of sometimes conflicting feelings. I’m humbled and grateful to have been able to share stories and ideas about our business for so long. I like to think that the relationship between a newspaper, especially a locally focused one like the Daily Herald, and its readers is not just a commercial proposition, not just the “make money” portion of our founder Hosea Paddock’s three-pronged description of our mission, but also a kind of friendship, a shared love of our community and our world. A commitment to working together to constantly improve the quality of life for all of us, whatever our circumstances.

I hope the past 25 years of this letter have helped foster that spirit. I think they have. But no one looking at our world today would honestly suggest that the public’s trust in newspapers or any news media has deepened since 1999. The media landscape has changed so dramatically — the shift to a 24-hour news cycle including broadcast outlets that openly slant descriptions of news events to their own political agendas, the rise of social media outlets and their increased influence in presenting and slanting news, the advent of a United States president, no less, who in the Wild West environment social media has promoted, declares traditional, objectivity-oriented media “enemies of the people.”

Amid such reflections, I can’t help but think my contributions in the interest of trust have had little impact.

Though I do take some comfort in considering what might happen if newspapers like the Daily Herald didn’t at least try to make these efforts. I can’t speak for or, for goodness sakes, hope to enlarge the entire media landscape with my little reflections. But I do see connections we’ve made at the Daily Herald even with some of our severest critics, not just through this column but also through surveys we’ve conducted, through our Pulling Back the Curtain project and through many ways other editors reach out from time to time to speak to you directly about our work. I do sense that Daily Herald readers in general sense that we take to heart those other portions of Hosea’s motto and at least try “to fear God” and “tell the truth.”

So, I admit some feeling of celebration in having reached the 25-year mark with this column, a milestone that will be recognized with the publication of a collection of the essays that will be published in late August. The book is not so much a “best of” collection as an effort to show how the column has discussed key issues in media, the way we talk to each other and the way the whole process is changing. If you’re interested in such topics or have followed these “Letters to Readers,” you might look it up from Eckhartz Press next month.

Meanwhile, thank you not just for your indulgence today, but for allowing me to offer my reflections for the past quarter century. Whether you agree or disagree with me, even if you don’t totally trust me or the ideas I’ve shared, I and the Daily Herald truly value the unusual friendship we have. And I look forward to it continuing for many years to come — maybe not another 25 for me personally, of course, and maybe in new and unimagined forms, but always there and always valuable.

• Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is managing editor for opinion at the Daily Herald. Follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jim.slusher1 and on X at @JimSlusher. His new book “To Nudge The World: Conversation, Community and the Role of the Local Newspaper” is available for pre-order from Eckhartz Press at eckhartzpress.com.