Dante Interview Audio

Dante Cheney, Director of the American Communities Project at Michigan State University and a data journalist with the Wall Street Journal, discusses his work and the divisiveness in America. The American Communities Project categorizes counties into 15 different types of places based on demographics and geography. Cheney explains that people in different places see reality in very different ways, and this is due to factors such as migration patterns, the internet, and targeted marketing. He acknowledges that bridging the divides is difficult and will require a lot of work. Cheney also discusses the changes in political reporting over the years, highlighting the impact of Donald Trump and the rise of social media, which has made politics a much angrier space. All right. So, thank you for joining me, Dante. If you could just introduce yourself here. I am Dante Cheney. I'm Director of the American Communities Project at Michigan State University and a data journalist with the Wall Street Journal. Good. Thank you. So, my first question I have for you today is, I know that you're a political journalist and you specialize in data and everything of the sort. Can you talk a little bit about some of the work that you've done before? Yeah. Well, a lot of the work I've done, I've worked with the Wall Street Journal doing kind of data and politics reporting, kind of focusing on demographics a little bit and geography, which kind of ties into the work I do with the American Communities Project, you know, roughly working along the same lines. And I worked for a while with Meet the Press and I did the data download segment back when they did that with Chuck Todd for, I guess, like six, seven years, something like that. That just ended last fall before last, so fall of 2023. Awesome. Cool. Cool. And that kind of ties into my next question here, actually, is what kind of work does the American Communities Project do? Tell me a little bit about that. Well, the idea behind the American Communities Project is the idea that where you live and the people you come in contact every day and your lived experience has a lot to do with how you see the world. And to do it, we worked with Matt Grossman, actually, at Michigan State to create the newest version of the typology, which is at the county level, there's about 3,100 counties in the United States, and we break them into 15 different types of place. So everything from big cities and urban suburbs and exurbs to really rural places like what we call aging farmlands, working class country, rural middle America. And, you know, when you go to the sites of the projects, you can see the map that shows you all the counties in the country color-coded with the type that they're in. But really what it is is a way to kind of look at any kind of data, so anything from unemployment numbers to median household income to election results, and get a kind of different sense of how people in different places, different kinds of places, see a wide range of issues, everything from politics to culture to economics. Okay. And when I was doing my own little bit of research on the work you do with the American Communities Project, I noticed one part it mentioned was kind of finding that divisiveness in America and finding ways to bridge that divisiveness. Can you talk a little bit about that too? Yeah. So we currently are operating under a three-year grant with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that's aimed at kind of understanding what we call American fragmentation. So the idea that increasingly there's never, to be clear, there's never really been one real lived experience in America. It's always depended on where you live. But increasingly people in different kinds of places see reality in very, very different ways. There's a whole bunch of reasons for that. Some of it is about how migration patterns have changed, how we increasingly live near people like us. Some of it is the rise of the Internet and the World Wide Web and the way we kind of process information, the information, the news sites we go to for information. And part of it is marketing, which is really good at kind of taking people and placing them into boxes and targeting messages to them. I mean, basically, the fragmentation that we see is really it's the result of those things. It's the result of increasingly people moving near people like them. It's the result of the rise of the Internet and the fragmentation of the news media. And the third thing I think really is the way companies, marketing companies have found that. And they're doing their job. Their job is to sell widgets. And they understand that what sells widgets in Detroit might be different than what sells widgets in Grayling. So messages are targeted to different kinds of people. Those three things together really have kind of led to the fragmentation. As for kind of stitching it all back together and bridging the divides, we're looking at that. And there are some things we see in the data because we do big polls with this grant we have from Robert Wood Johnson, big surveys. But it's extremely difficult. Basically, the country is these different places really look more and more like they're moving further and further away from each other. And to kind of imagine how we're going to bridge those divides, it's going to take a lot of work. It's not going to be easy. Absolutely, for sure. That's very interesting, actually. That's very, very cool stuff you're doing there. Thanks. And doing a little bit of research on you as well, I noticed you work at the Wall Street. You do reporting for the Wall Street Journal. You've done work for Meet the Press. And like you mentioned, you worked with Chuck Todd before. So tell me a little bit about your background as a journalist, how you got started, kind of how you over the years have grown into where you're at now. So I started actually there. I started at Michigan State many, many, many years ago now. I worked at the State News. I was a journalism and history major. I was a dual major in journalism and history. I worked for the Capital News Service and learned to cover the state capital there and graduated. I came out in kind of the recession of the early 90s, bounced around internships. I interned up in Bay City and then in Grand Rapids, and then I got an internship out here in Washington, D.C., and then I never really came home. I worked a newsletter out here, kind of covering Congress and things like that. I hooked on with Newsweek, so I went up to New York for three years, worked in the research department and helped work with graphics research and helped write graphics and build graphics, kind of got me in a little bit more data. Met my wife. We came back to D.C. I've been here really since 97. I started just freelancing and working for the Pew, what was it at the time, the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism. I guess later it just became the Pew Journalism Project. I wrote for the Christian Science Monitor. I was a political columnist for them for a little while. Then I came up with this idea for the American Communities Project, which was originally called Patchwork Nation back in 2008. Really, since 2008, I've worked with PBS and I've worked with the News Hour. I've worked at the Christian Science Monitor. I've worked at Wall Street Journal, and I've run this project. But really, what's behind all the work that I do is really kind of the misunderstanding of the country being broken into different kinds of places, different kinds of communities that see the world differently. A lot of times I do political reporting, just straight political reporting. But even behind that, there really is kind of this base of how I see the country being split into these different kinds of places that kind of, I think, separates some of the work that I do from other people. Absolutely, and kind of pivoting in that direction a little bit there, kind of this, you know, re-election and everything, and just a renewal climate here. My first question is, how has political reporting changed over the years, especially with, you know, the past 12 years and just how, you know, with COVID and a lot of, like, you know, we've talked about the divisiveness. How has that changed over the years? Well, I mean, since I started like a million years ago, it's a radically different enterprise. It's just completely different. The newsrooms have gotten smaller. When I first started doing this, the Internet wasn't really even a thing. When I first got the newsweek in 1994, we didn't have e-mail addresses, which is kind of hard to believe. But, like, none of that existed. So that's all changed dramatically. But, like, the way that politics has changed, in particular in political coverage, since 2012, you know, Donald Trump really kind of reshuffled the deck in American politics. There was kind of this slow transformation happening in politics where there was a switch with culture-educated voters moving from being Republican to Democratic. That should have been going on for about 20, 20, I guess, really, this whole century, since the turn of the century. But he accelerated all that. I think the movement of the two parties, like, in terms of class and education, accelerated under Trump, and it's changed politics dramatically. I mean, like, even in 2012, the thing that's curious about is things Republicans stood for in 2012 they don't stand for anymore. Republicans were the free trade party. They don't really believe in that very much anymore. I mean, I guess they're still the low-tax party, but, I mean, everybody's really for low taxes in one way or another. It's just a funner way to frame it. And then the Democrats, I would say, you know, they have moved away a little bit from their working-class roots, and they have really become much more of this. They had this divide between kind of whites with a college degree and then a lot of, you know, black voters, Latino voters that don't have college degrees. So that's changing. I mean, as for the climate around it, it's become, and this is, you know, this I think has a lot to do with the rise of social media, but, like, it's just become it's a much angrier space. I mean, when you write anything now, people, even before reading the story, they'll send you a headline and send you, you know, a missive, an email about what a terrible person you are sometimes, and you can tell they haven't read the story. Sometimes you can respond, like, have you even read this? And sometimes they'll say no. So politics has just become a much angrier space. I mean, it really is, you know, this thing that's motivating, I think, a lot of Trump voters now in particular about, like, you know, we need everything changed. We've got to throw things out. We've got to do things differently. You know, that kind of feeling makes things tense, because like a lot of what Trump voters are calling for is throwing out, you know, basically overturning the system. I think they feel fine saying that. But I'm not sure all the people that they elect believe that. So it's just become a very, very, politics has become a very, very strange space, It's a much more, it's a much more visceral, angry space. And thankfully, I don't have to do as much of that. I don't spend a lot of time talking to elected representatives, which I'm, again, I'm very thankful for. But, you know, you go out and you talk to voters, which is what I do, and try to understand what's happening in the country, and you can really feel it. You can really feel the political divides when you try to talk to different people in different places, and even the skepticism they look at you with, if you say you're with the media, or if you're, you know, the American Communities Project is based at Michigan State, if I say it's involved with the university. There are some places where you'll get, you know, looks from people. So it's, you know, it's a very, it's changed a lot. The environment has changed a lot. And I'm not really sure where it's going yet, but it's definitely changed a lot. Yeah, I've definitely noticed a lot of that, even in my own personal kind of small-time reporting. I, you know, have done, like, a couple election story assignments these past couple months here, and I've noticed that a lot, where it's very skepticism from people, and you're talking to folks in different groups. And you have people that love to, you know, explain what they're passionate about. You've got other people that are just very weary of what you're asking. You know, it's very, very interesting, honestly. Yeah, I mean, I've been talking to voters for a long time. This last year, no, before the election, it was the hardest it's been to talk to people in kind of rural communities. I mean, maybe, again, it's like you say you're a journalist or you say you're from a university. It's never been harder to get people to open up, and that's, you know, it's disappointing, because their job is to try to understand voters. And when you understand voters, they have to talk to you. If they don't talk to you, it makes the job a lot harder. Right, for sure. I guess that actually answered my next question that I was going to ask. But actually, kind of reword the question a little bit here. Is there any, with a lot of the stuff that we're talking about Donald Trump and, you know, a lot of anti-Media sentiment, is there a lot of fear with reporting, especially on hot topic issues like this, fear for your own personal safety or just kind of just that whole attitude going around? So, I haven't had that. I know that some, I mean, look, I have some things going for me. I mean, in terms of feeling, you know, I'm not a huge guy, but I'm an average-sized guy. I'm a man. I, you know, I'm basically an old white guy with gray hair. So, that makes me less threatening, I think, to some people. But I do know that, like, some younger voters, I think, or some young journalists, have had some challenges, I think, trying to talk to people and felt nervous. It's really hard to get over that. You really, I mean, if you're doing this work, you really have to. I mean, the goal is to understand people. To understand people, you have to talk to people. To talk to people, you really do have to get out there. And that's hard. And I understand it's hard. Some places, it's much harder than others. But, you know, just the idea of being able to get over that fear and connect with people as human beings is just crucial because you've got to be able to talk to people as people and not just interview subjects. And if you do that, I think you can get past it. But it is, like, I wouldn't say fear, but, like, for me, it really is a sense of frustration sometimes. And I've had a couple of reporting trips, but one in particular this last year where I came back from it, and I was just like, jeez, I've never had this kind of trouble getting people to open up before. It's just really difficult. I've generally been – it's not been hard. In my career, I am a personable enough person where I generally don't have a terrible time talking to people, but I've never had anything like this year. It's just been – it's been very difficult. Yeah, it's definitely been very challenging. And I remember when I worked with – when I did Jeremy Field's class, visual reporting, and I interviewed a bunch of people, and everyone was just like, dude, leave me alone, blah, blah, blah, all this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, man, how do you do this? And he's like, you have to have a thick skin because there's people that don't want to talk to you, and you just have to take it and move on to the next person, you know. And that helped me kind of rethink it a little bit where it's like, okay, maybe if I just had a thicker skin where there's people that just don't want to talk to you, no matter how nice you are, how personable, whatever, there's people that just won't want to talk to you. The next person might be a full open book, you know. So those personal experiences will definitely have that, where it's just like, yeah, you just have to have a thick skin with it, and it is what it is when it happens. Yeah, and there is this thing I think sometimes, like, you don't get into this field – I mean, I remember the first Trump administration, there were all these things, like, people would say, like, it's just nice – people are thanking me for being a journalist, and like, I mean, I guess it's always nice to have somebody thank you for doing what you do, but, like, you don't get into this line of work because you want to be liked, okay? Like, I mean, you can't – that doesn't mean you're going to deliberately be a jerk. Like, your job is not to be the, you know, the asshole reporter who just bothers people, but, like, your job is to tell a story, and sometimes the story you tell about a topic, a lot of times, is going to make somebody unhappy, right? Not everybody, but, like, there are two sides, often way more than two sides to a lot of stories, and the story you tell may make people unhappy, and that's part of the job. It doesn't mean you go looking for it. It doesn't mean you go looking for it, but, like, you can't run from it, and you can't be afraid of, like, people not liking you. Absolutely, and that's definitely the biggest thing to take away from that, you know, you're not always going to be liked because that's not what you're looking for. Right. That's so true. That is so true. I mean, your first duty is to the truth, right? Your first duty is to do is not, like, you're going to find out everything, but get as close as you can to the truth or learn as much of the truth as you possibly can, and that's, like, your real mission, and then if you make friends along the way, it's good, and you will. I mean, everybody makes some friends along the way, right? Like, even sometimes people, if you write a story, they're not happy with it. If you treat it right, and, you know, if you treat them right and you treat the topic fairly, you come back, you know, a lot of times they can still end up being your friend. I mean, and, like, I respect you for the job you do. It's more important, I think, when you do the work to have people's respect than to have their love. Absolutely. Absolutely. I've definitely had that before. I've had a couple of people I've interviewed, and they're always like, man, you can call me anytime. I'll always be a source for you. And I'm just like, oh, okay. Like, it's just, you know, and I've had a couple of people that I've become really good friends with after the interview. It's just like not part of the job, but it's a cool little perk to have, you know? Yeah, yeah. That's what I love about it. So kind of pivoting out of the election political area a little bit, with AI on the rise here, how do you feel that that's going to affect the job, and will it take away a journalist's job, do you think? I mean, it'll probably take away some jobs. Look, some journalism is fairly formulaic. I mean, some journalism is, look, you know, interest rates. Like, you know, there's an announcement about what, particularly for, like, economic reporting, sports reporting. There are some things that can be very, like, you know, at some point the unemployment numbers come out. You can, you know, you can write, even before they could do this, they could basically write code and just have it pop in what the numbers are. You know, the rate was this, it went to this, it went up, it went down. Like, or even in sports, they pioneered some stuff I know with, like, sports reporting where it's, you know, so-and-so beat so-and-so by this score to this score, so-and-so led the way with so many points. Like, that stuff, I think, is going to be automated. I do think that, like, the real, and I don't even necessarily know if that's bad, because theoretically what that can do, what it should do, or you hope it does, is free up journalists to do the stories that aren't like that, because the stories, frankly, go from the right. I mean, somebody's got to do those stories, and somebody's got to get the information, and somebody's got to tell, you know, somebody's got to tell the people what the unemployment rate is, who won the basketball game, what's happening to interest rates, when the Fed meets, these things are important. But, you know, they're not, those are not fun stories to write. The more interesting, the more fun story to write, it's always digging and trying to understand what's going on. I don't, I mean, who knows, AI, maybe at some point we'll be able to do a really good thoughtful analysis piece, but we're not there yet, and even if AI gets better at doing analysis, or it just knows where to go to pull the proper points in to make analysis, or do analyses, it's, the thing that separates good journalists, or really good journalists, other than scoops, I know everybody likes scoops, and I like scoops too, but like, you know, really the thing that separates, I think, the best journalists from the rest is they have a different kind of perspective, and they bring a different approach to a story, that AI, you know, what AI does, and is very good at doing, is working through a formula. Like, you know, when somebody asks me this, what are they really asking? They're really asking this. I will answer it with this, this, and this. Like, you know, good journalism sometimes is doing the story that nobody else can see, right? And AI may be able to pick out some trends in data, or some trends in different things, but it's not the same as, like, a good, thoughtful, well-written analysis piece that brings a different perspective to something is still something that journalists, I think, are going to own for quite some time. And that's not even about just politics or economics. It can be about sports. It can be about anything. Oh, absolutely. And that's a really good assessment, actually, because we were talking about that last night, I'm in Tracy's Journalism 300 class, and we were talking about that with a truth-referenced reporter who came, Paul Eden, I think his name is. We asked him about it, and sort of had a similar idea there. Like you said, though, which is really good, it's like, you know, certain numbers, certain stories that do involve just, like, those numbers and generating those, that's where AI can take over. It's perfect. Like you said, like what Tracy was saying, too, it's like there's a human aspect that will be lost, that AI can't do it no matter what, you know. It's like those relationships we were talking about with people where it's like, you know, talking from person to person and all of these things where it's like AI can't replicate that, you know, and that's what can never be replaced with our jobs like that. So I think that's a very good thing to remember with all the stories that we have, because a lot of young people are all thinking the same way. I've taken the right degree and blah, blah, blah, and it's like, I think we're good, guys. I think there's a lot that AI just can't do, you know. Yeah, and the other way to think about it is like all AI, like AI, you know, AI is not thinking. AI is working off of a bunch of other things that people have written. And, again, for formulaic stories, it's like, you know, A, B, C, D, E, just write the story, right. They're back to A, it's very standard. But, like, you know, AI can't really think. It can mimic thinking, but it can't really think. So AI can't really, AI can't create new things. It can work through past things and try to reconnect them. Somebody would say, well, that's all the human mind does, too. It's like maybe, but every individual human being comes to a subject with a different set of experiences and crowns and knowledge, and it leads them to see things slightly differently from each other. And, like, maybe that's where the real strength is going to be going forward. I mean, I will say for journalists going forward, for young journalists, the key is going to be, I think, to be entrepreneurial and to be open, like the media environment is changing so fast. Maybe at some point it will slow down, but it's not there yet. The idea of being entrepreneurial and thinking outside of the box and being willing to try something new and acquire skills and knowledge, those are the people I think are going to do well. Absolutely. I totally agree with that. I like that. That's a very optimistic outlook. I feel like I've gotten a lot of outlooks where it's like, no, just give it up, man. There's no hope. It's just kind of like, no, that can't be the direction. We can't allow that. There's got to be more than that. Yeah, and there will always be room for people who have different ways of looking at things and skill and ability to do something different, always, always, and not just scoops, which is just getting something first, right? There's going to be room for that out there. Absolutely, 100%. My next one here, do you have any concerns for the future of media and especially freedom of press here with the current direction, especially with the recent election and the divisiveness getting a little bit stronger here in the past few weeks? Do you have any concerns with that going forward in the future? I think you always have to have concerns. I think you always have to have concerns. I mean, you have to be worried about where it's moving because the landscape is changing so fast and, like, you're not sure where it's headed. But, like, freedom of the press, I mean, I'm a little worried about self-censorship. I mean, there's all this talk about the Washington Post didn't do an endorsement this year. And I'm not saying that I don't think endorsements are, like, this huge thing. I think their meaning is overstated. I think most people, you know, like, I think we all agree the Washington Post is going to endorse. They just didn't do it, but we all knew. But that wasn't what bothered me. What bothered me was they did it two weeks before the election, which just, like, well, we'd always been planning to do this. It's, like, really? That's pretty odd, then, that you wait until two days, you know, two weeks before the election to tell everybody about it. So the idea, the thing that concerns me a little bit is self-censorship. I think there's concern that political leaders, I mean, particularly, I mean, you know, the Donald Trump rant thing is going to be people's retribution. I mean, he clearly is trying to settle scores. So I think there's a lot of concern among people who run news organizations, in particular, about not wanting to get on the wrong side of the Trump administration. But, you know, I think some of those concerns have always been there. I think the bigger concerns I have about the future in journalism are just models for making money. That's the bigger challenge for me. Like, how are we going to basically survive in a time, like, so much of, like, you know, news organizations and news divisions of television and, like, God even knows, like, what's happening on social media and what's happening over the web. You know, a lot of these places are chasing money, and they should. I mean, look, profit's important. Capitalism is what, capitalism has some drawbacks, but ultimately it has a lot of pluses. But one real drawback is, frankly, the desire for profit above all else. And that does concern me. Yeah, absolutely. And one thing, too, like I've noticed as well is, and especially this is more towards, like, the 2020 era, a lot of people were more interested in things like Twitch streaming and stuff, which I do think is an interesting area to kind of expand journalism. And I know, I can't remember his name, but one of the Ph.D. students did an article. He wrote a whole, like, a whole op-ed basically about Twitch streaming and how it's like a different form of journalistic reporting. And one thing I've noticed, and this is way more anecdotal than more factual or, you know, data-driven, but I've noticed that a lot, like, Twitch streams create, like, echo chambers. A lot of, like, that social media reporting has created, like, it's very obvious where they lead, sort of. And that's always been something, like, I've been taught, especially here at MSU. It's like, you know, your political leanings never get in the way of your reporting. It's always about getting to the facts, the truth, but, you know, the whole nine yards. So that's something I'm curious about, if you've noticed anything with your research about that, where it's a lot of social media creating those echo chambers. Oh, yeah. I mean, it definitely does. I mean, that's a real problem with social media. Look, social media is designed, well, it's designed to do a couple things. Some social media is designed to elicit reactions and create, is designed to elicit reactions and create, raise your, you know, raise your ire, get you angry, make you respond, so create interactions in that way. The other way is you go someplace because you feel comfortable there. And why are you comfortable? It's because you agree with people. And if everybody, you know, if everybody agrees, I mean, it's, you know, it's nice to live in a world where everybody agrees with you, but that's not the reality. And it can be problematic. Like, if you're just getting news, like, for instance, like, this thing that's happening, if everybody leaving X or Twitter, and I agree, Twitter has really become a mess. Like, the ads are just out of control at this point. I get served stuff, like, why am I getting this? Like, I'm not following this person. I, way too much. And, you know, so that's not good. So everybody's going to Blue Sky, and Blue Sky is very much for people on the left, right? Well, I think that's good, and I want them to be comfortable. And I don't just, you know, I don't dislike Blue Sky. I have a Blue Sky account. But now I basically react to Twitter and Blue Sky because I need to make sure that I'm trying to read everything. Like, in the world of social media, as the way it's constructed today, the only way you're going to get lots of different points of view is by actively seeking out lots of different points of view. And people tend to not seek out things that they don't agree with. You don't seek out things that you don't like. And everything becomes an echo chamber. It becomes very difficult to, you know, reality can be a slippery thing. And I think it's really hard to have a balanced kind of view where you're getting people who agree with you, people who disagree with you, people who make arguments for different ways of looking at things the way that social media is constructed right now. And it's a real challenge. And, frankly, it's something we have to figure out because even all the stuff that we're doing with the American Communities Project, the point of that work is to explain to Americans what America really is, which I know sounds weird. But, like, it's Americans that don't – they know the immediate place they live in and they know their friends and they know the stuff they like to read and the stuff they like to do, but they don't know a lot outside their lived experience. And that's a real problem. And social media is just making it worse because it's just siloing you with people like you. And that's not going to help understanding. And it doesn't mean – look, it doesn't mean you have to agree with people. It's really important that people understand this. Like, you shouldn't read things because you think they're going to sway you one way or the other, but you at least need to understand where people are coming from or at least try to, right? And if you don't, the United States kind of needs that or it doesn't really work. Absolutely. And it's interesting you mention that, too. In my own mindset, especially as a future journalist and in my, you know, very rookie era I'm in right now, I noticed after the election, you know, a lot of people I talk to, if anybody votes for Trump, I'm blocking them and I don't ever want to speak to them again. And there's just a lot of these attitudes where I'm like, that's not going to help anything. It's not going to improve where we're at. And, you know, I tried to talk to a lot of people that were just absolutely jumping with joy over Trump winning. And it was nice because I felt like we were bridging together, where it's like I'm talking to this person, trying to understand where they're coming from. And when you do that, I see a lot of people get interested in where I come from personally, what I might think or feel. And after these conversations, it's more like we both understand each other better. And it's like we don't hate each other after doing this. And that's something I'm really curious about, is something what young journalists could do to help bridge that gap a little bit, you know, where, you know, journalists are supposed to be objective. Obviously, they're not supposed to read one way or another. But, you know, that's something I'm curious if you have any insight on, is what we could do as young journalists to kind of help bridge that gap between people. Well, the one thing that you're really right about is you cannot just start blocking people. And I understand the desire to block people. Like I follow a lot of things that I like and a lot of things I don't like, especially on X or Twitter or whatever the hell we're calling it now. And, you know, I have to stop myself sometimes from hitting like do not follow or block or whatever. Look, if somebody is getting in and like harassing you, yeah, block them because none of us need that. But like in terms of just in terms of reading things you don't agree with, you kind of especially if you're going to do journalism, you really need that. But I think all of Americans, all Americans could do better with it. But I think that journalists in particular need to do it. So the one thing I would say is like when you feel yourself hitting the block button or you're going to stop following people, stop. Maybe the answer is you just need to spend less time on social media. Like maybe you need to stop. But the idea of just like I'm going to block out these things I don't like is like as a journalist, you can't do that. You've got to read and watch and listen to things you don't like sometimes because that's part of the job, you know. Your job is to understand, especially in politics, your job is to understand everybody, not just the people you agree with. And that's an important part of the job. Absolutely. And that's a good point that you make. When you feel you want to hit that block button, it's like you've got to stop yourself and just think like, okay, is this, like you said, if you're being harassed or just treated very poorly, obviously that's the route to go there. But it's like you've got to ask yourself, are you just feeling a little emotional here or are we feeling logical, you know. Right, right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's the big thing to think about because I've definitely had my points on social media where I might, you know, talk about something and, you know, speak about it and somebody might say something about me personally or whatever. I've got to stop and be like, all right, is this person assaulting me because they disagree with me or are they assaulting me because they just feel like picking on someone today, you know. It's like I just have to think about that a little bit harder. I mean, if they're responding to something you wrote, that's one thing. I mean, you know, when you write something you're going to get some responses and people are going to say some things, that's okay. I would say, like, if you write something and you get some responses and you're like, yeah, I don't really like that, and then like days later the same person keeps jumping in, at some point I would be like, all right, dude, no, this is not what I'm here for, and I'd block that person. I'm not here to get harassed. But, like, when I write something, if somebody has something they need to say to me, they should feel free to say it and I should say something, you know. Generally I say, like, you know, thanks for reading. I'm interested in hearing your point of view. I mean, I get emails from people about stuff I write a lot, and I almost always, well, I always try to respond. I mean, maybe if they're really off the wall I don't, but, like, I usually try to respond, and, like, I respond politely. I don't get in an argument with them. I do sometimes ask, like, they'll say something, I'm like, I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're referring to or something like that, but I don't, like, how dare you, and, like, engage in, like, a fight with them. The whole point for you as a journalist, this isn't true for everybody, for you as a journalist, the point is trying to understand the other side of where your views are as much as you possibly can, and even to try to understand people you don't agree with. I mean, a lot of journalists, the older you get, you sit in the middle because you start to see things from both sides a little more just because you do it. You do so much of the job. And, like, the idea of whoever says something to you trying to understand where they're coming from I think is really important. Definitely, definitely. And I've had those moments, too, where I've, you know, have heard people say stuff that other people say, like, oh, my God, they're a horrible person for saying that. It's like, you know, I sit there and I'm kind of like, why do you think that? And if you can bridge that gap with that person and have them understand, you can kind of really figure out where that person is coming from. It's like, sure, what they're saying might be really bad, and it might be kind of like, well, dude, do you know what you're saying? But if you really get down to it, it's kind of like, I understand where, I understand how you're getting to that point. It might not be something I necessarily, you know, agree with or whatever, but I understand where that's coming from. And I think that's something that's really missing with a lot of our current climate right now. It's just not really getting to the root of why people say these things. Yeah, I mean, I will say sometimes you can do that and you try to engage and it just doesn't go anywhere, and after a while you just have to cut your loss and say, like, okay, I tried. Absolutely. You know, but, like, the idea of, I think, trying is important, right? That's the most important thing. Yes, 100%. So for my last question I got for you here, Dante, basically, what important pieces of advice would you have for younger journalists starting out, just broadly speaking, sort of? Well, I mean, I hate using catchwords and phrases like a growth mindset, but, like, you really do have to go into this profession with a growth mindset. Don't think you know where you're going to go, especially, geez, the way the environment is now, the way the news environment is now. It's okay to have ideas about, like, I think I want to do this and I think I want to do that, but, like, understand that all plans, like, you guys are young. All plans are subject to change, right? So don't think I need to be doing this by this time and I need to be doing that by that time because you may end up, you take a job and then you get a different assignment on a job, you get a different set of responsibilities. You're like, well, I really kind of like this now and I think I'm going to go off in this direction. So the idea of, like, it's okay to have goals, but keep yourself open, acquire as many skills as you can, and if you really like the work, just find a way to do the work. Don't worry about image or prestige or stuff like that. Do the stuff that you like to do and the stuff that you care about because, like, you know, this is your job. I mean, try to find a way, like, we're all working so much now and in journalism too, but, like, you've got to like what you're doing. It can't be something where it's – it can't be something – you can do something for a while with the idea of my goal is to get here so I've got to suck it up and do this thing for a while. We all have to do that. That's part of being young in any field, right? But, like, you know, the most important thing is don't get so – don't get sucked into thinking that, like, what you think your dreams are at 19 or 20 or 21 or 22 is the way you're going to think about things at 30 or 35 or 40. Like, life goes on. The profession changes. You change. And you've got to kind of make sure you keep your mind open. I mean, flexibility is just the most important thing of all. Not flexibility in terms of ethics or how you do your job, but, I mean, if you're doing it well or not, but flexibility just in terms of what you think the job is going to look like. Just allow yourself some ability to kind of go with the flow. Excellent. That's great advice, honestly. I'm 28 years old, and even at my age now, I'm like, that's true. I mean, I never thought I'd be doing this when I was younger. Well, this didn't exist. I mean, like, that's what I mean. And you just find out – I ended up being a very different kind of journalist than I thought I was going to be when I was young. You know, I'm still young. I've still got a lot of time left. I hope. And, like, I think that – I think I know what I'm going to do, but I don't know. I'm open to different – I'm always open to different ideas. Yeah, things will always change down the road. Yeah. When I was younger, I was like, I'm going to be a Hunter S. Thompson kind of journalist, and now I've got – Yeah, well, that way they're young. I want to be a law school. I want to be a legal analyst and be a journalist in that regard. Yeah, things change. Things change. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you learn more about the field, too. Like, what you think about the field changes. What you know about the field changes what you think about the field, and then the field is going to change itself, and there may be jobs you haven't thought of yet, and, like, it's just keep yourself open. Keep yourself open. For sure. Well, Dustin, I really appreciate your time today, my friend. Thank you so much for all your insight. Really, really good to have you here. I'm happy to help, and good luck on the assignment. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay. I will talk to you later. If you ever – by the way, I do, like, come to campus. I'll be there. I'll be there in the first week of December. If you ever want to get together and get a cup of coffee, please. Always feel free to drop by the office. Oh, for sure. I will do that, actually. Yeah. Thank you, Dante. Cool. All right. Thank you, Ben. Good luck. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. Have a good rest of your day, my friend. You too.