Bridging Misinformation Gaps with Local Journalism

Quinn: [00:00:00] What's the missing link in local journalism? That's today's big question, and my guest is Lyndsey Gilpin. Lyndsey is the Senior Manager of Community Engagement at Grist. Lyndsey was the founder and executive editor at Southerly, a nonprofit media organization that equipped people who face environmental injustices and are at most at risk of climate change effects with journalism and resources on natural disasters, pollution, food, energy, and more.

It was very groundbreaking, and now she's brought that to Grist. Lyndsey was recently a John S. Knight Community Impact Fellow at Stanford University, focusing on information access in rural southern communities of color, where she is from, based in Louisville. And Lyndsey's work has appeared in Harper's, Vice, The Daily Beast, City Lab, Undark, High Country News, The Washington Post, Hakai, The Atlantic, Grist, [00:01:00] Outside, Inside Climate News, you name it, she's got the credentials.

And in an age of mass dis and misinformation it's more important than ever that we not only fund journalism and obviously read it, but local journalism and journalists and publishers, editors, photographers, documenters, and more that are of the communities they are based in, who have and continue to build, intentionally, trust in an ongoing two way conversation to help those people get that information to connect the last mile and make sure it goes back and forth.

Welcome to Important, Not Important. My name is Quinn Emmett, and this is science for people who give a shit. In these weekly conversations with incredible humans like Lyndsey, I take a deep dive with someone who's working [00:02:00] on the front lines of the future to constructively build a radically better today and tomorrow.

Our goal, as always, is to help you answer the question, what can I do?

Let's go talk to Lyndsey.

Lyndsey, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining me.

Lyndsey Gilpin: Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Quinn: For sure. The last time I was in Louisville was 18, it was 2009 for the Derby and we lost my brother for 24 hours. It was great. It was great.

Lyndsey Gilpin: That's sounds like a Derby experience. We’ve all had it.

Quinn: My uncle, who loves us very much, was like, It's fine. He'll find his way home. Let's go. So, yeah, he's fine. He's alive. So, good town. Good town, good times.

Lyndsey Gilpin: It's changed a lot since then. You should come back. It's there's so much more food and obviously they like love the bourbon tourism thing. So that's the big thing now.

Quinn: Yeah. People are on that. We're still doing the [00:03:00] colonial thing. We also have better food than when I was growing up here. But yeah, you know, you lean on what got you there. I get it.

Lyndsey Gilpin: Exactly.

Quinn: So Lyndsey, I mentioned offline a little bit before we dive into this. A lot of folks that listen to this are people who are already doing something incredible.

They could be, you know, a legislator or policy maker of some sort, or they could be a third grade teacher or run a college endowment. Who knows? But they're always inspired by and look to folks who are, as we describe it, on the front lines of the future doing the thing. So, I have a two part question for you. I guess it's one question with two parts. Anyways, this is going great, and it's basically, Why do you have to do this job? And the first part is why do you in particular have to do this job, like of all the people in the world, why does this have to be you? And the second part is why do you have to do this specific work of everything you could have done and could [00:04:00] do why this? Let's do this.

Lyndsey Gilpin: Yeah. Okay. All right. I'm going to answer it backwards because I think it's easier to answer the second part first. So I do community engagement at a journalism or an media organization that covers environmental justice issues nationally. And I came at the community engagement, which I can talk about, is a very buzzy term that a lot of your listeners have probably heard. I came at that from journalism. I was a reporter and an editor for over a decade. You know, I did the investigative work. focused on environmental issues pretty much the whole time, but I, you know, I did a lot of investigations.

I did long form journalism. You know, I had my dream of like, when I was younger and moving to New York and you know, breaking into the, you know, the classic what they tell you that the only way you can succeed in writing is go be a nobody in New York for a while. Luckily, very quickly, I was like, screw that.

I don't want to do that. [00:05:00] But I've done a lot of different types of reporting and, you know, chasing the story and trying to figure out how to get journalism to people and amplify the voices that aren't amplified enough in our society and in our communities. And I actually came at this particular version of journalism through starting my own magazine, which I ran for five years.

It was called Southerly. I launched it right after the 2016 election. I was out West and I was really frustrated with the way the media was covering the South. And I moved home to Louisville and I was like, all right, I'm just going to start freelancing on the side and seeing if people would be interested in more journalism about environmental justice in the South and communities that are underrepresented and often presented as a monolith in this region.

And through that sort of being able to manage my own publication, I really wanted to make sure that the ethos was always very authentic and trying [00:06:00] to make sure that the voices that are often left out of the conversation are able to be represented and people have the opportunity to be part of the journalism process.

So we held a lot of community events, panel discussions, listening sessions, like ways to get people involved in journalism and understand what journalism is before the story ran, before you know, instead of just coming into their community and telling a story and leaving, we just like really followed up a lot and focused specifically on rural communities, low wealth communities of color.

And it was, you know, it was a small scrappy thing and I was running it mostly by myself. I had some help sort of over the years, like contract workers and people who really made sure I could keep it going. But in the end, I was like, this is exhausting. I had a baby. I was like, I can't have two babies here.

So, you know, it's just, it's a lot. But through that work I became more and more disillusioned with the way journalism in general works. Often, you know, a [00:07:00] national magazine or newspaper goes into a place, writes a story, leaves, already has it written in their head what's going to be the story.

This is very much the case in environmental crises after hurricanes like we have just seen. And after chemical spills or oil spills or whatever it may be. And particularly around climate change issues, like very much focuses on whether or not people believe in climate change rather than like, how do we get people engaged on that issue and meet them where they're at?

And this community engagement sort of, like sector of journalism that was kind of becoming more popular over the last few years is like, how do we meet people where they're at? How do we make sure that the information gets to them in a way that makes the most sense, whether that's print or audio or video or canvassing door to door or equipping them to do that journalism themselves.

And so that is the part that I fell in love with. And that is really, when I kind of had this moment, this epiphany, like five years into this where I was like, Oh, I don't want to just write anymore. [00:08:00] Like I want to make sure that the stuff that I'm doing and the stuff that other journalists are doing, like the really good work, is actually being seen by the people who need to see it.

And that to me is much more meaningful and fulfilling than anything I have done before, which, you know, it was not something I thought 10 years ago, but I really love it. So a lot of my work now and the thing that I love most about it is that it's very slow going and one on one and a lot of the impact is very anecdotal.

And it's just like, how do we engage people like one on one or in a room full of their neighbors and community members and friends and talk about the issues that are most important to them. And in doing that, figure out where they need information, what information they need, what misinformation they have in their lives that we can maybe teach them how to correct or identify.

And I think that I am not the only person that does this work. I have learned so much from people all [00:09:00] over the country in journalism and outside of journalism. Organizers do this all the time, right? This is like community organizing, like you host an event and you, yeah, get people talking about an issue that's important to them.

And then you try to figure out how to mobilize them in some way around it. And this is very similar in that mobilizing them around the importance of information access and journalism, which is something that, you know, journalism as an industry has made very inaccessible. So I am definitely not the, you know, like the only person for this job.

I've learned so much about it through other, like mostly hyper local places, mostly people of color doing this work who have been doing this work for a long time. Some ones I could name that maybe like listeners would know, Outlier Media in Detroit does text based, SMS based reporting, Connect to Arizona is a Spanish language outlet in Phoenix and across the border that does WhatsApp messaging.

There's been Documenters, which trains people to go to city meetings and document what [00:10:00] they see and take notes and publish them. There's just so many amazing versions of journalism and getting information out that I have become more and more passionate about over the last few years.

Quinn: I love it.

That was incredible. We're done. That was amazing. That's amazing. I mean, following Grist for so long, and then following your jump into this truly with two feet and going into it, do you have an organizing background of any sort or was it just like hold on?

I don't want to just write it and move on to the next thing.

Lyndsey Gilpin: You know, no, I don't, I have always been very much a journalist. I decided I wanted to be a journalist when I was like 11 years old and never looked another way. Even when everyone was like, yeah, you're not going to make any money. You better find something else. I was like, no, I'm doing this, you know?

And I think the part that sort of separates it from organizing, I think, is that there're so many principles from it that I find through organizing that are very useful. So, again the way we reach people, convening [00:11:00] people, kind of, giving people agency over their stories and their experiences, which I don't think journalism often does.

But it's also keeping that line, which I think, where the journalism background is really useful, is there is a line right that we can't cross like for conflict of interest or making sure that people trust that information and know where it's coming from, which is obviously very difficult in today's age but like journalism historically has been so obsessed with this idea that we have to be objective, which is the white male editors decided, you know, decades and decades ago.

Quinn: Still deciding.

Lyndsey Gilpin: Right? Still deciding. And a lot of news outlets still are like, you can't have a background in something that you're reporting on, or you're too close to the subject matter.

And to me and to a lot of people that I have learned from. is a benefit, right? Especially in organizing, if you are organizing around reproductive freedom and you have dealt with some sort of reproductive injustice whether that's abortion or [00:12:00] teen pregnancy or whatever it might be, like, that is an asset.

You know that issue and you can come to it in a more educated way. And I think the same is with journalism. If you are a Spanish speaker and have dealt with immigration issues and you are a first generation immigrant, like that is an asset. If you're trying to report on those communities, same with people who are enduring, you know, the effects of climate change who are seeing it like on the coasts or in areas that aren't really getting the resources they need to adapt or mitigate climate change effects.

Like they know what's happening and often have ideas that are more creative or more realistic than like the abstract things that I think, like the progressive movement often comes up with. We should all do this. And it's like, well, why don't you ask people on the ground.

Quinn: Yeah, that's great, let's ask him what they need.

Lyndsey Gilpin: Yeah. Yeah. So journalism doesn't often do that. Because it's sort of seen as like, we're asking people too much. Like, we're supposed to tell them what they need. You know, we're supposed to just give them information and [00:13:00] let it go. And that is a disservice to people, I think because you can't just give people like a bunch of stuff and be like figure it out best of luck, you know, and that's not what we're here for.

Quinn: I think also, and I get it, I understand in certain cases, in some cases depending on the topic, in most cases, the need for being objective in some way.

Obviously that can lean way too far in the other direction. You can end up being the mouthpiece for something that doesn't need it or hurts other folks.

But at the same time, I kind of come back to Ed Yong in two places here, who was at the Atlantic and did all the incredible work for years and is a wonderful author. And he just gave a talk recently at the last XOXO conference about. He was like, Hey, this is how I realized I needed to do this. And this is how it broke me. Because, I needed to get too close. And that was really hard. It takes it out of you. And he said at the beginning of the [00:14:00] pandemic, and I did a poor man's version of this, that the pandemic exposed, it was like a flood exposing the cracks in our sidewalk.

Right. And my version was it's a pop quiz on, Hey, here's all the economic and societal choices you made over the past 100 years. Let's see how they go. Not great. But journalism was the same way, which was, and again, we're seeing this with, you know, folks talking about the poor job the New York Times is doing when they refuse to say certain words. The receipts are in a little bit on how that version of journalism has gone which is being afraid to get too close. Being afraid or refusing to hire someone from those communities, if not talk to them, follow up with them. And then, what I love about your work is making sure it gets back to them. Not just write a story and move on and maybe they never see it. You know, if you're writing about farm workers, which is something I've done but in a much less way than you have, how do you then get that to them? What [00:15:00] does that mean philosophically, what does that mean strategically, what does that mean for Grist's budgets?

Who do they need to hire? Who is the best person for that? I remember one of the first conversations I ever had on this show when I had even less of an idea of what I was doing was a gentleman whose name I, of course, completely forget. He's a pastor and he works on climate change from within the evangelical church. And when I asked him, Hey, what can we do to help? He said, just give us money to do our jobs because the messenger actually really matters a lot here. And he's like, you're not the guy. I'm the guy, so just support us and let us do it. But know that the messenger really matters and it really does. And that's why we're, you know, such big fans here of your work and the 19th and Capital B and all those folks that are like, we are of this community too. It's often not just reporting on something and moving along. It’s updates on how this thing is going and how it gives people perspective and helps them make different decisions and get [00:16:00] involved in other ways, like you said, recording City Council meetings or school board meetings or whatever it might be, or even pamphlets. So, yeah, I get it. I get it. I think there's never been a better time for this version of it. Clearly, we need it. The proverbial we and lots of specific communities need it. I want to go back one second, though. You mentioned you wanted to be a journalist since you were 11. Was there something specific that prompted that?

Lyndsey Gilpin: I actually wrote a memoir, or an essay in seventh grade, sixth grade, about my grandmother who I'd never met and this locket that my mom had with her picture in it, which, interestingly enough, my daughter is named after that grandmother. But I wrote it and it appeared in the local newspaper, the Courier Journal in Louisville.

I did not know at the time it was in the kids section. I just thought it was like, yeah, in the paper.

Yeah, but it didn't matter. It didn't matter. It said Kids Ink on it, you know.

But it was printed and I saw my byline and I was like, oh, that is cool.[00:17:00]

Quinn: 100%.

Lyndsey Gilpin: So I think originally it started out as I want to see my name in lights right here, you know, but then it sort of morphed into, Oh, journalism is such an incredible tool to get in like accurate, important information out to the masses in a way that isn't, you know, that's so different from entertainment or other media.

So yeah, I just kept on going from there.

Quinn: I love it. I'm going to ask you a question. Have you, which I know is why you're here. I'm a moron. Have you ever heard of a young, now young woman named Hilde Lysiak?

Lyndsey Gilpin: Yeah.

Quinn: She was a young reporter very similar. She was about eight years old. Her dad was an investigative journalist in sort of New York area and used to take her along to some, you know, conversations and interviews that children don't normally attend, some hard hitting stuff and eventually it broke him a little bit and he said, well, we're going to move back to our small [00:18:00] town and I'm going to write a book and she was like, that's great for you, but I'm a journalist now.

I can't just drop this willy nilly, this is my calling. And they moved to this small town and she almost immediately scooped the local paper on a murder and published it in her blog. And the response from the community was not great. Hey, how dare you come in here, little girl, you know, et cetera, et cetera. But it was correct. She made the news. She ends up getting a book deal. Hillary Clinton writes to her and says keep doing what you're doing, all this stuff. I tell you this story because my wife made a TV show about her life a couple years ago called Home Before Dark. It was on Apple TV.

Lyndsey Gilpin: Maybe that's where I recognize that from. That's so cool.

Quinn: It was, you know, a similar vibe of people being like, one you shouldn't do this for a thousand reasons like there's no 401k involved but two like you're just a little girl like what kind of stories do you tell whether it's in Kids Ink or your adorable little blog,

And be like [00:19:00] there's so many stories to tell. I empathize with it. That was a big part of our life for quite a while.

Lyndsey Gilpin: That's really interesting. Yeah, and I think that one of the things I think is really important about this sort of, this process in journalism is, Grist has had 25 years of this incredible environmental journalism. And still the, you know, the reason they brought me on even and this being sort of like late in the game in terms of how long they've been around, but you know, it's still being so important is that, that process that they were reporting with was still pretty linear.

It was like, okay, we find the story, we give it to the people who read us. And then after that, they do with it what they will. And you know, they have always done incredible and more and more so over the years have really done some amazing more justice focused journalism, reaching people through different events and things like that.

But one of the reasons they brought me on was like, all right, how can we take that a step farther? And, [00:20:00] you know, they often times, and a lot of newsrooms do this, and Grist has been doing an amazing job, is partnering with local news outlets like local radio stations or local nonprofit news that where we share a reporter and we get to get those stories out both you know, in Western North Carolina, Blue Ridge Public Radio is one of our partners, and also in Grist, and show people in California or New York, you know, what is happening from someone who is on the ground, and often have those in two different media, right?

Audio and print. And I like to, you know, that story you just told me reminds me of kind of taking it a step even further, which is equipping people with the means to do journalism themselves. And so that's sort of like the next phase of this work. And I've already done this a couple of times, both at Grist and when I was running Southerly is you know, having a training program to teach people how to identify misinformation, what the ethics are of journalism, how to write and how to take [00:21:00] photos and what it's like to be edited so that when they do post something, even if it's just posting something online or hosting a YouTube show, they have in the back of their minds, like they don't have to necessarily be a journalist or call themselves a journalist, right? Or pitching to the local newspaper, but doing journalism in the way of making sure they're getting accurate information out to people is really important. And a lot of people are doing that anyway. Or if they write an op-ed for their local newspaper, now they have some stuff that they know how to file a public records request or interview. And that, I think, is the most amazing ultimate goal of this work is we can't, with the system that we have in journalism, solve all of the problems that misinformation has caused, right? Like we can't be in every single tiny rural community and like address every single environmental issue all at once.

So what better way to try to do that, right? Than to teach people how to do that and learn from them in the process. And then they can go [00:22:00] to their communities and say Oh, Hey, I went to my church last Sunday and I taught everybody like how to fact check or I've had people say that, right?

Oh, and then I went and I testified at the local like public service commission hearing because I knew that they needed somebody to talk about it from this community or whatever it might be. And I think that is a really amazing way to give people again, like agency over their stories and also give people oftentimes just the confidence they need. They know what they're talking about.

People know what's happening to them. And they might not talk about it in the same way that we do at a national level or like politicians do, but people know way more than we often, especially journalists often give them credit for. And I think that's a super, it's just a really beautiful way to allow people to, you know, share their own stories and be part of the process.

Quinn: Of course, because you can't teach the intimacy they already have with the subject matter, however hyper local about one elementary school or school board or church or town or whatever it might be. And you can't teach the [00:23:00] curiosity, right?

All you can do is help foster it by giving them thes proven tools of the trade that frankly can be extended further than you really used them in a long time. Take a step forward into sort of the pragmatic side of this.

Like you said, someone like, a place like Grist has been around, for quite a while. Chicken and egg, did you come to them and say, Hey listen, I think you could do more of this and I think I'm the person to do it? Or did they come to that first and go hunting for someone like you? And then I would love to get into the sort of working our way back forwards from the farm worker pamphlets you all made, at least. What goes into the discussions, and resources, and budget meetings to make something like this happen? So how did this start?

Lyndsey Gilpin: Yeah, so I knew the folks at Grist for a while since I wrote for them a lot when I was a reporter and when I was ending Southerly, I was like, I want to do this work [00:24:00] still, and it would be great to do it at a place that has more resources than my tiny little publication.

And so I approached a few people there and, you know, talked to them about sort of the goals that Grist had. And as I mentioned, they have a lot of these local news partnerships around the country. And so, a big goal for them was trying to kind of connect the national media and local media and start meeting people where they are, doing more of the like pamphlets or flyers or going to rural places that maybe don't have access to Grist.org all the time. Right. Or don't know about it because of their political leanings or whatever it may be. So they also wanted to kind of move in the direction that I think a lot of journalism outlets are moving into, which is how do we engage people more authentically than just storytelling.

And so, that's sort of how that came about, and I've worked on a few projects. I started in January, and I've worked on a few projects since I've been here. One of them was like a nine month long project in Georgia, which was [00:25:00] on, so there's a lot of misinformation and lack of information around just energy policy and regulation in the state of Georgia.

And so I kind of did this with our radio partner in Atlanta, WABE, we did reporting on the public service commission, which regulates Georgia power. You know, I held a few listening sessions to meet people in their communities and talk about what they wanted to read more of, what stories they thought were missing.

And then use that information to assign those stories, so our reporter and a freelancer got to do those stories like answer those questions that people had. I also held one of the training programs I was talking about. That's what we did in Georgia. We had four people go through this training for six weeks and then they worked on a project around information sharing and journalism in their communities around energy and that is sort of one bucket like these long form projects where I can come in way before any of the like stories are assigned or the reporters actually go out to report on something and at the beginning we can say [00:26:00] like what is the main thing we're trying to find out here and for this one it was, all right, what do people know about this regulatory agency, and what do they want to know, and what would help them make better decisions when they vote.

Or more informed decisions when they vote. And so that is sort of like where we came up with this idea of like, let's go in a few different communities. One was all Spanish speaking, so we held it in Spanish and had an interpreter there. The other ones were in specific neighborhoods in Atlanta and in Macon.

And then we like, from there, you know, that's when the storytelling process you know, continued. We were like, all right, here's the things that people want to know. Let's directly answer their questions. Let's work on this for months, had a newsletter that we kept sending out, that sort of thing.

And then the other sort of bucket of work that I've been doing is this more responsive type of journalism, right? Like Grist is always going to have reporters who are reporting on like a disaster that happens. Like the two hurricanes that we just saw in the South. Or, you know, some sort of environmental catastrophe or just general issues like public [00:27:00] health issues that are happening all the time.

And one big thing I'm trying to do is say, all right, we know that reporting is going to happen. And so like, how can I help the organization build into its process of like, all right, where do we start asking the question of, like, how do we get this information out to everyone?

Not just like publishing it online. So, with the farmworker piece, what happened was our reporter Ayurela Horn-Muller, who's in Florida , was doing a big story on the sort of movement to try to get more food and information about food and disaster issues to farmworkers in Florida because there was just this huge gap.

And the work that farmworker advocacy organizations were doing to meet them and make sure that they were getting fed, especially in times of disaster and hurricanes. And so, she was doing that. And then she had another story that was about these information gaps around disaster issues, emergency shelters, things like that like farm workers weren't getting either because it wasn't in Spanish ever from the city or the county, or just because that information just was not accessible.[00:28:00]

And so, once we started talking, I was like, Oh, well, let's figure out, a) we need to translate these stories. Because it was just gonna be in English, with an English language outlet that was like a partner that was co-publishing the story. Spanish speakers don't come to Grist to read something, so like, where can we get this published?

And let's translate it and get it published somewhere else. And it ended up getting published in a Spanish language outlet. And then from there I had two Zoom conversations. One in English with some farmworker advocacy orgs in Florida. And I asked them like, all right, what are the biggest issues? Because this story is sort of like the plight, right?

Like the gaps that farmworkers face in accessing this information. But they don't necessarily need to read that. They need actual information, right?

Quinn: They're well aware of the gaps.

Lyndsey Gilpin: Yeah, right. Exactly. We don't need a pamphlet about that. So what happened was the farmworker organization was like, here are the things that people want to know.

What are my rights? What happens if I get asked to, I get an ID, if I go to a FEMA recovery center after a hurricane, where do I get [00:29:00] food? How do I get disaster SNAP, which is a thing that comes up after disasters, like what, if I'm undocumented, what are my options if I can't apply for federal food programs, those sorts of questions, and so what I did was designed this after that conversation, and then a conversation with a few folks that are community health workers in Florida.

And that was in Spanish. And so there was an interpreter and I wasn't really part of the conversation. I was just kind of there to kind of guide it. We figured out, all right, here's what we should put in this brochure. And it was a lot of, like I said, that information and links to sites that they needed to go to, information about organizations where they could get food, that sort of thing.

And then I had the people I spoke to look at it and say, Hey, does this, is this what you all think people need, are there any gaps? Can you make sure it aligns with the language that you're using to describe these things? And just like the values that you all are trying to share with folks on the ground because I don't want to do something that's totally, at odds with what they're trying to do.

[00:30:00] And, you know, we're just providing information. And so, what they did was I printed this out and then mailed like 1600 copies to several different locations of their organizations. And they took it to workshops and took it out into the fields to farm workers. And hopefully that information will become useful.

Like there's a QR code that they could go to the Spanish language version online. And once we did it in Spanish, one of the groups was like, Hey, we have a lot of folks that speak Haitian Creole. And that was a really amazing opportunity for me because I had never done this sort of work in any language other than Spanish.

And so being able to, you know, I had to track down someone who could translate into Haitian Creole and they did that. And we got both the digital and the print version done. And so now they have that in two languages, like two most spoken languages for the workers. And again, like that impact is so hard to track.

Cause you're like, we know how many we sent out, but hopefully it's in the hands of people who are like, you know, especially after Milton hit and after Helene hit, that, you know, if they [00:31:00] do go to an emergency shelter, if they do go to try to find food, like at least they know the questions to ask or like things to look out for.

And I didn't really realize it would be so timely because you know, it happened like a month before those storms hit, but it's that kind of responsive work. And once you have a template for that, then you can use that in other communities and other populations and get it translated in other languages and, you know, use it in North Carolina instead of Florida.

Because there are farm workers there too. So I think that is the most amazing part of something like that is like you have it ready before a crisis happens and then you can respond even quicker next time,

Quinn: So, I mean, really, it's so admirable. I mean, you guys really took it from getting it to these particular organizations and farms to translating it, not just into Spanish, which is obviously the right thing to do, but also Haitian Creole. You're listening to the community, taking it, doing the work, doing it again, getting it back out there, hoping it's correct. There has to be a little trust that, okay, hopefully this changes a few lives, right? Helps folks if [00:32:00] this happens. How does Grist measure the return on investment for your time and these materials? And all this travel and work and contractors you're hiring to translate things.

How does that factor? And again, I'm coming at it from the perspective of, again, someone like the 19th or capital B, which are, you know, semi well funded, but so many other amazing independent organizations or independent reporters who are trying to do a version of what you did with Southerly, whatever it might be, how do you not justify it? I mean, morally, you can obviously justify it. It's incredible work. But budgets are budgets and journalism is in a tough spot, even for someone like Grist. How does that part work?

Lyndsey Gilpin: Yeah, it's a really good question because I think that, you know, when I was running Southerly, I think the hardest thing about like when you pitch this idea, especially to funders or just to anyone, they're like, yeah, that's amazing. Do it. That's incredible. You should meet people where they're at.

You should be able to print [00:33:00] stuff and hand it out. And then when you talk about how long it takes and how many resources it takes just to, you know, not just the money to like print something right? But it's also the time and energy to, you know, I'm doing a lot of the logistics and communicating whether we're hosting an event or putting together, designing a pamphlet, right?

Like our design team is way booked up. They can't design this pamphlet. So they had to kind of teach me how to design it on my own and then I could do it. Or even just, you know, designing a website, the backend of that, making sure that like we did a plain text version of a website and a fancy version, like those sorts of things that take time and energy.

Quinn: I saw the plain text version, sorry to interrupt, and I thought something was wrong with my browser and then I refreshed it and I was like, oh, this is fucking genius. It's like the SMS stuff, where you're just like, get rid of all the other shit. It doesn't matter.

Lyndsey Gilpin: Yeah. I saw another one of our partners, Blue Ridge Public Radio did that after Helene and I was like, that's it, and so I made sure [00:34:00] that we could do it and got it. Yeah. It's so, it's duh. Right. But it's just those things you don't think about. And so again, like when you're pitching it to funders, it sounds I think that it's very buzzy, community engagement is a very buzzy thing in journalism right now.

And so everyone wants to do it. And then when you talk about how long it takes, the effort it takes and that, you know, just one person at a big organization like Grist, you know, like it requires a lot of help. Like I need reporters to help me get the information that, cause I can't be a reporter and this, which sometimes I am doing that but having a reporter on board to do some of that back end work and do the reporting and help me fact check it like that's so helpful and critical and amazing because Grist has, you know, people who want to do this work and really believe in this work and so, that has been really important. When I came on to the whole of 2024, you know, I had just come on, so I didn't have a budget. So I was over here like, Hey, can I have $1,000 to print this? Or to run this through FedEx, you know, that sort of thing. And so luckily for the next year, I have a lot more money to be able to say, all right, here's a [00:35:00] budget for printing. Here's a budget for like events and things. And here is maybe you want to do a fellowship again. Cause you know, the fellowship that we ran that was six weeks long, I paid everyone a few thousand bucks because it was, they were using their time. And when we held listening sessions, I paid people to be there to participate and they weren't used as sources ever again or anything like that.

But I feel it's really important to pay people for their time. And so I think that is a difficult conversation not just at Grist, but in general in journalism is we kind of just expect people to give us their time. And obviously there's a line we can't quote them as sources after we pay them.

That is not how this works.

But if we want people to do the work, particularly low income, people of color, like people in rural areas where we go into their community and we're like, Hey, help us figure out how to do our work better. Then, you know, they need to be paid for their time. And so that part of the budget I think is a really difficult conversation sometimes because it makes it blurry with the ethics of what you know how a lot of journalists think that like it should go, like no they should just [00:36:00] give it to us. And so that I think is the part of the sell. I often, I talk to the funding team, the development team at Grist a decent amount and I think that one of the really amazing things is like community engagement and like the work that I'm doing is sort of this bridge between the audience side and the editorial side of newsrooms, where oftentimes they're very distant, you know, it's okay, we're putting our stuff out on social media, we're like, communicating with the audience in that way.

And then we're like, deciding all our editorial goals over here. And I think this is a way to bridge those two and say, all right, how do we ask people what they want or need and then decide our editorial goals or rather than making sure the editorial process always informs what we're doing for our audience.

And so I think that is a really, hopefully better way to fundraise around that. And I hope that I see a lot of other newsrooms doing that too, but it is, for this Helene thing, we, you know, I got a thousand bucks to print out some stuff, flyers on like how to access FEMA [00:37:00] aid. And then we had a QR code that went to that plain text site.

And then I got some assistance through another organization where we got the flyer actually printed in Alt Weekly, Mountain Express. And they printed it in their edition this week. And it's going out to 20,000 people in five counties.

And so it's like, how can we work together with other newsrooms because everyone is so strapped to make sure we get those resources because everyone has, you know, something to give in that way, whether it's time or energy or money and so unfortunately, and fortunately, that's like the position we're in, you know, I mean, it's amazing, but it sucks. I wish we weren't in it.

Quinn: You hope that Grist is making enough money elsewhere that as you build these playbooks for, and I kind of thought about how you all are doing, you know, what we're all doing, which is adaptation and mitigation at the same time. You know, hey, here's how to access FEMA on a plain text site or by SMS. When you're already affected because you're a farm worker with no leave or heat [00:38:00] protections. But at the same time, you're doing things like Hey, here's how a public utility commission works. And in particular, one in Georgia can affect that. So that hopefully we can start to tame this whole thing a little bit.

You wish you didn't have to. But at the same time, like you said, there's partners out there that can actually rely on the trust that they've built with their communities, like these Alt Weeklies or Blue Ridge Public Radio, who say like, Hey, we've already got this audience of people who are really engaged and trust us. We're going to trust you to do something kind of from the outside that you think is going to help them. But like you got to perform, you got to show up and have these conversations. You got to buy the donuts. You can't pay people specifically for one thing, but you can pay them for this and hopefully you can train more people. It's an effort and I do hope that Grist's funders and all these other places are looking at it and going. Yes, it needs to have a budget.

Yes. She cannot just run wild buying everything for everyone here. She cannot just [00:39:00] live at FedEx and choose the glossy option, but at the same time, maybe this isn't the specific part of our operations where we expect even a reasonable return on interest, you know, hopefully we can make that up elsewhere, so that we can do this kind of work. Do you feel like, hopefully it's heading in that sort of direction?

Lyndsey Gilpin: Yeah. I do, I think that, and again, I think it's been sort of a slow movement. And now we finally, because of the number of news outlets that are doing this kind of work and doing different kinds of journalism, training people, printing things, doing SMS based reporting, like that's more mainstream now.

And so I think now the funders are finally catching up with it. Right. Or like, Oh, okay. This is how we get more information out to people. And I think it's hard to, one of the things that I always try to get across and I think is really helpful is, you know, as we are sort of like deciding what's worth [00:40:00] paying for as far as like how to get information out or what partnership is worthwhile or if we're going to reach enough people or should we experiment with this new way of getting information out?

Meanwhile, all of the fossil fuel companies, all of the, you know, the Heritage Foundations of the world, all of you know, these organizations and people with really dangerous misinformation, like they're going to schools and they're going to churches and they're hosting events.

And they're writing op eds and they're, you know, trying to get their stuff published on the local news. Like that machine is constantly working and we're kind of coming at a deficit where like those communities that we're trying to reach are already like in it with all of that misinformation.

And so let's just put our resources and time, like, there's an urgency here that I think sometimes isn't, you know, really respected. Like it's Oh, we'll have time to figure out like the best way to do it. And it's no, let's just throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks.

[00:41:00] Let's like, collaborate. Let's stop trying to scoop each other and just get this stuff out there. And I think that's like a constant battle. But I think it's slowly changing, right? There's more collaborations and working together than there used to be. But you know, this is all happening while we're, you know, trying to figure this out.

So the least we can do is just try stuff. That's sort of the spot we're in right now.

Quinn: It's like a journalism version of mutual aid, almost.

Lyndsey Gilpin: Yeah. Yeah. Which it's like, you know, you think about, you're like mutual aid is amazing and would be great if these things could be provided by the government or the, you know, the systems of power that should be doing it.

And same with journalism, but it is what it is.

Quinn: It's easy and cliche and there's some very poorly run nonprofits, things like that, that have a big name, this and that, that are wasteful, just like any company or government or whatever it might be. But at the same time, you know, again, and we kind of work in the realm of all the make or break things here.

So we're not just worried about Helene. We're worried again about, you know, zero heat protections, and all that [00:42:00] everyday stuff. Like you said, that's just happening. But there's also organizations like one that's near and dear to my heart is Alex's Lemonade Stand, and they do two things.

They fund research into pediatric cancer, and all these incredible doctors and scientists, and their whole support mechanisms. But they also fund specifically travel for families, who need to go to treatment, or clinical trials, whatever it might be, because that is, just because you got in doesn't mean you can afford to travel to Philly or wherever. And nothing turns me into like radicalized Batman more when people are like, Well are they wasting money? It’s like, you know what they would love? Is for just, there not to be kids with cancer. It would be great if this just wasn't a problem in the fucking first place or if there was enough funding in general. So just, they didn't have to do this work, and see kids who are sick.

Again, you know, it's like the whole, oh look how much this billionaire donated! That's great. It would be great if our entire health system didn't rely on [00:43:00] GoFundMe and billionaire donations. But in the meantime we do have to build the trust and we have to do the work because that's where we are, you know, so you try to change the game while we've got to play by the rules that exist because like you said, and this is a lot of what we try to do you know, in our work and also this new app thing we've launched it's like treating any illness is deal with the cause and deal with the symptoms. You know, we have to try to pass laws for universal free healthy school lunches. But also there's people that need to eat tonight, and we need to feed them. And I appreciate that you are of the opinion of, No, we have to throw shit at the wall, because we can't just wait. You know?

Lyndsey Gilpin: Yeah, it's true. I mean, I would love there to be more government funding for media. And I mean, like, in this kind of group where we're, like, trying to advocate for policies to improve funding for journalism in general, you know, just like for public broadcasting, what does that look like in other parts of journalism?

And like, yes, [00:44:00] that is, that's incredibly important. And at the same time as we've seen, you know, in North Carolina right now, it was news yesterday that FEMA was and other federal like officials were told to leave because a militia was coming in trying to quote, unquote, like hunt FEMA. And when misinformation has created that many dangerous situations like it's urgent, right? Like we have to, this is not just a thing we can kind of slowly address. Like we are obviously because of the election, but like just in general, it's like this in so many other areas. We just aren't paying as much attention.

And so, I think journalism has a bigger role, like the industry in general has a bigger role in addressing that than I think, you know, we're often like, Oh, nonprofits and, you know, you know, other organizations are doing this kind of work on the ground. It's like, no, like we're the ones on the ground it's our job to make sure people have a healthy information ecosystem because that's so vital to their lives.

And I think that's such an important thing to me and it becomes more important all the time, not just in times of a hurricane, but in general, getting the [00:45:00] point across to people all over the U. S. and internationally that not just a free media, but like a media that's well funded and and diverse and you know, socio or economically, racially, geographically, like we have to make sure that this continues because we're seeing in real time, like the dangers of what happens when it doesn't, you know.

Quinn: And also just this, on one hand, I guess practically budget wise, and because there is so much to cover this version of journalism, and policy where, again you kind of do something, and then take your foot off the pedal and go Well, okay, we've reported on it, hopefully that's out there. But again, I have these barometers of okay, is there still a place in the U.S. that people like semi affectionately call Cancer Alley? Because if there is, then we're probably not done yet. You know, they need better information.

They have the information. They're being told misinformation because we keep building shit. And again, we call it Cancer Alley. It [00:46:00] feels like there's still more to do, you know?

It feels like something could be better funded. I don't know, you know, how you pick the order, but it feels like there's more to do.

Lyndsey Gilpin: Yeah, I know it's so overwhelming sometimes that, you know, it's, and I'm sure, you know, organizers and everybody feels like this all the time, like healthcare workers, teachers, you're just like, what do I, how can I make some sort of change? And it just feels like I'm not doing anything.

Like I'm just spinning my wheels. And I think the way I think about it is there's a little corner that I can work on. Right. And that is right now it's in Western North Carolina. I can get this FEMA information out and hopefully people will see a FEMA official. Maybe one person sees somebody in a FEMA jacket and is like, they're not going to seize my land.

I'm going to apply for money that hopefully I can get from them. And it's a messy process. And there's a lot of faults that the federal government has in this situation. Right. A lot of reasons for distrust. But if I could just [00:47:00] like maybe work on that little corner and then hopefully replicate it, then, you know, that's all I can hope for, I guess.

Quinn: You do have to moderate your expectations a little bit. We're fond of saying, people write in and say things like, I heard the jet stream's slowing down. What can I do? And I'm like, not much. However, here's a million things you can do depending on what you're interested in and what your skills are and what your resource or money wise or time wise capable of. Knowing the typical constraints of we're a country without childcare, you know, like that is a constraint.

But at the same time, again, we say this, we use this phrase, which is all you can do is all you can do, which is like, if you are able to control something and affect it, give it everything you got, but understand that there's certain forces and things that you're not going to be able to completely affect on your own or right now, or more broadly.

But again, hopefully it does scale and the way that you have built a playbook for this that maybe other media companies that exist or don't exist yet can look at and go. Okay. [00:48:00] Maybe it doesn't actually cost that much to run these fellowships in this reporting and these pamphlets and all these types of things. Maybe that's somewhere we can pull the cost back somewhere and apply it here.

And where could we have that effect? Because you do have to do the work. We do have to do the work.

And there's a lot. It's very easy to look around and be like I've only affected one part of western North Carolina. It's like I know but everyone else is ignoring them.

Lyndsey Gilpin: Yeah, definitely. And one of those things in journalsism, I think, is, you know, I always talk about, like, when I was younger, all I wanted to do was like, win a Pulitzer Prize, you know, when I found out about the Pulitzer Prize, I was like, that's what I'm doing, you know, but now in this break, you're like, yes, amazing, incredible.

Congrats to everyone who's ever won a Pulitzer. And so many people are just competing for that, right? And rather than thinking, where does this information go and it could be life saving. It could be that it could change someone's mindset. It might not change a policy at the federal level or you know, get as much attention, but it could change something on a smaller scale.

[00:49:00] And that's something I think about a lot and also yell about a lot.

Quinn: Yeah, I yell at everyone. I'm just shaking a rake in my front yard all of the time at people but it does matter and how you set your expectations and how you understand and operate within scales matters to, you know, again, I'm in Virginia and Virginia has become very purple, blue back and forth sort of thing.

But, you know, the example I use whenever I tell people, please stop, not stop giving to presidential races, but please give to state and local races is, you know, I'm very familiar with a couple of the legislators who, bare minimum, passed Medicare in Virginia, when was that now? Eight years ago.

And overnight, 400,000 people, most of which probably had never had any sort of health care, health insurance before, got it. And that can be your scale. That's still a hell of a lot of people whose lives you more or less just changed. I have a friend, who in Richmond, they have [00:50:00] this big program, they built this big beautiful pool, and part of the way they got funding from the city and the county and these private institutions, University of Richmond, was to say, we're going to make it free for every kid in Richmond to get swim lessons. And this guy I know who is the executive director showed me this big wall where they have a count every year from the schools and the different neighborhoods, how many kids they've taught to swim. And you know, it's 12,000 kids, something like that so far. And it's easy to be like, oh, there's 400 million people.

It's okay, but if you've taught 12,000 kids to swim, you've probably, over the course of their collective lives, and each of their lives, probably saved like 20 lives. Which doesn't seem like a lot. I understand that in the grand scope of, is the jet stream slowing down? But you can definitely go to sleep at night knowing that you are really doing something.

And if you're building a plain text website in SMS for, you know, Florida farm workers who are [00:51:00] already fucked because of the system, or folks in Western North Carolina. In a state that cannot decide what it wants to be and how it wants to help people. That's something to hang your hat on.

This is great. I've got a couple last questions and I'm going to get you out of here. Is that alright?

Lyndsey Gilpin: Yeah, go for it.

Quinn: Okay what do you feel like sort of in brief, this is the what can we do sort of thing, what of this playbook can sort of be summarized down as much as possible? What has been transferable, do you think, towards people who work in neighborhoods with lead pipes? Many black neighborhoods, Latino neighborhoods, maternal health, whatever it might be. What of your playbook do you feel can be transferable? And what have been things where you're like, well, this has been pretty unique to this specific situation? What can people start to adopt or at least think about ahead of time here?

Lyndsey Gilpin: One thing I always like to say is, please copy what I'm doing.

I mean don't plagiarize it if you don't mind you could paraphrase it, but it is a template, and I think anyone can, in their [00:52:00] community, I mean, there's so many people already doing this work if you are, you know, I think there's a lot of folks, in general I see a lot of women sort of, leading these efforts in their communities where they're, like, tracking, you know, pollution or trying to educate their neighbors or start a citizens group. And that is, you're doing information access work, right? You're trying to make sure, and so I think, you know, taking lessons from not just what I'm doing, but other organizations that are doing really important community centered journalism is like, how do I you know, use the tools of journalism to make sure it's accurate, make sure it's like fact checked use the correct sources like that I can trust and get that information out to people and also identifying misinformation. If you see, no matter where you are, like if you see someone, I mean, I'm not advocating for getting on Facebook fights all the time, but if you see, cause I did it the other day and it was not super successful, but if you see, you know, if you see somebody saying misinformation, whether you're like at your holiday dinner table or [00:53:00] someone sharing something, you're like, I know that's inaccurate.

Like you don't necessarily have to do it publicly, but are there ways in your life where you can be like, Hey, here's how I know that's not true. Here's where this information comes from. Like I did this around like FEMA stuff just because that's something I feel very confident in addressing.

And I think that those conversations suck, they're uncomfortable, but like we can all do better at just engaging a little bit more with people that were just like, Oh, no, we're not going to agree. I think that is just like one tiny thing to do. In general, like just taking this playbook, look for news outlets in your area, like support journalism, right?

You don't necessarily have to subscribe to your local paper, but can you find, if you're in Atlanta, there's an organization called Canopy Atlanta that does, they train people to do journalism through fellowships and they go out and write about issues in their neighborhoods, not just environmental ones.

They also have a documenter's program where you're paid to go to local meetings and take notes and publish them. And that's popping up in so many cities across the country. It's in Sacramento, [00:54:00] it's in Chicago, it's in Philadelphia. You can look at that through City Bureau or Documenters online.

They're just all these opportunities that aren't necessarily like the traditional media that you might see that are doing things like the things that I'm talking about. And you can always, you know, start something like that yourself, it's useful to learn how to do like I said, the tools of journalism before to make sure that you're doing it in a way that's ethical and like people can trust.

But, if you're really interested in like storytelling and getting information out, like there are a lot of ways that you can do that and you don't need the whole newsroom to back you up or you could work with a local organization in your community that's focused on a particular thing like lead pipes or pollution or whatever it may be.

And so I think there's kind of, you know, at Southerly I did, you know, I could only print off a hundred brochures here and there, or five hundred brochures, and now I can print off a thousand. So there's totally useful ways to do this at different scales. And I think it all starts with just kind of recognizing what you're really [00:55:00] passionate about and what information gaps you see and when you're in your neighborhood and dealing with something that you know is a problem that maybe hasn't been recognized yet. That's where you can be of the most use, you know?

Quinn: Sure, because nobody knows it better than you. You are of that space. Awesome. That's super, super helpful. Okay. Last little lightning round questions. You've got lives to change here. Lyndsey, first time in your life when you realized you had the power of change or the power to do something meaningful to someone besides yourself?

Lyndsey Gilpin: Oh my gosh, that's a really hard question. I think it probably was, I don't know, this is kind of late, but like, when I was in grad school in Chicago and I was writing about children's health and had to write a lot about things like asthma and stuff on the South side. And really just, I think I got an email or a note from somebody, I was a student run website that was not, you know, super [00:56:00] well circulated or anything. And I got a note that, you know, like someone had read that and had impacted how they thought about this issue. And they were going to share it with people. And I've gotten many of those over the years. And I think every single time I'm like, Oh, people read things and change their minds about something or can use that somewhere and so that was like the first time I remember that really well, but it's happened a million times since that it always surprises me.

Quinn: And that's also just great feedback for folks, one of the things I'm trying to figure out how to program into this tool thing is how to just write your journalist or newspaper or radio station and say, thank you for covering this thing. Because it does go a long way to not just the person doing the work, but the organization is like, Oh, I'm glad we spent resources on Lyndsey's pamphlets. You know, people appreciated that.

Lyndsey Gilpin: Yeah. And I feel like I need to do that to so many people, not just, you know, journalists, but just like people I see quoted in things or like just try to track people down more [00:57:00] often and be like, thanks so much for that information or for what you did, you know.

Quinn: Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that. Last one. What is a book you've read in all of your free time over the past year or so that has affected you in some way? Changed your thinking in some way? Opened your mind to maybe a topic you hadn't considered before?

Lyndsey Gilpin: I do put off a lot of other things so I can read because I'm, well, I love reading, but I'm actually reading a book right now. I'm not done with it yet. So, you know, I can't speak to like it being finished, but it's called The Quickening by Elizabeth Rush.

It's about motherhood and a trip that she takes to Antarctica to write about the melting glaciers and kind of combining like the idea of continuing our legacy, right.

And becoming a parent and I've already become a parent. But it's just so interesting to kind of see her weave in that together with climate change. Cause I think oftentimes that's an either or thing that people decide [00:58:00] like if you care about the earth, you can't have kids, or vice versa.

You know, it's just, it becomes a crazy conversation, and this is just a really nuanced, beautiful way to to talk about the future of our planet, in a beautiful, optimistic way, and in a very depressing way. And also I'm just learning a ton about Antarctica that I had no idea.

Quinn: So cool. I love that. Well, thank you for sharing that. I will add it to my truly endless list of things I need to get to.

Lyndsey Gilpin: Endless. And my nightstand is full. Yeah.

Quinn: Right and my kids are, you know, I've been trying to do this new thing. My kids are nine, 10, and 11 and I've been just reading, not just with them, but they're like, Hey, I read this book, you would like it.

I was like, fuck it, I'll read that. Let me push aside that whole book stand. And it's actually really fun. It's a great way to connect with them. And also like the books are great, and it's a great way to just keep having conversations with them before they're going to start ignoring me very soon.

I don't know what the point was but nice to connect in that way.

Which is thinking about things a little more comprehensively.

There's a [00:59:00] wonderful new book by a gentleman I just had on the show named Ferris Jabr, I think his name is. Not about parenthood, but just the earth as sort of a living organism and all the ways it actually works and, you know, how we're affecting it. It's affected us, all that. It's quite lovely.

Anyways, that's it. Where can folks follow your intrepid work?

Lyndsey Gilpin: Yes, grist.org, G R I S T dot org is where all my stuff is. I'm the senior manager of community engagement, so you won't see my stuff on the front page, but if you dig a little bit, you can find the community engagement stuff. There's grist.org slash updates is like where we post a lot of the stuff that we're doing with this kind of work. And then once you're there, you can see a lot of our partners work too, like Blue Ridge Public Radio, WAB in Atlanta, Deep South Today. So there's all over the country we have partners. So, I encourage everyone to look through that too, because that's where we'll see a lot of the stuff that I'm working on.

Quinn: Thank you so much for your time and for this awesome work. I really appreciate, you know, when folks say, what can I do? You seem to really ask [01:00:00] this question, which is like, how far can I take it? You know, where it's a little bit like the rural broadband thing. It's not enough to just build towers. Like you got to connect people. We have to do that work or else they're left out of this thing. I appreciate that.

Lyndsey Gilpin: Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me on. This was really fun.