Journalists should relish losing access

Trump's press people have no idea what they're doing.

So, I’m not trying to make this a Trump newsletter. But I am trying to write about topics here that don’t cross over with my IndyStar work ... which, unfortunately, lends itself to some Trump #content.

Today’s newsletter is sort of a cross between Trump and my insidery journalism thoughts, with a sweet Billy Joel tune at the end.

1. How not to run your press operation

Photo by David Lusvardi on Unsplash

The Trump administration is sanctioning the Associated Press because of its policy of calling the Gulf of Mexico the … Gulf of Mexico.

President Trump, as you probably know, sought to rename it the Gulf of America via executive order. The AP determines style standards for many, if not most, news organizations, and it’s sticking with the pre-Trump name, robbing the Gulf of America of some legitimacy.

The Trump administration is not taking it well!

Axios reports:

The White House on Friday said it will bar the Associated Press from future events in the Oval Office and Air Force One, over the AP's refusal to obey President Trump's executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. … The decision will be met with fury from press advocates, who have argued over the past week, during which the White House barred the AP from three previous events, that penalizing the news organization for its editorial standards sets a dangerous precedent for press freedoms.

I understand why the AP and news trade groups are protesting the move. But, on a practical level, I generally think journalists should relish losing official access to newsmakers and events — and that those revoking access are almost always making a mistake.

My earliest journalism mentor gave me some advice on this topic that I’ve always remembered. He was a sports writer engaged in a public feud with a hall-of-fame coach, who was refusing to talk to him. When I asked my mentor about the situation, he shrugged, and said, “I can cover the team without talking to the coach. Eventually, he’s going to want credit for something and he’ll come to me.”

I’ve found the spirit of this advice to be universally correct.

While AP reporters might miss some news-of-the-day items while locked out of the Oval Office and Air Force One, where the Trump administration controls the narrative, reporters can also view their loss of access as a license to spend time doing more interesting and aggressive reporting on topics of their choosing. This trade-off usually results in a better service for the audience.

I don’t begrudge journalists who value access and fight to retain it. It’s obviously good for someone to be watching the president and other leaders as much as possible. Eliciting newsworthy answers to questions from people in power is a special and valuable part of journalism.

But it’s also laborious and time-intensive, with big payoffs coming somewhat rarely. That’s why the absolute best communications staffers for government officials take the opposite approach to the Trump administration, keeping reporters occupied with boring press conferences, background chats and events as much as humanly possible. That way, the flacks not only get to choose topics, but also reduce the discretionary time journalists have to do enterprise work that might turn out unfavorably for the bosses.

The Trump administration’s gambit to hold access over the heads of journalists is a self-own, a losing game played by people who don’t know what they’re doing.

The AP obviously can protest the decision — while simultaneously looking into much juicier stories than they’d find aboard Air Force One.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is eventually going to want to plant some fluffy, self-congratulatory story in the AP or some other mainstream outlet it’s restricting — and Trump’s press people might look around and find no one there to run with it.

2. Reckless indifference

Photo by Sean Lee on Unsplash

The DOGE squad is operating with a business consultant’s mindset that it can inflict deeper cuts to government staff than necessary and then put agencies back together like Humpty Dumpty.

Except, we all remember how Humpty Dumpty ended.

This reckless approach to cutting a tiny fraction of the nation’s budget is opening up risks that we can’t yet fathom.

For example, CNN reports:

Trump administration officials fired more than 300 staffers Thursday night at the National Nuclear Security Administration — the agency tasked with managing the nation’s nuclear stockpile — as part of broader Energy Department layoffs, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.

Sources told CNN the officials did not seem to know this agency oversees America’s nuclear weapons.

I know, I know. You can’t believe the mainstream media.

But DOGE would do well to Google some mainstream media articles because many of the waste, fraud and abuse revelations it’s announcing happen to have already been reported a long time ago.

Not only is DOGE unlikely to find novel fraud or make more than marginal budget cuts, but also it’s trashing entire agencies without taking the time to learn what they do. A lot of government agencies do important things! Like … nuclear weapons.

DOGE also is moving to lay off thousands of employees from the Internal Revenue Service, aka the tax police, an agency where employees out-earn their salaries by bringing in revenue to the government from people who are trying to hide it.

There’s no doubt many parts of the federal government are broken, but DOGE’s wrecking ball approach seems more likely to bring new, impossible-to-anticipate consequences than to fix anything.

3. What I wrote

Photo by Steven Van Elk on Unsplash

I published three columns this week for IndyStar:

• The Braun-Beckwith plan to abolish Carmel

• Mailbag: Our alleys are hopeless, but at least we have sports

• Indy council Democrats booted Jesse Brown because he’s a terrible co-worker

4. What I read

Photo by Perry Merrity II on Unsplash

Max Read on the soy boys of the right:

We’re now three weeks into the second Trump administration, and it seems clear that something has changed from the first go-round. The MAGA populist fraction of the Trumpist coalition has been relatively marginalized in favor of the austerian-accelerationist Silicon Valley right. The archetypal article about Trump voters in rural diners has been replaced with magazine stories about obnoxious arrivistes comparing Trump to Beyoncé and the inauguration to Comic-Con. Even Trump himself seems oddly sidelined, his threats about tariffs and treasuries effectively ignored by both heads of state and the stock market, his striking and creative Truth social postings left mostly unread--while Elon Musk attracts all resistance energy simply by tweeting “🤣” at some of the worst jokes on the planet.

The end beneficiaries of Trumpist upward redistribution haven’t changed much. But the affect of the second Trump administration is, so far, wholly different. Gone is the apocalyptic malevolence of “American carnage,” supplanted by the unctuous corniness of “DOGE.” Gone is the sense of a lasting political realignment, succeeded by an inescapable minoritarian whine. Gone are Steve Bannon, the alt-right, and the “forgotten man and woman” Trump celebrated in his 2016 victory speech. In their place: Elon Musk and the Soy Right.

David Weigel interviewing former Anheuser-Busch InBev executive Anson Frericks on how Bud Light killed DEI:

I think that it was Kid Rock lighting up a case of Bud Light, and the broader social media reaction. I think that exemplified the feelings of a lot of people in middle America. “Man, you know, the last couple years, I kept my mouth shut when the NFL allowed players to kneel on the ground, because I want to watch the game. When Disney got involved in the parental rights issues in Florida – well, there’s only one Disney World, and my kids really want to go.” All of a sudden, you do this with a working class man’s beer.

5. ‘You can get what you want or you can just get old’

I saw Billy Joel, one of my all-time favorite artists, last weekend in Indianapolis. I’ve been playing his music nonstop since then, especially the song “Vienna,” which he played during the show.

If you haven’t heard it, or don’t remember, it’s worth a listen!

Thanks for reading! I promise to make next week’s newsletter less Trumpy and political.