- Good evening everyone, I'm David Crabtree, the CEO, General Manager of PBS North Carolina.

My apologies that you do not have a video shot of me in this golden age of beautiful technology.

There's a glitch in the system, but nonetheless, we have got a wonderful 30 to 45 minutes to share with you.

First, welcome for joining us.

You've just watched a very important film, Independent Lens bringing to us, "Breaking the News."

Obviously, it's going to invite very deeply driven community conversation.

I want you to know that we wanna provide a safe space for open and informative discussions, and I'm sure that each of you will be respectful when entering your questions and comments to the chat.

You can see to the right of your screen.

Each of us have differing viewpoints and opinions, so we're here to share experiences and knowledge and hear different perspectives.

Before we get to this discussion, a few housekeeping items.

Again, please note this discussion is being recorded, will be available to view again anytime you want to.

All event registrants will receive a link to the recording, and the discussion will be posted on our website in the engagement section.

Resources and a link to a survey will also be included in an email.

The survey links are posted in the chat and, throughout the evening, you can text the 19th to 415-223-8013.

Again, we'll be giving you that number.

You're probably not sitting there with a pen, but it's 415-223-8013.

Or click on the link in the chat to participate in the interactive survey, that will make you eligible to win a $50 gift card from Independent Lens.

Don't forget, you can watch "Breaking the News" again Monday, the 26th of February at 10:00, here on PBS North Carolina.

So let's get to the people involved who are the ones who are going to make this discussion so valuable.

First, Caitlin Yaede, the Managing Editor of the Daily Tar Heel, public policy grad student at UNC Chapel Hill.

Shelvia Dancy, Assistant Professor at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media.

My good friend, Lena Tillett, journalist news anchor, WRAL TV in Raleigh.

And Amanda Lamb, who I had the privilege of working with for almost 30 years, journalist, podcaster, adjunct professor at Meredith College.

And I'm glad each of you are here to join.

In your experience of what you saw, Lena, I want to begin with you.

You're anchoring nightly news at WRAL, you're a reporter, you host a talk program, you're a wife, you're a mother.

You are in this sphere of having so very much, it hasn't always been this way.

Take us back to your beginnings, and what obstacles you may have faced early on in your career and maybe some that continue today.

- Oh, wow, David, you're taking me back.

Wow, okay.

Thank you for having me.

And, yes, it was so wonderful working with you.

I miss you so dearly at WRAL.

So I guess, I mean, I know that there are a lot of young journalists who are watching.

And, first of all, keep at it.

That's just gonna be my advice and my encouragement to you.

I had a kind of an interesting path.

I interned at a news station in Washington, DC in college, and that kind of let me know that I wanted to be a journalist.

Erin Haynes talked about seeing Black women anchors in Atlanta.

I also was privileged to see Black women anchors in Atlanta, I mean, in Washington DC.

So I thought that that's what news programs looked like.

You know, seeing Maureen Bunyan and Lesli Foster, and CJ Hayward, and you name it.

I mean, I got to see some pretty brilliant poised Black women delivering the news, in addition to Black men.

But that was the representation that I was fortunate to see.

And as a result, it encouraged me to become a journalist, in addition to when I actually got in the newsroom and I knew that this was the place where I wanted to tell stories, and I wanted to be a voice for people who did not have a voice or a platform.

So fast forward, you know, I ultimately went to graduate school for journalism.

I went to NYU where I studied news and documentary, so I got a master's in journalism.

And then I was at News 12, Brooklyn and the Bronx.

That was actually where I first started, which is ironic because technically that's the number one market in the country, but it was not the number one market, because it was with a cable news network.

But I had just a plethora of stories to tell, I learned so much.

I got to tell so many different types of stories.

And I was really fortunate that our news director valued the stories of diverse communities.

My news director was a Latina and, you know, telling stories in the Bronx, in Brooklyn, she loved to know about the diversity and the variety of stories from those communities.

There was no story that was too, you know, trivial to tell, because these were stories that truly had an impact on people.

And also was interesting to so many communities, West Indian communities, Black communities, in terms of Black American, you know?

They valued all stories.

Then I went to Omaha, Nebraska, and it was a different kind of newsroom.

It was a different kind of market.

And so, I would say that I had to learn and develop my story pitching when I got to these markets where they weren't as diverse.

Because I had to, I felt that I had to, convince news directors that stories about people who looked like me were worthy of telling.

And that's the difference between, you know, working for someone who already values my stories, values the stories of people from different cultures and from, you know, different races, different genders, as opposed to working in a newsroom where you feel that you have to convince people that this is a story worth telling.

So what I ended up doing was working really hard at story pitching, and making sure I had my I's dotted, my T's crossed, I had every aspect.

I said, this is already the story, it's already laid out.

I've already talked to these characters, I already know these elements in the story.

And that's unfortunate, because that's something that a lot of people, journalists of color, have to confront, feeling that they have to over explain and oversell a story about our community.

So just starting off, David, I think that's something that I had to learn, and that's something that I mastered.

And when I got to WRAL, I had a different experience.

But it was something that I think a lot of young journalists should be prepared for when they go into their newsroom.

What stories are centered?

What stories are misrepresented, in addition to being underrepresented?

And what work do you have to do to try to solve that?

- Yeah, Caitlyn, I'd like to come to you next because you're listening, I noticed you nodding your head.

You're at the Daily Tar Heel.

You're at a very early stage in your career, which we hope will be long and varied and rewarding.

What led you to choose this field that can be so very difficult at times, like daily?

- Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you for that, David.

I was originally, in like my high school career, most people I knew that I wanted to write.

I knew that I had a skill for writing, and I had a mentor who she really pushed me to do journalism.

She said, "You wanna write and you wanna make an impact, and I think writing and reporting are the best way to do so."

And thankful for her mentorship, I was able to find lots of opportunities in high school and in my early years of college that led me to where I am now at the Daily Tar Heel.

But I think my understanding of why I wanted to pursue journalism has changed over the years.

I think that I've really begun to see how impactful good, thorough reporting is by members of communities are for the communities that are impacted by that.

I think journalists have a civic duty to kind of call out injustice, and also tell a story that can inspire civic engagement.

And you can do that without stepping on the, you know, or not being an objective journalist.

I think how issues are reported on kind of sets narratives for how those issues are then widely understood, and it is then up to those communities to shoulder that narrative.

So I think centering, the opportunity to center, on UNCs campus, specifically at the Daily Tar Heel, communities who have long been left out of university communications, long left out of Chapel Hill's local reporting.

We have a unique opportunity to kind of recenter them into our daily discussion, and reinvent what the average reader looks like.

Lena, you're talking about when you have to come with pitches, you have to come really prepared.

And one of those steps is to think about who is impacted by the story.

And I've had so many editors ask me, how does this pertain to the average reader?

With the assumption that the average reader is not a woman, that the average reader is not queer, that the average reader is not not white.

So I think really thinking about, who am I writing for?

And why am I writing for them?

And what impact do I have to have?

Has been an evolution of my journalism career that has made it so much more fulfilling for me.

But, yeah.

- Amanda, you and I began working together in 1994.

You were tireless in bringing story ideas into editorial meetings, fighting for those ideas, and sometimes you would leave exasperated because you weren't listened to.

- Yeah, I mean, David, I think I'm definitely the oldest person on this panel.

So I started in TV in 1989, and when I started in TV, nobody, nobody was talking about diversity.

They weren't talking about diversity when it came to covering marginalized communities, I don't even think that was a word back then.

And so, women specifically were not considered to be that important when it came to storytelling.

In other words, did we have specific stories that were important to us that we wanted to tell?

I remember at one point, they wanted me to cover women's issues, and they handed me a stack of what I would call traditionally female magazines, back in the day.

I won't name them, because I don't wanna call anybody out, but these were magazines that focused on fashion.

They focused on things, you know, relating to school and children and daycare.

And not that these things aren't important to women, of course, they are, but you know what?

They're also important to men, and they're not the only things that are important to women.

So there were so many times that I would pitch a story that I thought our female audience would be interested in.

And, you know, many times that fell on deaf ears.

I'm amazed at how far we've come.

I'm proud of my fellow journalists, I'm proud of Lena and other people in the WRAL newsroom, for how they continue to push forward stories that affect so many different kinds of people.

And I can tell you from my own experience now, I'm an independent podcaster, and my show is women transforming later in life, so personal and professional transformation.

And I am very aware that I wanna tell a diversity of stories from people of various backgrounds, because that's the most interesting way to report on this issue.

And I just think that the more voices we have, the more stories we tell from everybody, the better off we are.

And I'm really glad that this is part of the conversation now because it was not part of the conversation, I would say, for the majority of my career.

So maybe, you know, the first half, if not more.

- Professor, it's so interesting listening to Amanda talking about words that we did not use 25 years ago, maybe 20 years ago, maybe 15.

Marginalization, trans, it wasn't in the everyday vocabulary.

So as you are teaching young students, all students who want to learn, who want to grow, who are called to this profession, you are also very much aware of how even vocabulary changes month to month, sometimes definitely year to year.

Oops, you're muted.

- All right, there we go.

- Thank you.

- Oh, I said, yes, that's absolutely true.

Language is our currency as journalists, and so we have to be incredibly mindful of how we use language and the power of language.

One of the things that I drill into students is journalism is a public service.

My father served in the military, I always tell students, "I don't want to do bootcamp, don't wanna be yelled at, that's not the way I serve the country."

"But being a journalist, that's how I serve the public."

And so when we're writing stories, when we're telling stories, we have to be mindful that first, we owe it to people to tell all the stories about all the people in the audience.

I also remind students that people tend not to watch traditional newscasts.

One of the reasons they tend not to watch them is because they don't feel seen.

Or when they are visible, there's only a fraction of their story told.

So I always remind students, we wanna tell the whole story, and we want to give people reasons to watch, and give people reasons to trust that our station, our newspaper, is telling the entire community story.

And I also remind students that your responsibility as a journalist is to reach out to everyone, to include all types of voices.

That's when you're successful as a journalist, and that's when you're giving people a reason to read your stories, giving people a reason to watch your newscast.

It's a lot of work putting together a show, it's a lot of work writing an article.

And we want people to be there to receive it, we want those viewers, we want those readers.

We have to be there to see them, to recognize them, and to include them, to encourage them to be there to receive the content.

And that includes language as well, asking people what pronouns do they prefer.

That's a thing now, that was not a thing when I was studying journalism many, many moons ago.

Someone in the documentary we just watched said, "Wanting to report with empathy and wanting to report with heart."

And that's an example of that, of showing somebody that dignity of saying, your pronouns matter to me, and I'm gonna take the small step to get it right.

And that's something that students should be mindful of.

And from what I've seen, they are mindful of that.

- That is so in insightful.

Thank you for that.

Lena, I want you to walk us through the editorial process that you go through on a daily basis.

- Hmm.

- With the idea that we're not talking about this from a 30,000 foot view, this is granular.

We can say in the classroom, and with all due respect, professor, I don't mean that in your classroom, but we can look at what we think is the optimum way of doing things.

When reality tells you, no, you've got to do this, you're under this deadline, you've got to turn this story, you've got to write a blog, you've got to write an online piece.

And by the way, you have 93 seconds to tell this story, to cover all of the story.

- Hmm.

- So from that perspective, when you come with the idea, you have an idea of the story, but a not an idea of how the story's going to end, how do you sell it quickly in an editorial meeting?

- Hmm.

Okay.

You know what I'm gonna say, it's a case by case basis.

It depends on the story, obviously.

But I also think that if you lose your curiosity as a journalist, then you shouldn't be a journalist.

So you shouldn't go into a story thinking you know every aspect of the story, thinking you know all the facts of the story, or that you can describe everyone's experience.

I really appreciated what Kate said in the documentary, I appreciate it a lot that she said actually.

But she said, when she was just going through that really difficult moment of being hired to be an LGBTQ journalist, and that was her beat.

And yet it wasn't thoughtfully, even though they were sympathetic and empathetic about her experience, and they probably had every good intention about hiring her and wanting her perspective, they were not thinking through what it means to have them as a journalist and to prioritize their stories and gender inclusivity.

And everyone learned as a result of that.

But I thought it was really interesting, their experience in being able to describe maybe good intentions versus the execution.

But one of the things that Kate said was, "People need to be challenged to think outside their experiences."

And I think that's just journalism, that's everything right there.

So if I'm going to an editorial meeting, and I know that there are various sides, maybe not two sides, maybe there are three sides, right?

Then I want to make sure that I am reaching out to all the sides, so I can understand their perspective and where they're coming from, to have the most well-rounded story that I can have.

I also want to be transparent, once I've done the reporting, about what I was not able to learn.

And that's typically something that you will see maybe in a live, we call it a live tag.

At the end of our story, "We'll say we reached out to this group to better understand their perspective," and whatever they said or what they didn't say, so that we're very clear of covering our bases on the reporting that we attempted to tell the most well-rounded story possible.

But I think when you come to a meeting, an editorial meeting, the key is that you want to show that you've done the research and you've read and you have explored enough of the story before you are then able to go and get the interviews that you need to tell the most well-rounded story possible.

But like you said David, it's incredibly difficult to try to pack so much into a story, but it's our job to be thoughtful about presenting all the sides and making sure they're all represented.

And making sure that if it's not in the story, that we can point people to where they can learn more about that particular side.

- With that in mind, Amanda, when we talk about empathy and heart, which is very important, I think, to everyone on this panel, how do we show that empathy and heart to voices of dissent?

- Wow, that's a great question.

So I also teach a journalism class, and one of the things that I talk to my students about is that we have to be as kind and polite and diplomatic to people that we very much disagree with, as to the people that we agree with.

And I think that's the biggest challenge of being a journalist, is going out to stories and talking to people that, you know, have very different opinions than we do.

But yet, we still have to give them that grace, we have to give them a platform, we have to allow them to say what they're going to say.

And, you know, then we get to decide obviously how we include that in the story.

So I think it's allowing people that grace and that space to talk, even when it's something that we completely think is wrong or that we disagree with.

Now, one of the things in the documentary that I thought was really interesting, when they were talking about January 6th for example, and they were talking about the fact that, you know, there's not always two sides.

I mean, sometimes as journalists, we need to say, this is what happened, and this is the side that everybody should be falling on.

And, you know, historically, we always think journalism is, you know, everything's, you know, fair, in terms of we get 50% of the story goes to this side and 50% goes to this side.

But the reality is, is sometimes there are just things that, you know, we should as human beings call out and point out and say, you know, this is the right way to go.

But I think for most of my career, what I've just lived by is just trying to be a good listener and not assume that I know all the answers.

And when I go out to cover a story, to be as open-minded as I possibly can.

And to be fair and to be polite and diplomatic and honest when I cover a story.

- Caitlin, in the documentary, we heard the phrase, "We want to tell the true story."

I am really curious, at the Daily Tar Heel, how there is a discussion about what is true.

Because truth can be based on your own lens, accurate truth sometimes becomes blurred, depend depending on who is interpreting the data.

- Yeah, absolutely.

I think the way that we've really interpreted truth this year has been, what makes the most sense to our readers?

What best reflects the lived experiences of our readers?

And what do they need to know, and how do they need to know it to go by their day by day?

And I feel like when we do a lot of reporting, whether it be local politics or university politics, it always gets a little bit contentious, I feel.

But at the end of the day, we're able to think about the truth when we think about, okay, how were students impacted?

And is one of these realities, you know, if we're talking to multiple sources who maybe don't have the same viewpoint or aren't describing the same reality, which one is most universal?

Which one can we feel as students?

Which one can we feel as community members?

And what's gonna be the most helpful takeaway?

I think the most poignant example of this would be last year, we dedicated an entire issue just to reproductive rights, looking at what this looks like in Orange County, here in North Carolina specifically.

And I think that was super challenging.

Like you were talking about Amanda, for us as young journalists to go into the community and have difficult conversations with people who maybe didn't share the same opinions with us.

But at the end of the day, it was the reality of what was happening in Orange County.

And so, that was the truth for some of our reporters.

So I think just really not being afraid to get your hands dirty in it, and put yourself in the shoes of the people that you're talking to.

And I think the truth just kind of comes from that.

- Professor Dancy, I wanna come back to you with sort of the opposite of what I mentioned to you earlier about verbiage that was not in our heads 20, 25 years ago, to today's students who are so diverse, who are so open to...

They're ideating on issues of gender, of race, of sexual identity in ways that we had not seen in a previous generation, in my generation.

That I would think, on one hand, presents great opportunities for you as a professor of guiding these young minds, as well as challenges.

Can you talk a little about that?

- Well, I do think some generations have historically greeted the world with open arms.

They may not have been given a platform as much as others.

But I do think there are generations, for whom some of the issues that we openly discuss now, no one would've clutched pearls about it 20 or 30 years ago.

Now, some people would, but there are some people who would not fall into that camp.

Some people see what's happening today and they're like, this is how it should have been 20 years ago, this is how it should have been 30 years ago.

They were maybe lone voices in the wilderness, but I don't think that the majority of people were the opposite of what we see being so vocalized these days.

And when students walk into the classroom, I do think some of what that openness that they're reflecting sometimes, not in all cases, but that they're reflecting sometimes, is an openness that some of them have learned from their parents and they've learned from their grandparents.

It's been passed down from generations to be open-minded people, to be accepting people.

Not in every case, but in some case.

So I don't find that a challenge.

This is the world we live in, it's just the world that we live in.

And if you want to be a journalist, you are in the world, you are out there, you are in communities telling stories.

You don't live in a bubble.

You're out there exploring different communities, that's the work of a journalist.

And so students in my experience, welcome that, because that's what they will be doing.

If anyone struggles with going out into the world and meeting different populations, then I think they would struggle as a journalist, because that is the heart of what we do.

And I wanted to circle back to something Lena had said about the 90 second packages, and the 90 second stories, and just the hustle and bustle.

I think if I were to teach students that there was an optimum set of conditions under which to produce journalism, I would be doing them a disservice.

That is one of the reasons why I walked into the classroom as a professor in 2018, after 25 years as a newspaper journalist and a TV journalist, because I want students to understand that the hustle is real.

The tears are real, the blood and the sweat is real.

You will have to pump out two different hard news stories and a VO/SOT and do live shots and tweet, and write your web story.

So one of the reasons I left teaching is because I bring that experience to the classroom, to let them understand this is the condition under which you will be working.

If I were to teach them anything less, then I would not be preparing them to function and to survive in a newsroom.

- Do you miss that?

- Oh, yes, I wanted to be a reporter since I was six or seven years old.

I knew I was gonna be a writer.

And I was about eight years old, we were living in Japan, a and my father explained to me what journalists did.

And I thought it was a wonderful way of giving the world the life that I had as a military kid, taking a person in Nebraska, a person in North Carolina, a person in Japan, meet, understand each other.

My articles would introduce people to the world.

I thought, I loved newsprint, I would die in a newsroom.

It was all I wanted in life, in the world.

So, yeah.

- Wow.

- But I'll not always be in a newsroom, and being a professor is my way of still being in newsrooms.

Long after I no longer walk this earth, a part of me will be in newsrooms through my students.

And so, that's the way to keep the legacy continuing.

- Oh, I love that answer because each of us understand that, and we'll continue to understand that as long as we have breath.

We're storytellers, we're communicators, we care about people, we care about community.

And at some point in time, we wanted to make a difference, whatever that means, we wanted to change the world, whatever that really means, we have made progress.

But here's the question I want to end with for each of you, is that in progress that we're making in diversity and equity and inclusion, and really looking at how to tell stories that hopefully will create an atmosphere that make people think.

Even if they vehemently disagree with us, it gives them food for thought.

Obviously they're still blind spots.

For me, I mean, look at the irony of the fact that I'm the white male personified of my generation, entitled, helping facilitate this conversation.

And I'm the one with a glitch on my computer that can't show my face.

I love the irony that you can't see me.

I mean, it's just sort of amazing.

But that means we also have blind spots, each of us, no matter where we are in life.

So let's go Lena, Caitlin, Amanda, and professor, and tell me where the blind spots are, what we still have to work on.

- Can we come back to me?

You asked such a big question.

The blind spot, look, again, we saw this wonderful documentary, so let's just use the documentary, 'cause that's a huge question.

I loved the evolution that the CEO had in the documentary.

I could even sense the way that she described the work that 19th did in a more humble way a couple years after leading the organization versus starting it.

And maybe, you know, idealistically what she hoped for it to be.

And all that she thought that she knew about what it meant to tell the stories of diverse communities, versus what she had to learn along the way.

She said, "You realize you didn't have the answers that you thought you had."

And I know how difficult that must have been for her, and the really challenging conversations that they had to have.

But to be, I think, a strong leader in a newsroom, you have to have those humbling conversations.

You have to understand that you have people in your newsroom who have lived experiences that are different from yours.

You know, when people were talking about Black Lives Matter in 2020 and a racial reckoning and, you know, companies were, you know, putting out all these ads.

And newsrooms were saying what their new mission was, and saying, Black Lives Matter, and doing the black box on Instagram.

And a couple years later it's like, hello, have we stopped?

What happened to all of that movement?

And that it felt like a trend, and turns out it kind of was a trend, even though there were some significant, I think, changes that happened as a result of that racial reckoning.

But I think if you talk to a lot of journalists of color, you will also hear people who feel that there have been some steps in the wrong direction since that racial reckoning happened in 2020.

And the bottom line is, while that was a trend for companies and maybe for some newsrooms, and for some folks who changed their Instagram profile pictures, it's not a trend for Black journalists.

It's not a trend for people who have that experience, who still have to reckon with the idea of being over-policed and to not be seen, and the concerns about someone utilizing their white privilege to weaponize that against someone of color.

So, you know, that is the importance of having people with lived experiences to continue to remain in newsrooms, so that they can share what they continue to deal with, right?

This is not a fad.

And I think it's important to have leaders who are willing to listen and to take a step back and understand all that they don't know, so that they can learn more - Caitlin, blind spots.

- Yeah, I really like this question because I don't think that there is ever gonna stop being work to do.

I think we can always continue innovating our newsrooms to make them more inclusive, and it's just not gonna look the same maybe 20 years from now as it looks now.

But I think that one of the biggest... Well, first of all, what the 19th is doing is incredible reader service, and it's an incredible service to a generation of journalists who are trying to find their way into an industry that has such high barriers for entry.

And so I think one of the next things is keeping newsrooms accessible for the journalists.

I think if you're in a financially precarious position and you want to get involved in reporting, and you wanna report on communities that look like you and feel like you and, you know, get these issues out in the air, there's not much incentive to get in there.

I mean, journalists report burnout because pay is not always great.

And it is a competitive, competitive industry, especially for young journalists.

So I think working on making our newsrooms sustainable, making them welcoming and inclusive places automatically opens the door for so many people to become involved and make journalism a more collaborative process than it has been.

- Amanda.

- Yeah, I mean, I think, I echo a lot of what Lena said.

It takes generations to make real change, right?

So we're seeing change, we've seen some change, but it's like you go three steps forward and two steps back.

I think about standing on the shoulders of our mothers and our grandmothers, and how the world has changed for us, right?

When my mom graduated from college in 1962, she graduated from Duke, and she went to job interviews and they asked her how fast she could type.

And she was a Russian major at Duke, and graduated summa cum laude.

So, you know, it's changed, but it's slow.

The thing that I would point out very specifically, in my point of view, is that we don't have enough women and we don't have enough women of color in management positions in news organizations.

And I don't mean middle managers, there are lots of middle managers.

I mean, at the very top.

And I don't mean just in the newsroom, I mean running these companies, because nothing is going to change until we get more diversity in the upper ranks of news organizations.

And I think that has been very, very slow to happen.

And I hope that, you know, in the future, that we see more women, more women of color, more people from marginalized communities rising up in these organizations, because that's the way their voices are going to be heard.

- Professor Dancy, last word to you on blind spots as you see them.

- I agree with, well, practically everything everyone said, but to Amanda's last point there, getting into this industry requires somebody choosing your resume, plucking your resume from the pile, and giving you the internship, giving you the job as a reporter, giving you the job as an anchor.

Who we see is a reflection of choices that people have made, and choices that people are not making.

So I do believe that having an evolution in who are those gatekeepers, I think that will make a difference in who gets the internships and who gets to be an anchor and who gets to be a reporter.

And that's a powerful way of affecting change.

And my last point about blind spots, one of the things, lovely things I think about being a journalist is that you're constantly learning what your blind spots are, by virtue of the stories that you have to do every single day and every single week.

You don't get to live in a bubble, for the most part, I don't think you do.

But many people live in a bubble where they only interact with people who think like them and believe like them.

That is not the case when you're a journalist, and I love that.

Every day, you have to go talk to people who have a different background, different faith tradition, different political beliefs.

And that helps, I think, point out blind spots that you may have.

And one of my favorite questions as a journalist was asking people, what am I missing?

What do you think the media's not getting about this story, about this issue in your community?

And that would help me see, okay, well, what are my blind spots?

What do I not see?

And I think being a journalist, just the daily work is a powerful way of discovering what your own blind spots are.

- I thank you for that.

The question of what am I missing is one that, even after 40 years of doing this, I continue to ask almost daily at PBS North Carolina when we are discussing issues, because we are always learning.

We never hit a point where we've got it all figured out.

And one more remark I'd like to make in full disclosure, both Amanda Lamb and Lena Tillett over the years have challenged me, challenged my thinking, and helped me see where I had blind spots.

It wasn't about me being right or wrong, it was about David, have you looked at it this way?

Here's why this matters, Here's why this matters to others who may not have your lens.

And I want to say I thank you for challenging me over the years.

I hope you'll continue to.

Caitlin, I hope you will as well.

Shelvia, I hope you will.

Come visit us at PBS North Carolina, talk with our folks.

Let us tell your stories statewide of why this matters.

This is an amazing film we watched tonight, yet this discussion continues to be so very rich and it's something we will continue to take to the public.

My thanks to each of you, thanks to the folks who've joined us online tonight.

And again, you can always reach us at pbs.org.

Have a great evening everyone.