Mike Pesca: Is Blue City Media Up to the Challenge of Covering Trump 2.0?

Former National Public Radio and Slate journalist Mike Pesca, host of the longest-running (and highly entertaining!) daily news podcast, "The Gist," joins us to talk about the tough challenges blue city media is facing during the terrifying roller coaster ride that is Trump’s second term. Especially at a time when public trust in the media is at a record low.

Mike's got some well informed - and strong - opinions on whether major blue city outlets like the Washington Post and LA Times are caving to pressure from the Trump administration, and if the media outlets that shape the worldview of urban archipelago elites – the New York Times, NPR, et al – are doing enough to win back the public’s trust. We also chat about whether the whole "moral clarity" approach to news (a major hallmark of the Trump 1.0 era) is about to make a comeback, or whether old-school “objectivity” approaches are in the ascendency. Plus, we discuss what the hell is up with California Governor Gavin Newsom's new podcast that features right-wing guests like Charlie Kirk, and whether the mainstream media is correctly interpreting Newsom’s political and media play. Nor do we shy away from the big questions, like, how should legacy blue city newsrooms adapt to the rise of social media?    

Our editor is Quinn Waller.

About Blue City Blues 

Twenty years ago, Dan Savage encouraged progressives to move to blue cities to escape the reactionary politics of red places. And he got his wish. Over the last two decades, rural places have gotten redder and urban areas much bluer.  

 America’s bluest cities developed their own distinctive culture, politics and governance. They became the leading edge of a cultural transformation that reshaped progressivism, redefined urbanism and remade the Democratic Party.

But as blue cities went their own way, as they thrived as economically and culturally vibrant trend-setters, these urban cosmopolitan islands also developed their own distinctive set of problems. Inequality soared, and affordability tanked. And the conversation about those problems stagnated, relegated to the narrowly provincial local section of regional newspapers or local NPR programming. 

The Blue City Blues podcast aims to pick up where Savage’s Urban Archipelago idea left off, with a national perspective on the present and the future of urban America. We will consider blue cities as a collective whole. What unites them? What troubles them? What defines them? 

Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to [email protected]