Steve Inskeep

One of my six rules for media survival: 1/2

Rather than a poll or even a focus group, I walk through neighborhoods at election time, knocking on doors and talking with people on the street. Whoever answers, that’s my story. You learn a lot when you find people where they live. 1/2

Here’s a revolutionary idea: In the age of the internet and AI, of manufactured reality, of screens upon screens where we all seem to be slipping toward the dream world of The Matrix, it’s helpful to meet human beings face to face. 1/2

One way to think of voters this fall: the determined v. the disappointed. Based on voter interveiws on Georgia, here’s part of my exchange with Fredricka Whitfield of @cnn.com:

It’s commonplace to say that America can’t build great public works anymore. And there’s much truth in that - in which generation will California finish its high speed rail? But in some recent travel I came across two counter-examples that at least complicate the picture. 1/2

Here are two more of six rules for news media survival, offered in a lecture series named for a legendary president of CBS News: 1/2

One of six rules for media survival that I offered in the Richard Salant lecture, named in honor of a legendary president of CBS News. 1/2

One of six rules for media survival, which I outlined in a speech named after Richard Salant, a legendary president of CBS News. 1/2

This week I was asked to give a speech in a series that is named after Richard Salant, a legendary president of CBS News.

My friend Scott Detrow has Pope Leo’s delightful backstory. 1/2

It’s worth a careful listen to the NPR interview with Tucker Carlson. He does not say Trump simply made a bad choice on Iran or ignored the risks. Carlson asserts that Trump was *not in control.* “I don’t think he had the latitude to make this decision on his own.” 1/2

Sometimes it’s hard to confront inconvenient facts. An example: 1/2

Sometimes the person silencing you is you. That was true in “Woke 1” for many progressives and true in Trump 2 for many conservatives.

The wars after 9/11 brought long-term costs for America and the world. My reflections on covering 9/11 and the years afterward. 1/2

A book about 1861 argues that unstable times may not work out as badly as they seem.

On NPR’s Newsmakers: The influential pastor who believes most women should be denied the vote. open.substack.com/pub/steveins...

In an NPR interview, Israeli Ambassador Michael Leiter says Israeli forces are not leaving Lebanon as part of a peace deal: “We’re not going to withdraw from southern Lebanon.” Iran claimed Israel must withdraw. Will post full interview below.

The announcement of a tentative peace agreement in the U.S. war against Iran sent me looking for the text of another inconclusive peace deal: The Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812 with no measurable gain. The parallels are helpful to consider. 1/3

Whatever the exact war aims—and the cloudiness of those aims was surely part of the problem—the war didn’t achieve them. The Treaty of Ghent, concluded through negotiations in Belgium in December 1814, explicitly said that everything was to be put back the way it was before. 2/3

"Slowly is the fastest way to get where you want to be." Broadway star Andre De Shields famously said this when winning a Tony award at 73, but says people misunderstand his meaning. 1/2