Federalist Radio Hour America Is Due For A Real Reporting Revival
Jan 27, 2026
Ryan Wolf, director of the Center for Excellence in Journalism who runs training and fellowship programs for young reporters, discusses the collapse of local papers and changing career paths. He talks about the end of clickbait-era models and efforts to rebuild reporting skills. Conversation covers independent shoe-leather investigations, the rise of influencer-driven news, and AI’s mixed effects on journalism.
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Train Reporters Inside Major Opinion Rooms
- Launch practical fellowships that place young journalists inside major opinion pages to broaden newsroom viewpoints.
- Place fellows at outlets like The Washington Post and Boston Globe for nine-month rotations to reach new audiences.
Collapse Of The Old Local-To-National Pipeline
- Local and regional news pipelines have collapsed and the click-driven digital era that replaced them is also fading.
- That structural collapse forces media to reinvent revenue and audience strategies.
Opinion Pages Versus News Desks
- Newsrooms and opinion pages follow different incentive structures; opinion pages can more easily host ideological diversity.
- News desks may face a longer path to regain public trust because they present as objective but act otherwise.