Serenbe Stories

Charles Bethea on Journalism, Objectivity & The New Yorker

June 22, 2020 Serenbe / Charles Bethea Season 3 Episode 8
Serenbe Stories
Charles Bethea on Journalism, Objectivity & The New Yorker
Show Notes Transcript

This season we've talked with journalists, thought leaders, and influencers who've visited Serenbe, about how their lives and the industries they report on have changed in the wake of coronavirus. Today's guest is Charles Bethea, a journalist and staff write for The New Yorker who has been covering the pandemic and whose latest articles feature the first weekend of protests in Atlanta and Georgia's primary election. We talk with Charles about what stories he's working on, how his editors choose stories and how he remains objective throughout the reporting process.

Mentioned In The Episode

A Coronavirus Turf War In Klickitat County, Washington

Fair Fight - The organization created by Stacey Abrams that works to ensure fair elections in Georgia

Outside Magazine

Sally Bethea - Charles’ mother is the founding director of Chattahoochee Riverkeeper

Shrinking Newspapers and the Costs of Environmental Reporting in Coal Country

Survivor: How Nancy Writebol beat Ebola - Profile by Charles for Atlanta Magazine

The Polar Explorer Colin O’Brady and the Problem with “Firsts”

Monica Olsen (1s):
Hey guys, it's Monica here. I wanted to tell you about a new podcast that I've started with my very good friend, Jennifer Walsh called Biophilic Solutions. Our last season of Serenbe Stories, Building a Biophilic Movement, was so popular that we decided to dedicate an entire podcast to it. Every other week Jennifer and I will sit down with leaders in the growing field of biophilia. We'll talk about local and global solutions to help nurture the living, social, and economic systems that we all need to sustain future generations. More often than not, nature has the answers. You can find Biophilic Solutions on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and follow us today so you don't miss an episode. All right, now let's get back to Serenbe Stories.

Monica Olsen (43s):
Serenbe is a place where people live, work, learn, and play in celebration of life's beauty. And we're here to share the stories that connect residents and guests to each other, and to nature. This is Serenbe Stories. This season we've talked with journalists, thought leaders, and influencers who visited Serenbe about how their lives and the industries they report on have changed in the wake of the coronavirus.

Monica Olsen (1m 31s):
Today's guest is Charles Bethea, a journalist and staff writer for the New Yorker, who has been covering the pandemic and whose latest articles featured the first weekend of protests in Atlanta, and George's primary election. We talk with Charles about what stories he's working on, how his editors choose those stories, and how he remains objective throughout the reporting process.

Monica Olsen (1m 53s):
But first Serenbe Stories is brought to you by The Inn at Serenbe. The Inn is nestled in the rolling countryside of bucolic Serenbe, where guests can walk on the 15 miles of trails through preserved forest land, the wildflower meadow, and the animal village. You can relax by the pool, hot tub, or in rocking chairs on the wraparound porch. Play on the croquet lawn, swings, and in-ground trampolines. Connect with nature and each other all while staying in luxurious rooms on The Inn grounds or within the community of Serenbe. Book your stay today at serenbeinn.com.

Monica Olsen (2m 23s):
Hi everybody. Welcome back to Serenbe Stories. Charles Bethea is here today with us. Charles is an Atlanta native and he's written for a ton of different magazines, including outside Atlanta Magazine, Wall Street Journal, GQ, and he's currently a staff writer for the New Yorker. Charles, welcome to the podcast.

Charles Bethea (2m 41s):
Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here

Monica Olsen (2m 44s):
And we've got Steve here today. How are you, Steve?

Steve Nygren (2m 46s):
I'm good of all things.

Monica Olsen (2m 49s):
I love it. I know.

Steve Nygren (2m 51s):
I'm looking forward to the conversation with Charles.

Monica Olsen (2m 53s):
Definitely. Charles, tell us a little bit about what you're doing out in Oregon and why you're out there and why you're not in Atlanta. What's going on?

Charles Bethea (3m 2s):
So before the pandemic, before the deluge, before, before everything changed my partner and I had arranged a house sitting opportunity out here. It was sort of open-ended, the owner of this great house near the river, he took off to Calgary with his family and the house was vacant and I was looking for a place to work on projects that had different views, both literal, you know, views out the window, but also just talking to different people, you know, getting to know different topics and subjects and trying to sort of expand what I write about. I've been a Southern correspondent for awhile and I, at some point will probably branch out and move elsewhere. And this was sort of an opportunity to, to try that.

Charles Bethea (3m 4s):
So we've been here since mid March. We came out here just as everything was changing, beautiful place to be.

Monica Olsen (3m 50s):
Are you a big windsurfer or?

Charles Bethea (3m 52s):
No. I do most of the other things that are on offer here in the outdoors; skiing, mountain biking, road biking, gravel biking, everything you can do on a bike, hiking, trail running, even a little swimming in the cold water here. But I, no, I haven't tried the kite surfing. It looks both really fun and really hard to learn.

Monica Olsen (4m 12s):
Yeah. Yeah. It's such a beautiful little town. It's so quaint.

Charles Bethea (4m 17s):
Yeah. It's just opening back up. I'm actually just starting to get to know it better this week as businesses start to reopen.

Monica Olsen (4m 22s):
Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. So that's been a interesting beat that you've been covering. You've been covering COVID quite a bit. Is this something, had you ever done any kind of public health or in the, in the past? I feel like I had one of the first articles I read you had done an article on a runner. I want to say maybe for outside magazine, this is like three or four years ago.

Charles Bethea (4m 40s):
Hmm. Yeah. I've done a few running related pieces. I'm not sure which one you're referring to. Was it Fair Chase by chance?

Monica Olsen (4m 48s):
Yeah. Fair Chase. Yeah.

Charles Bethea (4m 50s):
Yeah, so that actually was turned into a little Netflix documentary that was available until recently about why we run. But yeah, I haven't done a whole lot of health-related reporting. I did do a little profile of a doctor in Georgia who responded to the Ebola outbreak a few years ago. But apart from that, I would say my, my writing has in the last couple of years, been mainly focused on politics, especially Southern politics. I covered Roy Moore's ill-fated campaign in Alabama, Jon Ossoff, Stacey Abrams, various, you know, Trump related things.

Charles Bethea (5m 32s):
And before that I was doing more of the sort of outdoor writing, Outside Magazine, Men's Journal, and all those other ones you mentioned. So, you know, a lot of like, like me, a lot of reporters now are having to shift into the public health writing world for obvious reasons. And I think it's good and useful to have folks switch gears.

Monica Olsen (5m 53s):
Yeah, definitely. I know that you grew up in Atlanta, right? And I want to say Steve, you knew, or know, Charles' mom.

Steve Nygren (6m 1s):
I mean absolutely. His mother's a legend here who, that's why I never have trouble with his face. It's just the same look as his mom. But no Sally Bethea is really responsible for cleaning up our river.

Charles Bethea (6m 17s):
Yeah. She is a hero. Thank you Steve.

Steve Nygren (6m 19s):
How was it growing up with such a powerful mom?

Charles Bethea (6m 22s):
Well, I'm sure most people can relate to this. You know, you see, you see your parents in one role and not so much their other like public facing role. So my view of my mom is, is of a wonderful nurturing, sometimes slightly more involved in, in my life and my brother's life than we wished kinda mom. But she also has this, you know, warriors river warrior sort of side of her that she developed over the years, that it's sort of hard for me to see those two things side-by-side because they're so different, but you know, the more I do the work that I do and even cover environmental and water related issues once in a while, the more I run up against her legacy, which is it, it is a pretty incredible one.

Monica Olsen (7m 7s):
Did you always want to be a journalist or did your mom encourage you? Or where, how did you choose that path?

Charles Bethea (7m 13s):
No, I was kind of subtly taught or encouraged that I was, I was going to be a lawyer. My father's was a lawyer. He retired a few years ago. He was also an English major like me and I always figured I would study English and then put it to use in a way that I could, you know, make money and do something sort of conventional. And as it came time to sort of like go down that path, the idea of law school was, was kind of onerous and overwhelming. And instead of going down that path, I got an internship at Outside Magazine. This was in 2005 outside of sort of the preeminent magazine that covers the world outdoors in all, in all the senses.

Charles Bethea (7m 59s):
And I got that internship, moved out to Santa Fe and lived there for four and a half years and still very much miss that part of the country covering those subjects is a little bit more fun, I would say, than going to a Trump rally. But you know, the work that I'm doing now feels in some ways more important not to, not to diminish at all the work at Outside Magazine, they do great stuff, but engaging with politics like I'm doing now, seems like it's kind of the number one subject, <inaudible>.

Monica Olsen (8m 35s):
So, speaking of politics, it's the day after the Georgia primaries. And we weren't really going to talk about politics today. We were really going to talk about COVID and journalism and what you're sort of seeing out there, but you put up a piece this morning for the New Yorker that was titled Georgia Betrays its Voters Again.

Charles Bethea (8m 55s):
Strong headline. I did not come up with that headline but I think there's ample ample reason to think. It's true.

Monica Olsen (9m 0s):
Yeah. So tell me a little bit about, I mean, you know, we all voted that are on the podcast here today and have been following the long lines and the broken machines or no paper and on and on and on, but tell us a little bit about from your perspective, like what you're hearing

Charles Bethea (9m 16s):
Well, as I think I mentioned to you guys, I wasn't planning on covering the primaries. I figured once I got back to Atlanta, I would probably cover, you know, the Ossoff campaign or some, some facet of the Senate race. But I, I woke up yesterday morning to a number of emails from voters, some of whom I'd spoken to in 2018 when I covered the midterms. And one of the, the, the folks that I spoke to was like, this is deja vu all over again. And there's the long lines, the broken machines, everything you just named seem to be happening again. And it was, it was both dumbfounding and sort of predictable to some that Georgia hadn't gotten its act together and made voting easier, more straightforward, more fair.

Charles Bethea (10m 5s):
So I did a piece, there was, you know, it was sort of a vignette that looked at the experience of three or four folks predominantly in the, the, the more blue collar and predominantly black parts of the city and the experiences they faced as compared to folks who go to elsewhere and just sort of heard their voices and, and juxtapose those voices with those of some of the state officials and county officials who were bickering over whose fault it was.

Monica Olsen (10m 35s):
And is anybody, is there an answer there? Cause I mean, what I sort of got out of the piece and I think we see this a lot in politics today is that they're pushing off, you know, or pushing down, you know, oh, it's the state's problem. Oh, it's the county's problem. Cause we, it's not our fault. We're not in charge of it. And so what did you see and why is that happening? You know, why does it continue to happen a year later we're still in the same place?

Charles Bethea (11m 1s):
I mean, I can only, I can only speculate. I haven't, I think that, to answer the question well requires, you know, really in depth reporting, but certainly the speculation is that one party, the Republican party, largely controls at the state level, how elections are run and it may be to their advantage to make it difficult for some folks to vote. As simple as that. And you know, how exactly that played out behind the scenes, whether the secretary of state Raffensperger or other folks, you know, deliberately made it difficult to vote, or if it was just a matter of incompetence or what have you, that that is yet to be sort of shown.

Charles Bethea (11m 42s):
But my piece was just more of a piece to look at the actual experience of the voters encountering these problems. And I think subsequent stories written by me and others will try to back the curtain a little bit.

Monica Olsen (11m 55s):
Do you have any suggestions of like, you know, obviously besides us getting out and vote, but you know how to use our voices to sort of help make that change? You know,

Charles Bethea (12m 5s):
I think that's a better question for activists, but I, I think, you know, just, just being aware, getting outside your own bubble, you know, focusing on the experiences maybe of those who are less fortunate, less privileged, who live in areas where voting is harder in the state of Georgia, just that awareness is useful and sharing that awareness. And, you know, I guess there, there are groups like Fair Fight, which is run by, started by Stacy Abrams, the Democrat. And they're trying to make it easier for, for these, these historically marginalized communities to, to vote. So I suppose, you know, getting involved with them could be beneficial, but as a journalist who tries to remain objective, I mean, I have my own views,

Charles Bethea (12m 51s):
I don't want to be too partial or partisan on that.

Monica Olsen (12m 54s):
Totally. Yeah, and I, and I think, you know, really it's, it's, it's all of us, like we're all in this together. And really, I, I so much dislike when we have to talk parties, you know, because it's really, we're all, we're all part of this. We should all find this solution and really be going for more people being able to vote and voice their opinion period.

Charles Bethea (13m 14s):
Yeah, exactly. It's not about, it's the thrust of the story. You know, I was talking to folks who were predominantly Democrats, but it wasn't about, you know, we need to get more people voting for Jon Ossoff. It's just about getting more people to vote, period. That's democracy.

Monica Olsen (13m 31s):
Definitely. Another piece you did, which I really think is interesting, probably from your time up there is the story totally different on COVID in Washington. This was about a story about a sheriff or two, a couple sheriffs. If you want to sort of set it up a little bit for us.

Charles Bethea (13m 45s):
Yeah. It's Hood River where I live is right across the Columbia River gorge from White Salmon, Washington and Klickitat county. And over there, the, the county is, is very polarized. You have on the Western edge of the county this, kind of like an Outside Magazine audience, sort of town called White Salmon. It's more liberal, it's more geared towards recreation. And then as you go east, you get these more sort of rural farming communities. And these folks who maybe are a little bit more inclined to vote conservatively and support the president.

Charles Bethea (14m 26s):
And there's a sheriff of the county who is aligned with the latter group over there in the east side of the county and the sheriff has been pushing back, like a handful of sheriffs in Washington, as well as in other states on the protocols established by the governor of the state, who is a Democrat. So you have this sort of power struggle between the more liberal governor of Washington and the more conservative sheriff in the county about how we move forward, about whether businesses should be open, about whether, you know, certain suggestions, strongly worded suggestions by the governor are indeed constitutional or right or just so you have this local versus statewide conflict set up.

Charles Bethea (15m 14s):
And even since the writing of that article, which, which outlined that sort of building tension, it's gotten, it's gotten more heated. And the sheriff, this guy, Bob Songer has come out and said that if contact tracers get sent to the county by the governor, he's going to, he's going to be open to arresting them for trespassing if they set foot on private property. So, you know, and a lot of those people are national guardsman who were going to be doing that work. So you're setting up kind of an insane conflict and it's all centered around how we move forward, which is playing out in different ways all over the country.

Monica Olsen (15m 54s):
Yeah. I mean, Steve, I've talked about this a lot that, you know, there's a lot of confusion out there, you know, it doesn't really matter where you sit and if you're supporting one side or the other from, from the politics, but even the WHO puts out stuff and it's like a little bit of confusing, you know, you can catch it from surfaces. No, no, no, you can't really, you know, oh, it is asymptomatic spreaders are everywhere. Oh no, no, no, no, you can't. So it, so it is understandable why people would be confused in, I don't know if, you know, I firmly believe that there is, you know, a pandemic. COVID is happening, but I just think that we've had such poor planning, you know, from the federal level and communication that there really isn't one voice.

Monica Olsen (16m 41s):
So to your point, everything has been set up for conflict.

Charles Bethea (16m 44s):
Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it is, it is scary. It's frustrating. And I think, you know, the wisest thing from my point of view, as a civilian as much as a journalist is to defer as much as possible to public health people, not politicians, whoever those, those public health people may be. And of course their views aren't as, or their understandings are still evolving. So, you know, I mean, we may hear conflicting things from public health officials, but clearly it's not useful for local politically motivated figures like sheriffs to, to wade into this and say things that are sort of inflammatory and potentially dangerous just to stir up their basic support.

Monica Olsen (17m 32s):
Right. I mean Steve, I know that you've seen, you know, with all of the hospitality here, we're obviously following all the protocols, all the CDC, you know, but, but it is hard because it's different state to state.

Steve Nygren (17m 44s):
Yeah. It's different from state to state and from country to country. It's going to be one the greatest lab experiences that the world has ever undertaken. Meanwhile, there're, there're, there're small businesses crashing, you know, and I'm not sure where, and we become so in extreme corners it feels that we haven't found that middle ground. That's the concern regarding everyone, public health officials, politicians, scientists. So it's a very frustrating time. And when you think of the other things that could be happening in the world, how are we going to face the next major crisis?

Steve Nygren(18m 26s):
Whether it's, you know, it's a food epidemic, something with our very fragile power grid. We are so disconnected and so lacking in leadership, it really takes pause because this isn't something that hasn't been predicted. It just is when.

Charles Bethea (18m 45s):
Yeah, and predicted by George Bush of all people in 2005 or something. It's not like we haven't heard this from both sides.

Monica Olsen (18m 51s):
Yeah. You know, dismantling the budget, whether that was a budgetary reason to put money elsewhere or the current president didn't like the past president so he's just attacking, you know, everything that they did. It's really been such a detriment to obviously the country and really globally. What else are you seeing in your reporting? You know? So, so that sort of like a snapshot of a sort of local state fight, you know, what are you seeing? What are you hearing out there overall that sort of different, you know, trends or?

Charles Bethea (19m 24s):
Well, one of the first things, like the second day I set foot in Hood River, I was just trying to wrap my head around the many facets of the pandemic as it unfolded. And the editor of the magazine, David Remnick sent an email I was copied on that said, Hey, we should, we should look into this, this, you know, this notion that people are going to start buying guns, just everyone's going to go out buying guns and liberals and Democrats who were opposed on in some way to guns are going to start buying them because they're petrified of the potential outcome of, I don't know, food shortages and people at their doors trying to take things. And so I went to a local gun shop here again, the day after I showed up, just hung out for a few hours.

Charles Bethea (20m 8s):
And within five minutes, a woman walked in who had never touched a gun in her life who was very much a liberal Democrat, lifelong Democrat. And she was there to get a gun because she thought people from Portland were going to be at running out of food in a month and were going to be coming to Hood River to, to pillage and plunder. And this was not, you know, not like a wildly paranoid person, as far as I can tell, generally, she seemed like she had a sound mind. So I did a piece for the magazine, for the talk of the town section I often write for that was, it was short, but it just captured that, that kind of moment. So I've been looking for a lot of those kinds of moments that show different ways in which the pandemic is really changing our society.

Steve Nygren (20m 53s):
And did you interview that woman in depth?

Charles Bethea (20m 57s):
So for those stories, it's less, it's less about like a, a one-on-one interview and more of a fly on the wall perspective. So I watched as she engaged with the shop owners who were very open about their support of the president and about the importance of gun rights above all. And I watched, so I watched them talk to her about what she was trying to do, and they were helpful, maybe a little patronizing to her. As she walked out, they were sorta like, man, there's just, there's lots of these types of liberals coming in here. I hope that I hope this opens their eyes to why guns are so important, et cetera.

Charles Bethea (21m 31s):
So I captured that scene, is maybe only a thousand words, the story, but it was less about, you know, me asking her to break down the second amendment and her views on it and more just capturing her moment of panic.

Steve Nygren (21m 46s):
Now, have you, have you talked to anyone, I think the interesting point is then this idea of our armed troops coming in to control the cities and this is the exact thing that people have been worried about.

Charles Bethea (22m 0s):
Yeah. Right. So it's yeah. So maybe so maybe, you know, in some ways their fears can be somewhat justified. The odd thing is it's the president that most of them support who's sending in the troops. It's kind of a weird, it's a weird scenario to say the least.

Monica Olsen (22m 16s):
Yeah. Well, and I think to go back to the piece, you do the, the piece in Washington on the sheriff, you know, it was really about constitutional rights that, that they felt that, and you hear this everywhere, you know, don't tell me you're taking away my right to leave my house. You're taking away my right to do the things that I do every day. Who are you to tell me, you know, these things?

Charles Bethea (22m 40s):
Yeah. It's that I think it's that like that tension that we've seen forever between Liberty and safety, I guess. The idea of there being regulations that are put in place to try to create the safest situation for everyone that yes, as a result, maybe I don't want to use the word infringe, although some would, they, they sort of tighten the, the notion of Liberty, some of these people want to feel, but it's done out of an abundance of caution.

Monica Olsen (23m 13s):
When you look back at like, you know, I was born in the seventies, but like seatbelt laws, that was fought. Airbags and seatbelt laws, or, or even after 9/11, you know, all of the changes that were made to the airplane so nobody could get into the cockpit, those were all fought by the airline industry. You know? So there is this interesting tension that happens when we have these dramatic crisises in America. And that sometimes, you know, I mean, can we imagine not driving with seatbelts now? You know, that sort of seems crazy.

Charles Bethea (23m 46s):
And to unpack that example you just did, one of the interesting things about, as I understand it at least, about the seatbelt thing is that obviously it was a good idea, but it had the unintended consequences of people starting to drive much more fast and recklessly once they wore seatbelts. And I haven't seen figures on this recently but somebody told me, that actually deaths went up at least in the short term. So, you know, these things are complicated.

Monica Olsen (24m 12s):
Yeah, definitely.

Charles Bethea (24m 13s):
No one's saying don't wear seatbelts or don't put them in cars, but you know, human behaviors is complex.

Steve Nygren (24m 20s):
One of the most interesting human behaviors is we now live in a smoke-free environment. And when I grew up, you would have never expected that. So it's, yeah I'm curious is, you know, growing up right in, you know, one of the great environmental households, how do you think this all might be affecting, talk about attitudes as, you know, have we become addicted to seeing blue skies and will the actual public start moving some of these things forward as they ended up doing when they got tired of sitting in smoke-filled rooms and saw the difference.

Charles Bethea (24m 51s):
Do you mean, you mean, as a result of the pandemic, people are engaged more with nature or they're going to care about it more now, or?

Steve Nygren (24m 57s):
That is correct. And places that have said, well, no matter what I do, it's not going to make a difference. And now they've seen in a very short time, our waters have cleared, our skies have cleared, the air has cleared. And I think it's, it's made everyone realize, oh, it is human behavior and it can be changed in a very short period of time.

Charles Bethea (25m 18s):
I haven't seen, you know, a big, big surveys of thoughts on that, but I think you're, I mean absolutely you're right that, an, an unintended consequence, unintended great consequence of the pandemic is that we are seeing these, these diminishing levels of pollution in air and water, et cetera. I do hope more people make the connection between their behaviors and that consequence. I can't, you know, I'm a little bit cynical. I'm not sure I'm full of hope on that, on that count, but I certainly hope so. I mean, in a place like LA where the air is suddenly, you know, you can see the sky and maybe see a few stars at night,

Charles Bethea (25m 57s):
It's surely people are connecting that with the fact that the highways aren't packed with cars. Or weren't. I don't know what the case is now, but that was at least initially that was what pictures coming out of LA looked like. So, yeah. I don't know Steve. I mean, I hope so. I don't know though, if people we're an accurate, you know, if the way we think about this as a reflection of how America does

Monica Olsen (26m 23s):
Well, and that brings up a good point of, you know, before sort of COVID was the news, and now obviously the protests are, are in the news, you know, there were these raging wildfires, remember those, you know? Yeah. And it's sort of like, it's just all pivoted. It's so interesting. Just culturally. And is it the media? Is it us? You know, just obviously these other topics are hugely important, but how we've, I really thought that 2020 was going to be sort of the year of the environment. Right?

Charles Bethea (26m 55s):
Right.

Monica Olsen (26m 57s):
I thought we were sort of on track to have that conversation and really start to maybe move that forward in a higher, in a, you know, further outside of sort of the green or environmental like-minded individuals.

Charles Bethea (27m 12s):
Yeah. I think there's reason to think that that was, that was the way things were going to play out. I think now maybe it's more of a secondary or tertiary story. It's still a very important story. It's the big story of the next few years or decades. But you know, when something like, when we get a video of a police officer kneeling on the neck of somebody, until he dies, clearly, that's, that's going to be raised up, rightly so, as a really important story that's reflective of another huge problem in this country, which is, or a few problems, racism, police brutality, et cetera. So, yeah, I don't know.

Charles Bethea (27m 48s):
I mean, I'm not going to say it's a bad thing that the, the climate story or the environmental story has taken a back seat. Hopefully they can coexist. But you know, when we talk about the media making choices, I'm, I'm sympathetic and obviously I'm biased as a member of the media, but the media and the New Yorker maybe is a little bit more immune to this than some magazines and papers cause the New Yorker, as I understand it, knock on wood, is doing pretty well financially. Most newspapers and magazines are not. You're seeing cuts across the board. And a lot, and I actually wrote a piece for the New Yorker a year or two ago about Kentucky newspaper, the Courier-Journal, and the cuts happening there that actually were, were largely, at least initially, on the environmental beat. They cut, they crunched some numbers and determined that they were going to have to cut most of the staffers, if not all of the staffers on that beat, because I guess fewer eyeballs were initially came into the paper to read those stories, even though those stories are critically important, especially in a state like Kentucky where you have all kinds of environmental problems.

Charles Bethea (29m 1s):
So at, at a paper that actually won a Pulitzer in the fifties on its coverage of environmental issues, we found not a designated environmental report. You know, so we have to be understanding when we talk about, or try to point fingers- and I'm not said you're doing this- but some people point fingers the media and say, Hey, you're missing this story or that story. Well, there's fewer and fewer people to cover stories. I mean, it's, it's tough. So, got to support the local papers and the national ones, if you can. To see stories covered.

Monica Olsen (29m 34s):
No, no, it's incredibly important. And I think the, you know, there's so much content out there as a consumer of media and of news it's very hard to figure out, you know, you know, where to even go for when you want coverage of something like that, because it's gotten so limited. And you know, so much of everything is just sort of yelling, you know, the latest moment at the top of your lungs, which you know, is super important in this time and day. But you know, you know, six, seven months ago, I'm like, I don't need any more politics, you know, I want actual substance. So that's a great thing about the New Yorker.

Monica Olsen (30m 12s):
And that's good to hear that they're doing well because that long format journalism is super, super important for somebody to be able to dive in to a topic and a story.

Charles Bethea (30m 22s):
Yeah. And the New Yorker's trying to, to do what it's always done, which is the long form stuff, but also get more engaged with breaking news. That's why the story that mine, that you read today, that's reflective of, that was the story I wrote, you know, in the, in 10, 10 hours following the election yesterday. There was no time to do something more in-depth than that because New York is trying to compete with and provide news that's breaking as well as the more considered, months long investigative stuff that I'm also doing occasionally. So yeah, the New Yorker, you know, here's a plug. You're like, I hope, I hope everybody supports it because

Monica Olsen (30m 59s):
You can subscribe at home here with an actual printed edition, you know, like it's rare to get paper in the house anymore, but we love it.

Charles Bethea (31m 7s):
Yeah. And the, the, the, the digital subscription is great too, you know. I write, I write probably 80 per 80% of my stuff is digital only and some 20% is print, but both places you'll find journalism that's fact-checked like none other in the industry, edited incredibly well, I benefit from some of the best editors, and I think the writers are okay too.

Monica Olsen (31m 31s):
No, your writing is like extremely compelling. And I think I need more of that in my life is cause it, everything is so short, quippy, Twitter, you know, these, you know, apple news, whatever it is. And to be able to sit with a piece and spend time is so rewarding, but I don't do it enough, you know? And I think we all need to be doing that.

Charles Bethea (31m 52s):
I mean, I don't get through every issue of The New Yorker either and I work there so.

Monica Olsen (31m 57s):
Yeah. Just skip through the cartoons and. What, what are you working on right now? Or what do you want to be working on? Like, are you, is it a two-way street? Do you pitch stuff up and they,  or are they sort of pushing you specifically on certain topics?

Charles Bethea (32m 12s):
Well, I think I was hired, so I was, to go back a couple of years, I was hired as part of an experiment they were doing when they got an infusion of money from the parent company, Conde Nast, to try to have more satellite reporters and satellite offices. I mean, historically New Yorker writers have lived everywhere, but they're trying really hard to have regional writers who understand those regions rather than parachuting in. So I was hired a few years ago as a Southern correspondent for the magazine. And I was hired not coincidentally around the time Trump was elected. So, you know, they wanted me to tell those stories and I don't come, I didn't come into it with a political background as a political reporter at all, I just came into the job with an ability to tell human stories.

Charles Bethea (32m 57s):
And if they intersect with politics fine. Yeah, so I didn't come into the job at the New Yorker with a great deal of political reporting experience, or if I'm being honest, even an interest in devoting my career to politics but. And I don't think I have, but they've leaned on me heavily for that kind of stuff coming out of the south the last few years for good reason. I mean, there's, there's a lot of important political stories to tell that reflect on the south and the country as a whole. So I've worked on that stuff and they've directed me towards a lot of political stuff, but they're open to, to me doing other things. I mean, I wrote about, of all things I wrote about, and this is kind of an Outside Magazine type topic, but a debate over a polar expedition record that was sat a few months ago by Colin O'Brady

Charles Bethea (33m 47s):
And there was a huge kerfuffle in that world about whether or not it was truly a first and what constitutes a first. So, you know, I still kind of move around and do different things depending on my time and my interests and my interests are more wide ranging than just politics. So to the question of what I'm doing now, I it's actually, I can't get into too much detail, I'd be happy to chat off the record about it, but it has to do with, with a, a rather privileged community in Atlanta and how it's dealt with COVID and how authorities have, or haven't really investigated it the way they have other areas of the state, such as south Georgia, where I wrote a piece about Albany. And the predominantly black community down there that had a few funerals that led to some, some outbreaks and that story, which I told, but other people told as well was one that we quickly heard a lot about.

Charles Bethea (34m 47s):
It was much more transparent what had happened and the state investigated it and numbers came out and we knew what happened. There's a sort of a similar story about an emerging outbreak in the, in Georgia that that's happened later, mainly among richer white folks, that, that, there's still a lot of question marks around. So I've been trying to dig into that and understand why it is we don't know as much about that. So that's, that's one thing I'm looking at, right now. But I don't know, I mean, I may be directed to, to do some other breaking news stuff that that's more of a long-term project.

Monica Olsen (35m 22s):
Yeah. Do you think that when you, whether you come back to Atlanta permanently, or you had mentioned that maybe, you know, you'll sort of go back out, maybe west again, will you be looking, what, like what type of neighborhood or place will you be looking for? Cause I think nature, I mean, obviously all us on this, this interview are huge supporters and passionate about it, but has it changed you by living in the river?

Charles Bethea (35m 46s):
It's, it's reconfirmed feelings I've long had. I mean, it's, it's not as if this is the first time I've lived in more harmony with nature, but it is a good reminder of how important that is to me. And I don't say that in a throwaway way, like it really is. I feel a lot better, just more grounded, more peace, whatever cliche you want to use. It, they're all true. Being closer to nature and being able to engage with the trails that abound out here. And, you know, I don't, I don't want to hate on Atlanta, downtown Atlanta even has some surprising amount of parks and trails of its own.

Charles Bethea (36m 24s):
And then Serenbe not far off from Atlanta offers even more. So yeah. I think when I returned to Atlanta, I'm going to try to prioritize to the degree I can, those experiences. And then more long-term looking at moving back to a place, that whether it's in the south or the west or whatever, that, is more kind of in the middle of nature. But I, I do want to say that like people in Atlanta, many of them don't realize how much there actually is to do, whether it's the Chattahoochee, whether it's stuff in north Georgia, or whether it's, you know, some trails, little mountain bike trails that go through downtown, like there's in Serenbe, but there's a lot for people in Atlanta that they don't realize.

Monica Olsen (37m 10s):
Definitely. Well, and I think, you know, there's, everybody's still trying to connect it all together, right? Steve, the path with the river, with the BeltLine,

Steve Nygren (37m 19s):
Yeah, I mean, thankful for what your mother did, there was interest in the river again. And so now the new RiverLands project really looks at the corridor, so the mile on each side, so that's a 200 square miles running right through Atlanta from Buford down to south of us.

Charles Bethea (37m 37s):
Yeah, it's incredible.

Steve Nygren (37m 38s):
Yeah. And so that could be one of the largest recreation corridor is in a major city.

Charles Bethea (37m 42s):
Yeah, I don't, I don't know enough about it. Like much of my mom's work.

Steve Nygren (37m 47s):
That's sort of what she did lay the groundwork that this could come on and trust for public land and the Atlanta regional commission has really taken this off.

Monica Olsen (37m 57s):
Definitely.

Steve Nygren (37m 58s):
I'll send you some stuff. It may be another great story.

Charles Bethea (37m 59s):
Please yeah. Yeah. I mean, when I, if and when I get the chance to experience Serenbe again, cause it has been a few years since I've spent more than an hour or two there, I would love to talk about story ideas with you.

Monica Olsen (38m 13s):
The last thing I just want to touch on is, just to keep on the COVID it's so interesting is that, you know, we were talking that, you know, numbers are starting to spike and I know everybody's trying to attribute it to different things. Do you think that you'll be covering more of that along with these stories that you're speaking of? Like just in general?

Charles Bethea (38m 32s):
Yeah. I think as the health threat remains moderate to high, they're going to want me to help, you know, articulate why that's happening to the best degree that I can and what the impacts are, both to health, but also perhaps to politics. I'd be very, to anybody listening, I'm very curious to hear about Republicans, maybe folks who voted for Trump who have been moved by the pandemic in some way to shift their thinking around politics. So please reach out to, I don't know to you guys, or to me. I'm at charles_bethea@newyorker.com.

Monica Olsen (39m 10s):
Perfect. We'll add that to our show notes too, for you.

Steve Nygren (39m 13s):
Charles, the interesting thing, you know, I've heard this, especially from like California, some of the states that have had a real shutdown, they have sort of sympathized with some of the Republicans. And so it's, I think it's going both ways interestingly enough.

Charles Bethea (39m 29s):
Yeah, I don't, I don't mean to suggest that it could only go one way, but I think it's interesting that so it's, you know, from a democratic point of view, at least Trump has done so many agregious things that haven't really impacted his core support, that his handling of the pandemic or his overseeing a pandemic where a hundred and what 15,000 people have died? Does that crack any of his support or not as an interesting question.

Monica Olsen (39m 53s):
Well, and I would layer on like, does all of the, everything that's going on with the protests and his handling of it, is that actually what's really starting to crack.

Charles Bethea (40m 1s):
That too. Right. Exactly. I mean, those are two, at least two recent avenues that could contribute to cracking of the support that's been so steadfast. So we'll see.

Monica Olsen (40m 11s):
We will see.

Charles Bethea (40m 12s):
<inaudible> is pulling ahead.

Monica Olsen (40m 13s):
I know, I know, I think it's an important time to be engaged. And so I really, really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us because I think people need to be reading the New Yorker, they need to be having conversations, and they needed to be understanding what's happening so they can make change.

Charles Bethea (40m 29s):
Thanks so much. I agree with that. Thank you so much.

Monica Olsen (40m 32s):
Well, we hope to have you down soon and thanks for being with us.

Charles Bethea (40m 36s):
Yeah, no problem. Thanks so much.

Steve Nygren (40m 37s):
Thanks Charles. Take care.

Charles Bethea (40m 38s):
Alright, thank you all.

Monica Olsen (40m 42s):
There are two rubrics in building a city. You can follow the sprawl mentality or you can preserve land while boosting economic development. Serenbe builds and designs to be both beautiful and environmentally sustainable.

Monica Olsen (40m 54s):
If you're a city planner, developer, land owner, or policy maker, there common sense solutions you can take to build a biophilic centered community. Attend the Nygren placemaking conference this fall to learn more. Details at nygrenplacemaking.com. That's nygrenplacemaking.com.

Monica Olsen (41m 25s): 
Thank you for listening to Serenbe Stories. New episodes are available on Mondays. Please rate and review the podcast and make sure to email your questions for Steve Nygren to stories@serenbe.com. You may even get to hear them on the podcast.

Monica Olsen (41m 37s):
More details about episodes and guests are available on our website, serenbestories.com.