Peter Madsen, Investigative and Features Reporter for the Lay It Out Foundation

In this episode of Bend Don’t Break, Aaron Switzer sits down with Peter Madsen, an investigative and features reporter supported by the Lay It Out Foundation. Peter shares his journey from writing for Vice and Thrasher in New York City to becoming one of Central Oregon’s most prolific storytellers.

The conversation dives into Peter’s passion for long-form journalism, the challenges of investigative reporting in a small community, and why he believes local news is essential for a healthy democracy. From his early days as a bike messenger in Manhattan to his current work uncovering stories that matter in Bend, Peter reflects on ambition, integrity, and the evolving role of media in our lives. Tune in for a candid discussion about local storytelling.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to the Ben Don't Break Podcast. We are powered by the Source, Ben's locally owned media company and weekly newspaper. This podcast is our eddy in the rushing waters of local journalism. We are glad that you are taking some of your time to listen to us chat with the people who shape our local community. Support us through our member program at Bensource.com.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Thank you to our presenting sponsor, Remax Key Properties, a family-owned, full-service real estate brokerage specializing in residential, luxury, commercial, new construction, and ranch and land properties. Their new state-of-the-art facility at 42 Greenwood Avenue is a modern collaborative space and the new home of the Ben Don't Break Podcast Recording Studio.

SPEAKER_02 0:45

I'm Aaron Sweitzer, publisher of The Source and producer of the Ben Don't Break Podcast with compatriot and fellow producer Meg and Burton. Today our guest is Peter Madsen. He is a features and investigative reporter supported by the Lay It Out Foundation, and his work regularly appears in The Source. Peter is part of our navel gazing Christmas podcast adventure. We're starting today. Peter's arts and culture writing has appeared in Vice, Thrasher, and the New York Times. He moved from New York City to Bend in 2016. Counting his time with the Laid Out Foundation, Peter has written over 400 stories about Central Oregon. Prior to taking the investigative post with the foundation, Peter worked on the Canadian Screen Award-winning documentary, It's Not Funny Anymore, from Vice Magazine to Proud Boys. Peter is, if or to clarify, Laid Out Foundation is uh closely associated with um the source, and Peter's been a big part of uh work that we've been doing lately. So we wanted to pull in for readers and get a uh and have you guys learn a little bit more about Peter. So thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 1:58

So were you brought up in New York? I mean, you says in your bio 2016, you moved here. How long were you in New York?

SPEAKER_01 2:07

Uh eight years. Okay. So I moved there when I was 23, uh, just a couple years out of undergrad, and I went to the to to the University of Iowa. They have a good good J school there. Um, yeah, but prior to that, I I lived in Iowa, Hawaii, Spain, and Mexico. So that's why I kind of start with New York. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:27

Was that prior to going to uh J school?

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Yeah, yeah. Well, mostly, yeah. My my dad is a retired airline pilot. Okay. So we lived in the Twin Cities area, big airline hub. Yeah. Then we moved to Hawaii because they want to station pilots out there to fly to Asia and Australia. So that was fun, fourth and fifth grade, getting a boogie board and skateboard and mountain bike. Like, yeah, that's why I like Ben so much because you can it the the vibe is still the island vibe is here.

SPEAKER_02 2:55

Yeah, a lot of people, uh I mean, it wasn't it's not as true, or maybe it's as true and it's been watered down, but there was a period in the ear late 90s when we first started the paper. There were so many Hawaiian people that had Hawaii homes in Hawaii and also here or transplants. So there was this kind of island there. Bend has always had this undercurrent of island vibe.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Yeah, I feel like it's because we have so much public land here. Yeah, whereas on the island chain, the public land is is water. There's a lot of private land. So, like the idea of like getting to tear around on a mountain bike or on a snowboard, yeah, you know, in the mountains, uh on snow is really appealing.

SPEAKER_02 3:33

Yeah. So um, where were you prior to moving to New York?

SPEAKER_01 3:38

I was in San Francisco. Doing just good working at a bookshop.

SPEAKER_02 3:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

Um that's a good start for any writer. I think it really was. It really was. Each day I walked home with a book stuck in my woo in my waistband. So I expanded my my my reading list, but I was freelancing for uh SF Weekly little music blurbs, previews to shows, and and I started doing artist interviews for Thrasher magazine, which is headquartered there. Yeah. As a skate rat, that was like so excited.

SPEAKER_02 4:09

That's cool. And uh, I mean it was just and especially then Thrasher's reputation was through the roof. I mean, it was a great time to be there.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

Oh, totally, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:16

I mean, like seeing not that its reputation's waned, but it was so prominent.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Well, it's you know, it's still the only printed uh monthly skateboard magazine, it's still pretty thick. Yeah, I subscribe, it's like 150 pages. Yeah, so it's still like the kind of CNN of pro skateboarding. It's yeah, hell skating.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

What was your first experience walking into the SF Weekly environment? I mean, what what was that? What was that like for you? Because that was your first exposure to journalism.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

Well, well, we get backtracked a little bit, and I because I just I never went in the office at SF Weekly. Okay, but intern at the city pages in Minneapolis, okay, which is owned uh then by the village by Village Voice Media, which also owned SF Weekly. So I interned there, I did some freelance writing for them on top of my calendar duties, and uh they were like, Well, you did a great job, you know, let us know what you're gonna do after college, you hit the ground running. And then, as you know, the New Times like merger with Village Voice happened, and there was this like a bloodletting in this newsroom among the editors and writers I had kind of worked with. And so I was like, shoot, where do I go now?

SPEAKER_02 5:29

I'm sure there's like five people watching this who understand what the New Times Village Voice merger. Well, I mean, most people know the Village Voice name, yeah, and that it was one of the first weeklies. Norman Mailer worked there. It it was immensely influential. And New Times, to their credit, at uh as they grew and expanded, was another forerunner of Alt Weeklies and had their own kind of brand. They were very much more focused on commercial, the commercial aspect of Alt Weeklies than I think Village Voice. But when they merged, it kind of rocked all the alt weekly world who that had seen themselves as being little independent bugs running around in the in the country. And when they merged, um, it was pretty clear times were changing for alt weekly news business. We were mainstreaming.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Right. Yeah, and that's that seemed to kind of run against the grain of a lot of the alt-journalists, uh our like value system. It's it's not like indie as an indie rock as a look, it was like indie, like uh as as as a political um way of operating with within the economy. It's anti-establishment, anti-corporate, and just kind of ate itself. So yeah, I booked it to New York because Vice at this time, 2008, yeah, was in Forbes. It's one of the fastest growing media companies. So a friend got a job there as a video editor, and I weaseled my way in.

SPEAKER_02 6:55

You turned your back on print for a while.

SPEAKER_01 6:57

Well, they were here's the thing they had a free glossy magazine, yeah, and that's what attracted me, but they were growing their video um kind of department in a big way within like five years. They'd be doing deals with HBO, they'd be carving out their own like news department. Yeah. But I was stuck in the marketing department, so I was like really frustrated. Right. It's like I'm a journalist, dang it. Like I'm copywriting from Mountain Dew and like all park Franks. I'm like, this is so antithetical.

SPEAKER_02 7:27

Well, I want to go before we get too far down the road. Go take me back to interning at City Pages. Like, you walk into that environment. What was that like for for a young Peter Madsen?

SPEAKER_01 7:39

For young Peter Madsen and still for a 42-year-old Peter Madsen, walk into alt weekly office is pretty cool. Um I I love the amount of the the the I mean everyone there is was is uh very I mean I was I was so in awe of how smart and knowledgeable people were in their writing with this sassy attitude. I mean, I just thought it was the coolest thing ever. Yeah, you know, you can really cop an attitude if you know what you're talking about, and that's what they certainly did. Yeah, and I as a very formative, you know, young journalist, and I wanted to aspire to have that confidence to write with the voice earned by knowledge and research reporting.

SPEAKER_02 8:20

Not uninformed and straight from the hip.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Yep, that's what the comment section is for.

SPEAKER_02 8:25

Right, right. Well, I think I think that it's it's in it must be interesting. I remember when we would bring in, and it's still true today when you bring in a lot of writers, they're always very shocked if they've come from well, pretty much any other journalistic area that you know, you're encouraged to have a voice. You're encouraged to step out from the that AP style, which I've always abhorred, coming from an English background. And um to kind of wide-eyed, you know, new writers who get in that environment like, wait, I can use first person sometimes, and I can do, I can say things, and I can, you know, we we would say, you know, go in objective, but when you when you understand the environment, you want to let people know what you found. I don't want you to, you know, bite your tongue. So um it's different.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

It's different. Yeah, I think it's more genuine. It's it's a more I I find that the interaction we have with with readers uh to be a much more it it it's it's much more similar to the kind of conversations we have in the real world with readers or just people in our world and around town. It's conversational, it's chatty, we'll you know, we we swear, like we'll say we'll write we'll writers say things like A V, you know, like you can't do that like if you're writing for uh USA Today. Right.

SPEAKER_02 9:45

So uh continuing on your meandering path to Ben. So when you got to when you're working at Vice, yeah, you you did manage to get out of the marketing department.

SPEAKER_01 9:57

I didn't. Well, I did by writing for the competition and then getting getting laid off. Uh so then I'm like, okay, what do I do? Right. I after after a year at Vice, I saw how the sausage was made.

SPEAKER_02 10:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

And a lot of stuff's come out, exposes about how exploitive they were and how disingenuous they were in terms of their of the journalism they were per purporting to make, especially with video. I mean, I saw how like a a sponsor would would a corporate sponsor would you know pay money for this this video series, but they would have they they could like cut out anything with teeth, and they did. So I'm like that went against the ethics I learned in J School, and it wasn't the work I wanted to do. So, what work can I do? I didn't need to keep a roof from my head. I started working as a bike messenger in Manhattan while freelancing.

SPEAKER_02 10:46

Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

So yeah, five years as a wild child in the streets.

SPEAKER_02 10:50

Yeah, my son, my son's in New York, rides his bike around a lot, sent me some of I wish I could remember the title of it, but there was a documentary about bike messengers in the 80s. Oh, I've seen it. Awesome, it's scary. Awesome documentary, and how they took their life in their own hands, and over the course of the documentary, they would just get busted up.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it it happens to you. You're gonna get arrested for something, you're gonna get hit by a cab, you're gonna get robbed. Yeah, all these things happen to me.

SPEAKER_02 11:19

But uh well, journalism is starting to look better and better for you as a career choice. Yeah, given given where you where you were there.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Yeah, yeah. It's funny that you know, my my my my early career ambitions have come full circle as I enter my early 40s. I wouldn't I wouldn't believe myself when an you know if I told if I had said I've I'll be at an alt weekly doing investigations and also arts and culture writing alongside it. I mean, yeah, I really thought that like that the alt weekly dream just it died in 2007.

SPEAKER_02 11:52

We're still here.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

God bless you.

SPEAKER_02 11:55

Did um so what's the um so what's the motivation for Ben? I mean, you're in New York. Why why come out here?

SPEAKER_01 12:03

Well, I I have this equip, and people who know me know I've trotted it out a few times, but I like to say I traded 8 million for 8 million ponderosas. Um I needed like a hipster detox, a status anxiety detox, and and you know, increasingly riding the city, I wanted to go out country roads and I was doing that, but I wanted to get in mountain biking, cycle across, yeah, skiing, and uh just a more genuine way of operating in the world. And so it gave me the opportunity to chill out.

SPEAKER_02 12:35

What uh so straight from New York to here. Yeah, what was that like when you landed?

SPEAKER_01 12:41

Culture shock. Culture shock. Um, I mean, I stuck out as a cisgender, straight passing white guy. Like I stuck out, right? I still get teased. I was I I wear a scarf, like a wool scarf, a nice scarf. I get teased. Like this is a town that doesn't wear scarves.

SPEAKER_02 12:58

No, I mean, so there's a no, that's wrong. You can't protect your neck unless it's gear. I went from see you don't have gear. Scarf would be an accoutrement. But but if you if you put a you know, you pull a balaclava on or something, I'm ready to sum itself sister. Then you're there, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:16

It's gotta be fleece, it can't be wool.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

Oh no, I like I'm wearing I'm wearing duck cloth and wool and uh wearing a shirt with ducks on it.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

I mean, yeah, it's east coast, man. It's still on you, it's still clinging to you. I guess I guess so. I also read books.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

I mean, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:32

Okay, yeah, that's east. Well, that's Portland. There's a lot of folks in Portland, too. Spent four years in Portland, so um, you did a stint at the daily here.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Yeah, I did.

SPEAKER_02 13:43

Yeah, and how long were you how long were you there? Because that's where you kind of we got really in deep into the culture here.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

I did, yeah. That's why how I met a lot of people and I got to learn how systems work. Um, I was there precisely three years. Yeah. Okay. Precisely. I wanted to look very purposeful.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

Yeah. And then you went back to school, correct?

SPEAKER_01 14:04

Yeah, grad school during COVID. I timed that perfectly.

SPEAKER_02 14:07

Yeah, that is a good move.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

And I explored audio journalism um and documentary filmmaking, and uh moved to Portland, worked on some documentaries.

unknown 14:17

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:18

Um tell us a little bit about the documentary.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Well, yeah, one was uh branded documentary for Bill Gates' book about climate change. It was also frustrating. It reminded me of my time in Vice at this at this studio. They're like, this is journalism that we're doing, and then the next week he'd be like, This isn't journalism what we're doing. So I was like just dizzy.

SPEAKER_02 14:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

Um so the work was exciting, but um what was the theme? It was just climate, it was five if five different groups, organizations, nonprofits, technologies are helping us get to know uh a race to zero carb carbon emissions by 2050. That's like Bill Gates's well, he's kind of like walked that he's backing it, he's walking it back a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 15:04

He walked it back. Yeah, yeah, not it's not as bad as as he thought. Well, I think is the is the theme right now.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

I'd probably feel better about climate change if I was a b billionaire as well. I mean, right. You just get your super yacht take off for the Arctic.

SPEAKER_02 15:19

Is he? I know uh Zuckerman's a super yachtter, but is is Gates a super? I know he's got the he's got the water plane.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 15:26

I know that there's a water plane involved.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

Well, I'd be disappointed if he wasn't a super yachtter. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 15:30

You would think.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

Gosh.

SPEAKER_02 15:32

So uh, but you did your own documentary, not for what was it, not for laughs?

SPEAKER_01 15:38

Or uh it's not funny anymore. Yeah. Uh from Vice magazine to Proud Boys. I I was hired on uh to a crew. Um, this is a fun story. One of the most uh well-known uh roving Vice correspondents, Thomas Morton. Uh we stayed in touch and he invited me to be a researcher and also a subject in this documentary where we traced the anti-PC origins of like the zine culture and comic culture that Vice came up in in the 90s in Montreal to the alt right, um, 4chan, like con contrarian racist, sexist, etc. stuff you see today. And the through line is that one of the founders of Vice, get uh Gavin McKinnis, uh was bought out of Vice in 2008, and then 2016 starts at Proud Boys. 2018 they turn into what they we we know them as today.

SPEAKER_02 16:35

Yeah, and so it's kind of like I didn't realize they were tied to Vice. I just I need to look to see your documentary.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

I'm yeah, I'll send you a link. Uh uh it's they it there's a through line, there's like an ED, there's like a contrarian edgelord through line in the the sensibility, yeah. And we chart that while also doing like a collective reckoning of like, uh, we should probably kind of do like a group therapy session here for the benefit of the public.

SPEAKER_02 17:03

Yeah. Was that the last documentary you worked on?

SPEAKER_01 17:06

Yes, yeah, yeah. I you know, I I like it's exciting to work in documentaries, it takes so long to make them, they're so expensive, they might not get distributed. So I missed the like immediacy of writing for a local audience for a publication that people trust, and and and happily I saw the job posting, you know, uh earlier this year, April or no, uh in the spring.

SPEAKER_02 17:31

Yeah, yeah, I think it was we we posted in March or April.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

Yeah, I started April.

SPEAKER_02 17:36

Megan's over there, the one who posted.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Started April 1st. That was my first day, I think.

SPEAKER_02 17:42

So well, I know um now you are uh you're doing great work.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Thanks.

SPEAKER_02 17:48

And you're doing deeper dives. And uh I'm fortunate that the paper still is a medium by which we can do longer form journalism, which in case readers don't know, is an endangered species. Uh but uh how how do you find that kind of work? It's it's uh you you gotta keep a lot of balls in the air and keep dogging dogging the stories to get to get it them built up and get the information you need. It's not turn and press releases.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

No, it's certainly not. Um I for the way I I've entered this heightened kind of root responsibility and storytelling is I I'm coming from a background of arts and culture writing, human interests, profiles, narrative storytelling, and those things lend themselves really well. The kind of like skills you hone and getting good at that lend themselves really good to long-form investigative work. So being able to like bolster my narratives with deep dives, like you know, um getting uh record requests. The one the most recent one I got uh had the word confidential on it, so I feel a little bit like a sleuth. But it's it's very much in line with it with the long-form narrative journalism I love have loved since I was in like in in undergrad. New York magazine, the New Yorker, New York Times, New York Times magazine, I mean The Atlantic, those are that's like the the big leagues. But every time I read long narrative feature in any of those publications, I'm just like I just love the storytelling.

SPEAKER_02 19:26

What do you what do you think about people who say that um you know nobody's got the attention span for that kind of that kind of thing anymore? Why why continue it? I mean, why continue writing in that way? I mean, Megan's generation, she they can't track that. I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_01 19:47

I I don't have I did this yeah, I this is just what I I do. Yeah. I it just I'm stubborn and short-sighted. I will, you know, I will do narrative investigative work right off the edge of a cliff. Like I I think though I we just kind of feel called to this kind of kind of work. It's yeah, I I can't, I I it's I don't I I don't have as much agency as you might think. Like this is what I do.

SPEAKER_02 20:14

I I stand by behind it just because I think that inevitably long form storytelling always will have a place. Whether, you know, maybe it starts transforming into something having some kind of video component, but um ultimately when you get to a story, the end of a story, and there's not the rest of the story, you know, there's a lot of journalism where I think where you read the story and you're like, wait a minute, I didn't hear from X, Y, and Z people in this. I don't know what happened to so and so. You don't know if there's another story coming. Um, you kind of want it wrapped up in a bow. And unless you give people the room to run on something like that, you don't ever get the bow. You just get the like, well, I hope we hear from this writer again.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Yeah, I hope we get an update.

unknown 21:01

Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Yeah. I mean, there's just uh so much of my favorite stories, whether they're films, um, you know, the origin was uh a piece of nonfiction writing. Maybe it was a s a script based on true events or it was based on long-form narrative reporting. I'm thinking of like Truman Capote. Like he he got the idea for a long for his nonfiction novel he called it by reading just a little snippet of a murder in Kansas and an AP wire. And then he's like, There's so much more to this story. And then he went and just wrote this beautiful book about it.

SPEAKER_02 21:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

And then he gave a movie out of it.

SPEAKER_02 21:38

Yeah. The uh you've been in the industry long enough to see a lot of change. What how do you what's your perception of that change and where do you think it's heading?

SPEAKER_01 21:51

I feel like it we're kind of I I feel like the reading public is replacing more important. On journalistic institutions they trust, especially locally owned ones. I feel like the donation kind of found um setup with newsrooms being nonprofits or partial nonprofits. Yeah. I think people are understanding that if we want a free society, we need to have journalists empowered to hold, you know, pop politicians to account to make sure that they're being straight with us. Without that, you know, you can't really do an investigation on TikTok. As addictive and fun as social media is, you know, it's you're not gonna have the the stable society that we we we have called America for so long.

SPEAKER_02 22:44

The um I should say for people who are listening, Peter's position is entirely funded through donations from the from the local community. So it is a different model. And um I find it very cool that in a way and these these people support it. It's there's no strings attached other than you know, quality control on, you know, it making sure that the features are well written and well documented. And I believe there's one other stipulation about uh must-have statistical basis in some of the reporting.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

Yeah, d data driven.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

Data driven, yeah. Right. So it's very cool and it's very new. I I when we first established the foundation, um, and this was just coming out of the pandemic when the model, I mean, it does it doesn't seem that that long ago, but the model even then was very new. Um, a lot of questions. Is it possible? Is it will will anything come of it? Some people have taken to education, some people work on, you know, some foundational, but the the foundations like uh the laid out foundation that actually uses those funds to hire very rare. And um and it's cool. It's cool to see that there is more accountability in the community because uh people are supporting the work that you do.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

I appreciate that very much.

SPEAKER_02 24:07

Yeah. Um and what do you what do you look forward to? I mean, as you look down the road at your own writing, what what are the aspirations and hopes that you have for yourself?

SPEAKER_01 24:19

Gosh, I mean don't get sued. Don't get sued.

SPEAKER_02 24:24

Don't don't or do get sued.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

Well, let's see. Get get sued for a good reason. When I can sleep, you know. Uh uh aspirations. I mean, I I really am just focused on the next week, the next month, right here. I mean, sure, like it'd be amazing to like have done the work to join the ranks of like national uh you know contributing writers for one of the those very illustrious publications I just mentioned. But you know, I I would it even in Is that on your radar?

SPEAKER_02 24:59

Do you uh do you aspire to that?

SPEAKER_01 25:00

I do aspire, but you know, it's it's not I I'm I also did like an an ambition detox when I I I left New York. Like I don't need to be a ready for a famous publication to feel good about myself or my work, people I interact with. Um have you working for a local news outlet um that's respected in town. I I like the interactions. I would if I was writing nationally, and I I have on on certain occasions thrasher New York Times. Yeah, you don't have that like immediacy with with your neighbors, with people in the coffee shop at the bar.

SPEAKER_02 25:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

And some I don't know. I I like I like local journalism.

SPEAKER_02 25:40

So I like the ambition detox. Yeah, we should have like a Movember for ambition detox where people just like stop. It's like we say to like, I always look at like Shaq or Snoop. I'm like, you can stop now. Yeah, like that. The ambition overload here is is killing me, and I'm not even them.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:59

You know, I'm sure they're they're loving the paycheck, but my god, it hurts my eyeballs when they come on and I see them again. I'm like, ambition detox would be good. And there's certainly people locally I would say the same thing about, not on this podcast.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

I just want to give everyone in Bend a scarf.

SPEAKER_02 26:14

That might, it could be that's how people would know you're part taking part in ambition detox. Yeah, wear a scarf for the month of February. We're gonna do ambition detox month, and everybody you'll wear a scarf to signal like I'm chilling this month, man. Chilling out no long-term, no long-term goals.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 26:33

Yeah, I like it. I'm gonna support that. That's gonna be a that's gonna be a thing. Um other other things that you're oh no, I know what I was gonna say. The you know, one of the things I find when we're doing hirings, especially when we're um bringing in journalists and reporters from large markets and they're coming here, a lot of times uh people come in and that and they have an attitude like, hey, well, I wrote in a big market, this is gonna be way easier, you know. I'm gonna uh, you know, smaller circulation, whatever it is that goes into their thinking about that. But I have found that it's just the opposite because once they start writing and they realize that the person they're writing about, they're gonna see that morning at coffee next morning at coffee, or that person's gonna read the story. That was probably the biggest wake-up call to me as a young publisher was, you know, at first you're starting out and you're like, you're slinging and you're, you know, you're writing pretty freely, and then you get confronted, you know, by by somebody. And it's not arm's length, it's not ivory tower journalism here in central Oregon. I remember, I I mean, I see folks all the time that we haven't endorsed or that are complete have complete disagreements, and you have to be able to, you got to have a great degree of integrity in your writing. And yeah, and a lot of reporters will come over and they'll have that first moment in the coffee shop and they'll come back and they'll be shook, you know, because now they realize their writing has real ramifications.

SPEAKER_01 28:05

Yeah, you it makes you want to triple fact check yourself.

SPEAKER_02 28:08

And I think it also is uh one of those things where it it gives you that you understand firsthand the power of the pen, you know, that you have affected that person's life. You thought you were writing to your screen and turning it into your editors, and then it goes into the press. Uh, and then it comes out, and the person you're writing about reads it, and they have real real things to tell you about how you did or did not get it right. And you got to be able to stand stand for that. And I I think that's one of the coolest things about it, you know, is um, I don't know a lot of other jobs that have that kind of like immediacy to uh the work that they're doing.

SPEAKER_01 28:46

Right. Yeah, yeah. I I like it. And when uh, you know, I I get comments, sometimes I agree with them, like maybe with the framing or including some like zoomed out context of an issue. And I'm like, all right, you know, if it's not a correction, you know, I can't go in and add paragraphs, but I can apply lessons learned each time I file a new story. That's how I I stick, keep my head up down the road, and um it's it's how I I kind of keep a thick skin about about this kind of stuff too. Sometimes like, you know, my my job as an investigative reporter, if I'm making everyone happy, if no one's sending me an angry email, I am messing up this job.

unknown 29:28

Right.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Arts and culture, human interests, right? You know, I could get pats on the head after every story, and that was fun, but yeah, I started to wonder, like, you know, maybe I could heighten the this sort of craft that I'm bringing to the table.

SPEAKER_02 29:42

I I remember being very uncomfortable when I mean when the paper first started out, I was doing a lot of the reporting around city issues, and I would go to city council meetings, and it's kind of eye-opening to what journalism is and and maybe should not be when you're in that council meeting. You see reporters gladhanding a lot of the counselors, and I was like, how's that work? Yeah, you know, you're gonna have to write about them, and that's gonna be uh that's gonna be harsh for you when you're standing in here, you know, letting them know that you know, being all chipper and and chummy, and then you've got to tell a hard story about it. So yeah, makes me uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

The the the the gladhanding?

SPEAKER_02 30:19

Yeah, just getting, I mean, I want to be personable and I want to be nice and and I want to have good relations, but I mean, I've seen some reporters who have felt like they needed to be effusive in order to get some inside information or whatever it is, but it's a bad dynamic. I think you end up in a in a in a cycle where eventually they're not gonna be happy with you.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:41

When you start doing your job.

SPEAKER_01 30:43

Yeah, you know. Well, I feel like not not that I I I think glad handing is the way to do a job. I I I think, yeah, having having like a respectful rapport will and you know, maybe filing simpler stories will help you have a difficult conversation with a politician or or a business leader about something very difficult. And you know, they hopefully will will have they'll they will trust us enough, you know, we have built up enough trust that they'll be transparent and uh go along with the process. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:17

So what's your um what's the next thing that you're working on? What do you not to divulge any, not to don't let the cat out of the bag.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

Is there a cat in the bag? I can't even acknowledge said cat.

SPEAKER_02 31:32

It's there might not be a cat. There might not even be another story in the works. We can't say.

SPEAKER_01 31:37

I'm just working on my my my next book on the company dime. No. Uh uh, gee, I really can't talk about it.

SPEAKER_02 31:46

What are your um what areas do you like to cover? I mean, what are things that spark Peter Madsen's interest?

SPEAKER_01 31:52

I'm interested in policing and the legal system. Yeah. Um, I find that fascinating and extremely relevant in today's uh, you know, presently. Um, and that's a process that it has been kind of uh kind of shut off to me in like the the previous beats I've covered. Nonprofits, uh health and and and fitness and outdoors and conservation, public lands, like all that's great, but like seeing someone stand trial for something, or you know, have to account for something that they uh allegedly did or didn't do, I mean, that's that's pretty it's real and it's dramatic, and I'm on I'm at the edge of my seat when I'm reporting that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 32:40

Well, great. Well, we're at the end of our time for the podcast. Uh anything you want viewers, listeners to know before they lose the visual. Although we're trying to do more with video, trying to get your face on camera more.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

Yeah. Uh pray for snow and wear a scarf.

SPEAKER_02 32:55

Yeah. This has been the Wearing Scarf Podcast. I'm Aaron Sweitzer, your publisher and producer. Thank you for listening. If you like what you heard, go to bensource.com, become a member, help support the work that Peter does, help support uh the paper, and we'll do more podcasts like this. Thank you for listening. Thanks. You've been listening to the Ben Don't Break podcast, powered by the Source Weekly. To read, hear, and see more of what we do, go to Bensource.com.