The press is the only industry the Constitution protects. Hugo Balta thinks too many newsrooms forgot why, and he walked out to prove it.
Hugo Balta spent three decades in newsrooms at NBC, MSNBC, Telemundo, CBS, ABC, and ESPN before leaving mainstream media for independent journalism. He now serves as executive editor of The Fulcrum and publisher of the Latino News Network, and he remains the only person in the history of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists to serve twice as its president. This conversation runs from a Paterson, NJ childhood as the son of Peruvian immigrants to why he rejects objectivity as a marketing tool, what a free press is actually for, and the morning he flew the flag upside down.
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Key Takeaways
Objectivity is a marketing tool. No journalist checks their identity at the newsroom door, and pretending otherwise is what audiences have stopped believing. The honest standard is fair and accurate, built on transparent methods and undisputed facts.
The math flipped, so he left. Early in his career, journalism was 70 percent of the job and business pressure 30. A decade later that ratio inverted toward clicks and presidential tweets, and that was the moment he chose independence.
Diagnosing a problem is only half the work. Solutions journalism holds that reporters owe readers more than a spotlight on what's broken. The turn toward what right looks like, backed by evidence and a few action items, is what separates informing from educating.
Understand the motivation, not just the position. Most disagreements are about the path, not the destination. Asking what drives someone's stance humanizes them and opens the ground where real debate can happen.
About Our Guest
Hugo Balta is executive editor of The Fulcrum and publisher of the Latino News Network, which has grown under his leadership to ten local and national digital news sites. A three-decade veteran of network and public media, he is an accredited Solutions Journalism Network trainer and teaches at Columbia College Chicago.
Links and Resources
The Fulcrum: thefulcrum.usLatino News Network: latinonewsnetwork.comHugo Balta on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/hugobalta
Connect with Talkin' Politics & Religion Without Killin' Each Other
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Partners
Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.
Fair and accurate beats objective every time. Now go talk some politics and religion with gentleness and respect.

She left the church at twenty-five. She never stopped praying, and she still doesn't know who's listening.
Lauren Jackson writes Believing, the New York Times newsletter about how people practice faith and doubt now, and she came to the beat by way of her own departure from the Mormon church she was raised in. Corey talks with her about what secularism can't replace, what AI is quietly taking from us, and the question she brings to every hard conversation.
Calls to Action
✅ Subscribe to Lauren's newsletter, Believing, at The New York Times✅ Follow her on Instagram: @laurenchristinejackson✅ Enjoyed this one? Leave a quick review: lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion
Key Takeaways
Ask what if they're right. Before a hard conversation, Lauren puts that question to herself, then listens. Your position may not move, but you get closer to the humanity of the person across from you, and that turns out to matter more.
Secularism won, and it still can't do everything. Religion delivers beliefs, belonging, and behaviors in one place, and nothing secular offers all three at once. The absence shows up as a hunger for community that people describe to her constantly.
Belief is spiking. Attendance isn't. Gallup finds a sharp jump in young men under thirty who call religion very important, without the matching rise in showing up anywhere. Religion is increasingly a piece of a packaged identity rather than a practice.
Resist the doctrine of efficiency. Father James Martin's phrase, and Lauren's working rule. We lose to machines on volume, so the only place left to win is quality, which requires the slowness that AI is designed to eliminate.
She will always seek to humanize. Not condone, and not valorize. Understand what real, human motivations produce behavior we find contestable, which is harder to sit with than a verdict.
We are the times. A friend gave her Augustine's line from the sacking of Rome, and it landed as an assignment. Despairing about the age is a way of pretending we are not participants in it.
About Our Guest
Lauren Jackson is deputy editorial director for newsletters at The New York Times and the host of Believing, a weekly newsletter about how people live religion and spirituality now.
Links and Resources
📩 Believing at The New York Times - www.nytimes.com/newsletters/believing📷 Instagram — @laurencristinejackson📖 Letters and Papers from Prison — Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Connect with Us
Substack: coreysnathan.substack.comLinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, TikTok, X: @coreysnathanYouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligion
Our Partners
Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.
Clarity, charity, and conviction can live in the same room. Yes, really.

The founders weren't just the names in the history books. You count as one, and citizenship is something you practice.
Lindsey Cormack studies how members of Congress actually talk to the people they represent, and she wrote the book on why civics belongs at home long before it reaches a classroom. Corey sits down with her on what it takes to raise a citizen, why disagreement is where the learning happens, and how a new podcast makes the case that government doesn't always have to suck.
Calls to Action
✅ Grab Lindsey's book, How to Raise a Citizen (And Why It's Up to You to Do It): howtoraiseacitizen.com✅ Follow her new podcast, Government That Doesn't Suck✅ Enjoyed this one? Leave a quick review: lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion
Key Takeaways
Every American is a founder. Lindsey reframes citizenship as something you practice, not something performed on you. The question she puts to students of every age, "what kind of founder are you," turns civic life from a spectator sport into a personal responsibility.
Two classes is not a civic education. Most Americans get one social studies class in middle school and one government class in high school, then nothing. That's too little, too late for a subject this size.
Open with "what have you heard?" Since there's no shared set of facts anymore, that question sets the table without a fight. From there, "what do you think" and "what do you know" move things toward learning instead of scorekeeping.
Winning is the wrong goal. The point of talking across difference is to learn why someone thinks the way they do, not to convert them. The pressure drops the moment you stop keeping score.
Government doesn't always have to suck. Lindsey's new show with Greg Jackson studies the times American government got things right, on the logic that you can't repeat a success you never bothered to examine. Grounded optimism holds up better than either blind cheerleading or constant despair.
About Our Guest
Lindsey Cormack is an associate professor of political science at Stevens Institute of Technology, creator of the DC Inbox database of congressional e-newsletters, author of How to Raise a Citizen (And Why It's Up to You to Do It), and co-host of the podcast Government That Doesn't Suck.
Links and Resources
📘 How to Raise a Citizen (And Why It's Up to You to Do It)🎙️ Government That Doesn't Suck — podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/government-that-doesnt-suck/id1896938110🗂️ DCinbox Insights on Substack — dcinboxinsights.substack.com📸 Instagram — @howtoraiseacitizen🦋 X and Bluesky — @DCInbox
Connect with Us
Substack: coreysnathan.substack.comLinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, TikTok, X: @coreysnathanYouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligion
Our Partners
Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.
Clarity, charity, and conviction can live in the same room. Yes, really.

Through Psalm 74 and the firebombing of a New Jersey synagogue in 1984, a bar mitzvah season becomes a reckoning with the places we call hallowed and what survives once they've been defiled. A solo reflection on desecration, spectacle, and the unglamorous work of redemption, from an old tavern's charred remains to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in the year of America's 250th.
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Talkin' Politics & Religion Without Killin' Each Other is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what's broken in our democracy and how we can fix it together.
The buckets and the steel wool. That's the work of redemption.

A doctor once told Rich Harwood's mother to face it, her son was a lemon. He's spent his life proving no one is disposable, and that even the most divided towns in America can build something together.
Two minutes. Real impact. Leave a review:  lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion
What does it take to heal a divided town? Less talking, says Rich Harwood. After almost 40 years running the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, he's watched the poorest community in America and some of the most divided places in the country do what most of us have stopped believing is possible: build something together, across every line that's supposed to keep them apart. The conversation runs from Moses and Lincoln to a synagogue firebombing to the three working men who saved his life as a sick kid, and lands on a deceptively simple idea about what we owe one another.
A few takeaways:
Pull issues out of the political frame and people agree more than they think. Harwood works the reddest and bluest places in the country and says he can't tell who voted for whom. Ask people what they care about instead of who they voted for, and the same concerns surface everywhere: youth, seniors, mental health, belonging.
Start small. Big comprehensive plans tend to collapse under their own weight. Real change starts with one modest step that catalyzes a chain reaction, the way practice dinners at a single church spread across an entire county in Reading, Pennsylvania.
Turn outward. Sharing space begins with a posture, not a technique. Physically turn toward the other person, choose to see them, and lead with curiosity about what matters to them.
About our guest: Rich Harwood is president and founder of the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation and the author of several books, most recently The New Civic Path: Restoring Our Belief in One Another and Our Nation (2024).
Find Rich:The Harwood Institute: theharwoodinstitute.orgRich Harwood on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/richardcharwood
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Talkin' Politics & Religion Without Killin' Each Other is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.
Rich wants the sequel over a beer. We're holding him to it.

An off-the-cuff solo update on two essays in the works: one on the sacred spaces we share and what survives their desecration, the other on the real derangement in our politics, told through three men Corey loves and has watched change. Plus the launch of something new for the show, taking the mission to a local pub, the divier the better, to talk politics and religion on camera, over a drink, with friends who see the world differently.
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✅ Find Corey @coreysnathan across the socials, and join the conversation over on Substack: coreysnathan.substack.com
Talkin' Politics & Religion Without Killin' Each Other is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what's broken in our democracy and how we can fix it together.
Pull up a stool. We're just getting started.

Some state lawmakers drive Uber to afford the job. The best of them are walking away.
Layla Zaidane runs the largest nonpartisan organization for young lawmakers in the country, and her team's "Exit Interview" found that the most promising bipartisan legislators are leaving office over problems that are entirely fixable. This conversation launches Terms of Service, a new collaboration between Future Caucus and TP&R that takes you inside what it actually costs to serve.
Key Takeaways
The math doesn't work. The average state lawmaker earns about $20,000 less than the average American worker. That pushes good people toward second jobs or out of office entirely.
The best ones are quitting. The legislators most willing to work across the aisle are resigning at high rates, and the reasons are solvable: pay, staff, scheduling, safety.
State houses are less broken than you think. Smaller chambers and retail-scale politics let lawmakers build the trust that gridlocked institutions can't.
Violence brought out the worst and the best. As threats against officials rose, some of the most powerful responses came from bipartisan pairs refusing to let it become normal.
About Our Guest
Layla Zaidane is president and CEO of Future Caucus, the largest nonpartisan organization for young lawmakers in the United States, working with Gen Z and millennial legislators across 36 states to govern across party lines.
Links and Resources
Future Caucus: futurecaucus.org | @futurecaucus
Layla Zaidane: @lzaidane
TP&R is proud to be part of The Democracy Group podcast network.
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✅ Find Corey @coreysnathan across the socials, and join the conversation over on Substack: coreysnathan.substack.com
The Terms of Service series is a partnership between Scan Media and Future Caucus. Executive Producers: Future Caucus and Layla Zaidane. Learn more about Future Caucus at www.futurecaucus.org.

Through the lens of the Tennessee Williams play, The Glass Menagerie, a morning walk through Washington, from DuPont Circle to the Jefferson Memorial, becomes a reckoning with what we've made of our civic sacred spaces. A solo reflection on desecration, devotion, and a faith in the American experiment that proves harder to walk away from than intended.
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✅ Find Corey @coreysnathan across the socials, and join the conversation over on Substack: coreysnathan.substack.com
Talkin' Politics & Religion Without Killin' Each Other is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what's broken in our democracy and how we can fix it together.
Beautiful, impossible, and ours anyway.