A TV News Reporter on Why She Quit Mainstream Media and Moved to an Airstream

Vance Crowe [00:00:00] As the crow flies on the Vance Crowe podcast. Alison Morrow, welcome to the podcast.

Alison Morrow [00:00:07] Hey, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Vance Crowe [00:00:10] Well, you are particularly bright-eyed and and and awake. For a new mother that just had a child amidst the coronavirus, what was that like leading up to having your first child going through the pandemic?

Alison Morrow [00:00:25] Yeah, well first I have switched to decaf only because I had high blood pressure in the end of my pregnancy. And so I'm doing this on no sleep and decaf. So it's, it's a challenge. Well, going into this journey, we obviously had no idea that Coronavirus was going to be waiting for us at the end. And so we had made a lot of changes. I quit my job, my career. It wasn't really just a job, it was like an identity as a journalist, a TV news journalist, which I had done for my entire adult life. We moved from the city to the country. So we had a geographical move, an identity career move. And then found out a week after I quit my job that I was pregnant. And so we were gonna be totally changing our lives with a child. So a lot happened in September of 2019 and when we came out to Central Washington, which is where we live now, we used to live in Seattle. It was a obviously big change of pace for a lot of reasons. And then boom, like this Coronavirus deal comes around like we had just taken our babymoon if people know what that is, you know your little honeymoon that you take while you're pregnant in mid-February. And then we got back and by like two weeks later the entire world had changed. And it was funny 'cause I remember when we were in California on vacation, we knew that this virus was coming around, but like nobody was really taking it seriously yet.

Alison Morrow [00:02:02] And there certainly was no talk of like a lockdown. I remember a friend of mine saying a few weeks after we got back, like California had done this, it's gonna happen in Seattle. And I was like, no way. Like that's just locking down parks in Seattle. I mean, how will people, you know, people are like obsessed with going outside ni here. There's no way that's gonna happen. And of course like everything has dramatically changed. So that also changed hospital protocol. So we had originally looked into going to a midwife center. We were really interested in like trying to have a natural birth. And I, pregnancy was really healthy and you get like a lot more just personalized attention. And so we had sort of moved down that path where we were gonna have, they were very close to a hospital, something happened. But basically you're sort of like, you know, it looks like an apartment essentially. Like you're gonna have a baby and a place that's a lot, you know, lower key, you can have a lot more freedom. It's, and the midwives like have a lot of training, they have a lot of tools and a lot of technology there. They just

Vance Crowe [00:03:02] Don't do like, and everybody's gonna be way more open to you doing the reverse birth or the side birth or the, I wanna, you know, follow my own rules. And so you're in this place where the rules are not as strict because the, the birth is expected to go easy and then you collide into coronavirus.

Alison Morrow [00:03:18] Yeah. And so the thing was though that was gonna end up being a great, like unexpected positive of all this was because like unlike the hospital systems, they can operate a little bit more independently. Whereas you're seeing hospitals kind of locked down by standardized protocol where you're a dad, maybe you're not even allowed in the delivery room or you have to wear a mask or if you're allowed in the room you can't leave. Like that was one thing our hospital here locally changed to was that you could come in, but like Hotel California, you were never leaving and if you had to leave you could not come back. And so we were thinking, well what if there was an emergency or my husband had to take a phone call and he couldn't get reception and he had to leave and he wasn't allowed to get back. The other thing too is I had found a doula that I really, she was a photographer and a doula. If you don't know what a doula is, they're just kind of like your therapist through the birthing process. They like bring you food if you need it. They tell you how to breathe, they hold your hand. They, and they also like hold the hand of your husband because it turns out that guys really like to fix things and they can't fix delivery. Like there's nothing that you can do as a guy to make it really any better other than just like standing there and, and trying to like empathize with what's going. But the pain is a, obviously you have female listeners like it's, it's hard to explain. I didn't really know what I was getting myself into when I did. Now I'm like, okay, this is why you can't really explain it. You just have to go through it. But, so that midwife center was a great option for us because it was like you, it still was independent and it was all gonna be, you know, gravy with like what we wanted to, we could kind of chart our own course.

Alison Morrow [00:04:49] Now, unfortunately, literally week 38 and a half of my pregnancy, I go into the doctor and my blood pressure is like one 40 over a hundred. And so I'm now facing gestational hypertension. And the problem with that is if your blood pressure goes up even a little bit more, they get afraid that you're gonna have a stroke in labor. So then the midwife center was no longer an option for us because I needed a lot more monitoring and safety protocols. So we ended up at a hospital in Bellevue, which is on the eastern side of Lake Washington in the Seattle area. And that brought us back again to the COVID deal because now we're in the hospital system and you have to follow the rules. And luckily the hospital we delivered in allowed our doula still our doula wouldn't have been allowed in central Washington. So we're, that's kind of one of the reasons why we moved. So I would still have my little therapist that was gonna come in and take pictures and everything. And then also like they would let you go in and out. So like when I would scream at my husband that I needed an iced coffee in the middle of my contractions, he was allowed to leave and get an iced coffee and bring it back into the ho you know, into the hospital room and not get kicked out for good. So actually ended up working out fine. Like it was definitely the total opposite of what we had planned because not just with like coronavirus, oh I had to wear a mask to push, which is another interesting thing. Like, you know, you're breathing like you're running a marathon but you now have to wear a face mask over yourself. So that lasted like two seconds and I just basically ripped it off down to my chin 'cause I just couldn't handle it.

Alison Morrow [00:06:22] I was like, listen, we've all been together all weekend. Like if you've got it, I've got it. If I've got it, you've got it. Like what? We're just gonna just deal with it now. I'm like, I, you know, I gotta get this thing out. If

Vance Crowe [00:06:32] I had, if if if I had just been living coronavirus without any, without my wife being pregnant, I would be like, I don't know, you're just gonna do what they've always done. But the amount of fear and concern that is, you know, if you are a woman that is thinking about pregnancy, you're already reading every like what to expect when you're expecting only now you're reading what does the New York Times think about the way your baby is going to come and what is all the research saying about how dangerous it is. And so I have watched this like proliferation and then there's all these stories that go along with it. So you were describing the story of, and my husband might have to leave the hospital and not be able to come back. We were hearing stories, it's since been disproven, so I'm not trying to throw this out there, but we heard a story last week where they were like, if you get tested for coronavirus and your baby tests negative, then they're gonna take it away for two weeks and you can't even see it. And like whether or not this is real Yeah,

Alison Morrow [00:07:28] It,

Vance Crowe [00:07:29] It impacts on your brain like, oh my God, am I gonna not be able to touch my baby for two weeks? Were you going through that?

Alison Morrow [00:07:37] And actually that is, that has happened. That's that's true. In fact, our hospital, I talked to the charge nurse about that, I think it was a chart, may have been one of the doctors. It's all a blur. But she was telling me that they did have that discussion at the hospital and decided like they would say to you, Hey, you have COVID-19, we, you know, are being told to take the baby away. What do you wanna do? Of course the mom's probably gonna say no and then they would just leave it up to the mom. So they said they did have that discussion at that, at our hospital about whether to take the baby away or not, because that is definitely a reality at some places. And they

Vance Crowe [00:08:13] Decided, okay, so now you you have that, you've just had this experience, what would you have done?

Alison Morrow [00:08:19] There's no way you're taking no way. First off, I haven't, correct me if I'm wrong and if somebody's listening and they want to write me and show me the research, I haven't seen that you, first off, I haven't seen like newborn babies as an at risk group or even young children as an at-risk group for fatality for COVID-19. And the other thing too is like I noticed the science saying that you're not transmitting it to your baby in utero either. So it's like you, you, you have the baby's been living with you, it's risk of getting it if you had it while it was in you is minimal. And then, okay, so it comes out and now you're breastfeeding it the nutrients that it really needs, right? I mean this is what builds up a baby's immune system is essentially like the stuff that you are producing and you wanna take the baby away and give them what formula or someone else's donor milk, which is not anywhere near as good for them as a mother's milk. Not to mention the bonding time. That's really important for, and there's all kinds of scientific research about skin to skin contact immediately after how that affects baby psychology and the early stages of growth, how it affects mother and postpartum depression for for what the risk factor of what I, I haven't seen, I haven't seen the research that shows that there's this enormous risk to an infant to stay with its mom who has COVID-19. I've seen these horror stories of women who have been comatose because of they, they're so sick that then they have to deliver by C-section and take the baby away.

Alison Morrow [00:09:55] 'cause mom is not even able to be a mother. But I haven't seen the re I mean somebody show me the research that says that the risks outweigh the rewards, you know, to take a baby away from a mom at such a pivotal moment in its development. No, there's no way. I I we've, we've thought about all kinds of scenarios. I've thought I'd give birth at a bus stop before my husband was not gonna be in the room with me for my first child. Like, no way. But I have a different, you know, when I look at this virus, I've been tried to, you know, I've tried to be very logical about it, read the science and I, and, and not fall into the emotional traps. Whether that's the media, you know, coverage of it that can be sometimes fearmongering or politicians using it to divide people. I've tried to say really close to like what, what are the numbers actually saying? And I, you know, it just, to me that was a no brainer. There's no way. And and I'm glad we didn't come to that 'cause I don't think that anyone would've wanted to, to experience what that would've been like to try to take my baby away. No way.

Vance Crowe [00:11:00] Yeah, and I mean it's a, it's just such a rare weird circumstance that you have all the pressure of having a child and now you've got this like uncharted territory of what is the right thing. So you were talking about the news and how you watch it. It's the big reason I wanted to have you on the show today was you are as our good friend Dwayne Faber described a reform journalist, right? You used to work in television news and now you've left, you're watching probably the largest news story since September 11th, maybe the largest news story since the assassination of Kennedy. How do you see what the news is telling us versus what a regular person that doesn't have any idea how the news works sees?

Alison Morrow [00:11:43] Oh man, well that's a big question. I mean, the first thing I guess I would say is I even question, not just in this case, but every case. Why is this story getting the attention that it's getting? I mean that's, I always start even at that point, not, not just like accepting that it should, but also pri primarily, you know, beginning at should it at all. Like, should, should it be getting this kind of coverage? Now once you get to that, you know, you get past that, you're like, okay, let's just say that this is a serious problem and it deserves to have wall to wall coverage. We'll just, we'll go there for now. How do you then sift through the way that it's presented in, you know, one institution versus another, even if that's print versus TV or two different national news stations or local TV is very different from national. So how do you parse that out? And I think ultimately I listen very closely to whether there's a pattern of, I guess the easy way to, would call it bias, but I think it's more so a pattern of holding a certain group accountable and allowing another group to be off sort of scot-free. And I think unfortunately what I wanna see from journalists is that everybody's held accountable if they're in a position of power, not just the person I don't like.

Alison Morrow [00:13:16] And I think unfortunately in this particular case, there's been so much politicizing of this virus that you'll see one group blamed on one channel versus another group blamed on another channel. And then, you know, in between there'll be all these people who deserve to also have very tough questions asked to them. And just, it just ends up being like, you know, a pretty easy, like, not to call out specific names, but I guess I'm going to at this point, I, i, I think it's interesting that you have somebody like Chris Cuomo, you know, interviewing his brother very, you know, I would say the questions are pretty moderate. They're, you know, I think that he, his brother deserves some tougher questions about what's happened in New York and then you may see him interview somebody else who he is a lot rougher on. Or when he talks about President Trump, he's a lot rougher on him. That to me, I sit back and I say, okay, why? When, when one person deserves just as difficult questions. If you're looking at the numbers, if you're looking how bad things, you know, were in New York City and, and how tough, you know, some of the choices were that had to be made there and not, I'm not gonna sit back and blame him like I could have done better as governor of New York, but I'm gonna say, hey, there are some questions that deserve to be asked. You know, why in one case does the question make it out there to some somebody who is not your brother, but then when it is your brother, it doesn't, you know, so, so I look at stuff like that and, and that makes me kind of sit back and say, okay, like, you know, are we looking at journalism right now or are we kind of, you know, is like, is this punditry?

Alison Morrow [00:15:02] And, and I think, and not to just pick on on CNN specifically, but you know, it happens on all of the different national cable news shows. And, and I would say like if you're a viewer and you're watching that, I, I would look very closely at, you know, do you see someone who is is sort of holding back in, in, in when they're talking to certain groups and then when there's another group they've got like this, like it's not even just a tough question, it's like an emotionally charged question. And I think that's probably one of my bigger gripes with journalists these days is that there have been like this, there's been this shift from asking questions that are like legitimate tough questions that really need answers and like you have the opportunity to pose that to the president or whoever else at a press conference. But unfortunately these are questions that are sort of, they're just directed at kind of well, something you would wanna tweet about, right? Like, it's like you, you, like I asked the president about, you know, this one thing that makes everybody really angry and everyone's angry at him and so I'm gonna, you know, fuel the anger and I'm gonna channel the anger of the American public and then I'm gonna tweet about it. And, and then unfortunately that it's not like the, the journalistic questions that are asked, it's like emotional questions, like questions that get everybody really divided and riled up, but don't necessarily give us any information that helps us like live better or think better or be

Vance Crowe [00:16:29] Better. Yeah, I mean I, I saw this guy doing a, and and he was a reporter and he was asking whoever the new press secretary is for Trump, the one that got the big slam and you know, so I was watching something that came across on Twitter and he was asking her about a paper she wrote in undergraduate and it was like, are you insane? This is something that happens on the West Wing as like a clever clip that they put in, but in the real world who gets held to account for a paper that they wrote when they were 21 years old, this seems like insanity, right? And the only people that would wanna publish that are people that are saying, we, this is gonna help us make money.

Alison Morrow [00:17:08] Yeah. And I mean you have to ask yourself like, what was the value of asking that question? I mean, truly like what, what, what were we supposed to get out of that? And, and I think when I watch people who, or and, and it honestly, it's the real journalists, you're not even watching them 'cause they're, they're not like in front of you very often. They're actually like doing a lot of research and meeting with sources and filing public records requests and you know, doing the sort of, you know, the, the, the, the just basic like steps of what journalism used to be like. Nobody. And I have a, it's funny, I did transition from like you said, from TV news to YouTube and I did a, a video from my YouTube channel about press conferences specifically because these press conferences, whether they're Governor Cuomo's or they're President Trump's or whoever else is that are having these regular press conferences kind of become like what people are focusing their attention on getting information. And so they're being seen as journalism. And I've really wanted to ask the question like, is this actual journalism when you go to a press conference? Is that really journalism? And ultimately, like I see it as part of the job. Like the nurses who took care of me, they had to clean up my vomit on the floor when I was throwing up during my labor, but it's not like the highest use of their training. You know, they could do a lot of like higher purpose stuff, but that's how I see a press conference. 'cause the reality is like it's a staged event by a a, a usually a political leader, maybe a corporation or something. They already have their messaging put together and they know what they're gonna tell you and you can ask 'em whatever question you want, you can ask if the sky's blue and they could say it's green.

Alison Morrow [00:18:43] There's no way you can hold them accountable to that because you're, you're, you're just taking their word for it. If you wanna find out if the sky's blue or green, you need to go to the public records and figure out what's really going on behind the scenes. And the journalists that I have worked with, and there are some very, very, very good journalists out there still, you just don't hear from 'em because they're working really hard doing that kind of stuff. They're behind the scenes filing public records requests, they're reading through thousands of documents, they're meeting with sources, they're having anonymous phone calls with people who are too scared to speak up. They're trying to get to the bottom of things. They don't have time to, you know, think of these emotionally laced questions and throw them at people to get a rise out of them. And then to get more following on Twitter. Like that's just, they don't, just don't have time to do that. And I just have found it fascinating to see how those unfortunately are getting lumped together. Like those sets of, of people or of of skills are like the same thing. And it, it's very unfortunate. That's why I talk about journalism and the state that we're in with the public distrust the way that I do. Because I don't think that it behooves the industry to just defend outright journalism as a whole, as if like, we haven't gone off the rails in a lot of ways. Like we have to hold each other accountable.

Vance Crowe [00:19:56] I think the term the the term journalist itself, like when I was going to college, somebody that said I'm gonna be a journalist, there was this sense of patriotism or excitement or, you know, and that wasn't all that long ago. But now if a young person told me they were going into journalism, it'd be like you saying I'm gonna go be a tobacco lobbyist. You'd be like, I mean I guess we need tobacco lobbyists, but is that what you really wanna do?

Alison Morrow [00:20:23] And, and that's sad. I mean I think it's really sad because I, I believe that it's such an important, and not just important, but like it's, it is essential to what it means to have an American democracy to have a free press. Like it is, if you look at the countries that my husband has gone to and fought in or even the countries, you know, like, like look at China for instance. I mean it what differentiates us from a lot of the places where you really just don't have freedom anywhere close to what, what we enjoy in the United States is because you don't have information like you, you just don't have the information. And so you, you make choices based on whatever the government tells you, whether those are good or bad. Like you don't even really know because you don't know what's really going on. And so it's, it is, it is so integral to democracy to have a trusted press, not just a free press, but a trusted press. And unfortunately with freedom obviously comes, you know, the ability to go one way or the other. And to take your channel, your news channel, whether it's M-S-N-B-C or Fox News or CNN or whatever else it is in the direction that you think caters to the particular kind of viewer you want. And then unfortunately though we end up, you know, going in our opposite directions. And so you watch your channel more and I watch my channel more and then slowly and slowly we start thinking very, very differently. But we don't, we don't think that you might have a point, we just think that you're the crazy person or you, you totally go off on the rails.

Alison Morrow [00:21:59] And we just kind of keep getting more and more, you know, our, our confirmation bias gets more and more strengthened by, by sort of the system that now has gotten set up. Now I'll say like, I will still watch national news, but I have found personalities that I like, like there are people on channels that I'm like, I, this is a person I trust more and then this is a person I trust less. And so I don't go by channels, I go by individuals. And then I also, were you a trusted journalist to find journalist? Say that again.

Vance Crowe [00:22:28] Were you a trusted journalist? Were you somebody that people thought like, hey, when Allison calls it's, it's a call worth taken?

Alison Morrow [00:22:35] I hope so. It definitely got a lot of criticism. I mean it depended on like what I was covering. It's hard to know sometimes whether like when you do a story, especially 'cause I cover the environment and the environment is a very complex world of topics. And I will say one of the reasons why I thought better of staying in TV news was because I got to the point where I knew enough about what I didn't know, that I was concerned that I was not able to give the time and effort that I needed as a TV journalist keep in mind like you have to keep your stories to 90 seconds, you have a few hours a day to put it together. I was shooting and editing all of my own stuff. So on top of like writing it and voicing it and presenting it, I was the photographer. I did everything from a technical standpoint too. And I had minimal hours a day to understand extremely complex topics. Salmon recovery, killer whales, agriculture, carbon footprints, clean water act, I mean all kinds of things. And I remember one time I was really concerned, I was covering the Clean Water Act changes to the Clean Water Act and I knew that I needed to read a senate report in order to really understand what I was talking about. And I was very concerned that I was not gonna have time to read that report before my deadline. And a coworker of mine said, just write what NBC says because we were an NBC affiliates or just write what NBC says. And I was like, what? No, why would I, you know, I don't wanna just recycle what NBC is saying in New York or Washington DC I don't know if they know anything more about the environment than I do.

Alison Morrow [00:24:11] I was the only, as far as I knew, there may have been one other full-time environmental reporter for a television station in the entire country. So like I had the most time to understand this of like anyone else out there. I didn't wanna like read someone else's reporting and just assume they got it right. I knew I know how it works. So I got to do that enough that I was like, you know, if I'm gonna really start talking about these issues, I need a longer form option. Like I need a podcast or a YouTube or a blog or something that gives me the opportunity to really start digging into these issues that are more complex. And so, yeah, I mean were there times that I failed? I'm, I'm sure, I mean I I'm not perfect and people make mistakes all the time. I think where I tried to be different is that if there was a moment where I was like, I, I didn't know that that was something I should have included in my story 'cause I had four hours to put it together and I was under a lot of pressure and nobody told me about it, then I would do then that story the next day. So I would always try to like admit to my mistakes and instead of if somebody wrote me and said, Hey, you left out our voice, instead of saying, well, I don't care, you know, my story's done, I'm moving on to my next thing. I would say, okay, well let's, let's do your story. Let's, let's let's come to your house on Thursday and we'll share your side of things and then build that body of work. The problem though is that maybe the people who saw Monday's story don't see Thursday's story. So they think that Monday is the complete version and there's, you know, it it's just that that's the very difficult part right now about where we're at with journalism and especially TV is that it's, the cycle is fast, it's constant, it, you know, the 24 hour news show, like, it just, it's constantly changing.

Alison Morrow [00:25:52] And the reg, you know, there's just a lot of stuff going on and there's just not a lot of time to do it.

Vance Crowe [00:25:56] And so are you watching local news? Do you, do you watch local news?

Alison Morrow [00:26:01] I read it online. I don't watch it. I don't, we've just got basically cut our cable. We're the, we're cord cutters as they say.

Vance Crowe [00:26:08] That was the most bizarre thing that happened during Coronavirus was for the first time in 10 years maybe my wife and I were like, oh, we better go find an antenna so we can watch Right.

Alison Morrow [00:26:17] The

Vance Crowe [00:26:17] Local news. And that was just to find out are our hospitals burning down? And once we discovered that our hospitals weren't burning down TV back off and back to regular land.

Alison Morrow [00:26:28] Yeah, I mean I think, I think local news is really important and I think if I were to have to choose between local and national news, I would watch my local news station that said I consume probably like less TV news if I'm gonna get it. I'm reading it online and more YouTube like I would say I have transitioned almost entirely to long form conversations about topics that I'm interested in. And I, you know, I, I don't watch as much like of the fast churning 92nd stories that I used to do because I just think I get more out of the other stuff.

Vance Crowe [00:27:15] What was it like, I mean, coming up in a career in the news, I mean like for somebody to make it all the way on to television seems like it's very difficult to do and then to have your own environmental segment in probably the most environmentally conscious area of the country, like that seems to me to be climbing a mountain and you left it.

Alison Morrow [00:27:36] Yeah, I left it, I, I loved my career. Like I, I actually really loved being a journalist. I, I think in a lot of ways now I'm trying to figure out what journalism looks like in 2020 with the new media that we have. And I'm just still in the process of that. 'cause I don't think I ever really wanna give up on that. I mean, I had a camera that I carried around with me as a little kid. I was like five or six when I started shooting videos and I like used to force my brothers to be in productions and you know, I shot videos in my dad's operating room before that was a problem. And, and there was HIPAA violations and whatnot and there was always just a like asking questions. And I mean, I remember like my AP biology teacher in high school was sure I would fail because all I did was like I was, you know, the office or like the real world before it was ever a thing. Like I would shoot videos of my classmates and interview them in class before like, you know, there was reality TV or the Kardashians or anything. And so when I got a perfect score on my AP bio test, I think my teacher was just like, I, I just don't understand like how this girl is the, the weirdest, she carries a camera, she interviews all of her classmates, how did, how did she ever know, like cellular biology. But somehow I was able to get through that and so I miss it. There's a lot, a lot about it that I miss. I think like trying to figure out like how to do like what you do for instance, you know, like having a podcast or doing YouTube and, and looking at how to present information in a different way to people is keeping, keeping me very curious and interested in going down that path.

Alison Morrow [00:29:08] And I think I'll figure it out. I think it's just like right now I, as I'm sure we'll talk about like we're working on an airstream and we've, you know, we're gonna move off grid and so I was trying to figure out lifestyle at the same time that I'm figuring out career and I'm sure those two will kind of blend together. But yeah, I mean I, I've seen a lot, I mean I've seen it change. I've seen like in 2008 when the recession hit, a lot changed in journalism because a lot of money was lost and so staffs were laid off and that's when I was told, I mean I came into the industry in 2007, so it was almost immediately after, and I've never really worked in a TV newsroom that wasn't affected by the recession. That's when they started making reporters shoot and edit their own video, which meant that you were no longer like sitting in the passenger seat making phone calls. You now were driving the car. Now if you think about that for a second, like a reporter, I mean it's not like the pre-Madonna thing, I'm just doing my makeup. Like I'm trying to understand what I'm talking about by four o'clock in the afternoon. So if I'm driving the car, that's not helping me and my ability to understand. So little things like that happened in 2008 that started to trickle down into the quality of the journalism that you're able to consume. And that happened also like in newspapers. There were a lot of layoffs, you know, doing more with less. And I'm sure that happened in, in industries across the board, not just news. The problem is like if you think about news, the collateral or like the currency in news is relationship. That's the way I always looked at it. Like my number one tool in my toolbox was, well my credibility and the relationships that I had with my sources. And when you have people like, you know, less time and fewer people and also just like younger people who are willing to work for a lot less and do a lot more because they started to add more live programming.

Alison Morrow [00:30:52] So you're doing three stories instead of one you, you are starting to cut away at the credibility and the relationships because think about the day when you used to turn on your TV news and you had a guy or a lady who was like in their early sixties reporting the news. Now what do you typically see? Like maybe mid twenties now everybody's gotta learn and start somewhere. I was in my mid twenties when I got started too, but I gotta tell you, like I didn't know I, I'm not gonna be crude here, but I didn't know one thing from the next, when I, when I was 25 years old trying to figure out politics, the environment, crime, whatever the issue was, you know, I thought I knew everything and I knew so little and it took me 15 years really to get to the point where I was like, okay, hold up, you know, maybe there are other ways to think about this topic or there are other options to explore here. Because the first thing about being a just a wise person, but somebody who is good at journalism is to know what you don't know and you don't figure that out for years because I think your first few years and whatever you're doing, you think you know everything and it's a super easy thing and then you get burned a few times and you're like, oh okay. And you hope that happens somewhere where there's only like four people watching and not, you know, 500,000.

Vance Crowe [00:32:06] Yeah. But you don't really, you, when you're young you don't have a way to say, hey that doesn't, that doesn't add up to a larger picture that I understand because you don't know about all the other things that would be connected with somebody's answer that they've just given you. That's so simple and it fits right into place and so you just pick it up and use it. And when you're a journalist now you're picking up that story and using it and somebody is getting an advantage or somebody's getting a disadvantage as a result of it. So it's a ton of pressure on a person that doesn't have experience.

Alison Morrow [00:32:36] Yeah, yeah. And I think something that happens in the journalism world, and this is really the only industry I've worked in other than I actually did do three years in seminary. That sounds like penitentiary. It was actually great. I loved going to seminary, but I have a master of divinity degree and I worked with heroin addicts for a little bit, but other than that, journalism like this is TV news is all I've ever done. And I did start at Fox News Channel in New York, so I was a producer for a national for their morning show, Fox and Friends. And then I moved into being a reporter for local news. So I've seen it on both sides, but I think what's unfortunate in that industry, and like I said, I'm not totally sure like you, could you tell me what it was like for you and what you used to do? There's a lot of just like, we only hang out with each other. It's very insular. You know, we go to work and then we go drinking with each other after work and then we go to football games together and we don't necessarily know a lot of people who are different than us. And I will credit, well I think it's probably partially because I grew up riding horses and so I had a lot of eclectic friends at the barn. Like people think that like riding horses just means you're like a snooty show person. But I, my barn, like we had all kinds of people, like people that you know, didn't have floors in their cars. These like the Flintstone cars, you know, from somebody parents, you know, owned like a, a a a cable company or you know, so all across the board when it came to, you know, education and wealth and, and background and culture and, and, and then that was so formative for me. So I was very interested in having all kinds of different friends and I think, you know, my not hanging out in the newsroom or like going drinking after work was really imperative to my ability to understand the world around me because if there was a farming story that came up, like chances were I knew a few farmers or if there was something else, you know, that came, I may, you know, I, I knew a person who thought a different way about this other issue or like, you know, I didn't just know Democrats or I didn't just know Republicans.

Alison Morrow [00:34:33] And so because I had relationships outside of work where I was empathizing with people 'cause I knew they weren't a terrible person just 'cause they thought this, 'cause I knew them, I knew that they were like a, a nice person. They, we went to dinner, we, you know, they helped take care of my whores, whatever it was. I couldn't just box them into thinking that they were just ignorant or stupid or mean or racist or whatever else just because they had one particular opinion. So then if you translate that into being a journalist, because I had those relationships outside of work when I was covering these particular issues, I also was able to sit back and, and have empathy and say, okay, like what, what is really going on here? If you have somebody who thinks this way and you know, the loudest voices are saying it's because they're all these negative things, but maybe there's another reason, maybe there's truth to whatever they're saying and I wanna explore it. I already had the curiosity level, they're ready to go. And I think unfortunately in a lot of ways, like they're especially younger journalists, like just aren't developing those relationships outside of work. And then you may not think that's the most important thing. But that's what what I always tell young journalists when I teach, like what's the most important thing? It's, it's not learning how to use a camera, it's not learning how to write grammatically. There's plenty of terrible grammar in news these days. The most important thing is that you as an individual have relationships outside of work with people who are different than you in the people that are around you. So that you can start building empathy for people who don't think exactly the way that you do. That way you're gonna start growing your curiosity and that's gonna make you a great journalist.

Alison Morrow [00:36:04] And the technical side of things you'll learn no matter what

Vance Crowe [00:36:08] Do you think journalism like it is right now will be around in five years? Will there be local news and newspapers and, and magazines in the same way that there is today?

Alison Morrow [00:36:18] Five years? I think yes. 20 or 30 years. Probably not. I mean it'll be very different if it's, if it is, I I still think you're gonna have local outlets because I think there will, there will be people who are gonna wanna know what's going on locally. But I do think the shift to digital is, I mean it should have already, it should be prehistoric at this point. Like it's, I can't, to me it's hard to believe that there are still a lot actually of stations who are still, they're making enough money. For instance in tv they make enough money on TV ads that they're still like kind of dragging their heels on the digital side of things. For instance, in my case, we wanted to move off grid. I pitched the idea of letting me be more remote, cover the entire state, do things online. 'cause the reason that I had to live in Seattle was because I was tied to a television set. Like I had to be within a certain radius of the signal. And the engineers really, I mean I had like, there was this, you know, hub in downtown Seattle and they didn't want me to live too far away from that. But if we opened up the internet as a major source of our information dissemination, then there was no reason that I couldn't get in my Airstream and still be an environmental reporter and now cover the entire state or who knows, do start doing national stuff like there, you know, there are plenty of options and that just wasn't something that they were interested in. Now it's interesting because now I see everybody like is like a YouTuber now in tv 'cause they, nobody's going into the studios anymore.

Alison Morrow [00:37:53] They're all like wearing their, you know, shorts from the waist down and like a tie on the waist up and like skyping in for their reports, which is like exactly what I pitched last year, which seemed to be so alien to them. So it's funny how like necessity is a mother of all innovation and they're all doing it now. I think it's gonna go back to what it was eventually, but I think eventually that whole model is gonna have to change because I just don't see appointment television being something that people are going to continue engaging in. Like appointment meaning you have to sit down at five o'clock to watch it. I mean the, the, the audiences are going towards like, they like to have a relationship. They like to know who the person is. Like you have a podcast, they like to know Vance, they like to know, you know, how Vance thinks about some things and they wanna know a little bit more about the topics that you're exploring. And I think most people, like when you watch a news cast, you might get crime first a fire next politics after that health and human wellness, you know, and it's all over the board. And I think more and more people are wanting to go an inch wide and a mile deep versus a mile wide and an inch deep. And that's

Vance Crowe [00:39:00] Gonna hundred percent as soon as we saw the weather come on. Which like, so we're sitting there waiting, are the hospitals burning down? Is is is chaos breaking out in the streets? And as soon as they were like, and we're gonna turn to Susan for the weather and the traffic over here, and we're like, who cares about the weather or the traffic right now? Like that's, that's not, but they're the, their base, the group of people that are tuning in every time the people that they're able to go to the car salesman and the furniture stores and say, we've got these audiences. They wanna know what the weather is gonna be like. They wanna know if they can go outside tomorrow. And even though they're not using traffic, we thought it was the funniest thing in the world. They were reporting traffic because they had a slot for reporting traffic only all of the roads were green. Right. And so it's like that appointment style thinking, right,

Alison Morrow [00:39:46] It just

Vance Crowe [00:39:46] Doesn't match in the regular world.

Alison Morrow [00:39:48] Yeah, yeah, no, that's actually, that's a really good point. They, well yeah, you have a traffic reporter so what are you gonna do with that person? Like put 'em on I know the hospital beach or something. I'm not No, no, no. So they, yeah, they stay doing traffic 'cause they know how to make the maps. But yeah, and the weather stuff has always been fascinating to me because that's what sells, I mean that's when people tune into their local news station when there's gonna be a snowstorm or a tornado or something like that. So, you know, there's always pressure there. Like if you wanna talk about bias, I mean that's the place where, you know, you really want things to go south because if people are scared about the weather, they will definitely tune in to watch your local newscast. But yeah, I mean I I I think like, like I said, I've worked with some really great, just wonderful people with big hearts and they're still there at, at my old station, like just trucking away and trying to do the best they can under these crazy circumstances. And I think like a lot of them are, are even seeing like what you and I are talking about, they may not speak publicly about it, but they see that there are changes that need to be made and they see like where the audiences are going and it's just, you know, it's like moving a really heavy cargo ship. You're like, you're really trying to turn in a direction that it's just, it, it's just not easily moved into, but it will have to eventually to survive because they're just like, the newspapers got a headstart in a lot of ways when people just stopped, like the internet stopped, people from buying newspapers, they just, the physical newspaper went the way of the white buffalo. And so the newspapers like had no choice.

Alison Morrow [00:41:20] They had to figure out how to use the internet. Well, TV stations, like TVs are still here, so they haven't had to feel the pressure that a newspaper has. So like, even though newspapers are still having a tough time and, and especially now we're seeing like layoffs all over the country. I, I think in the long run they've gotten a headstart on trying to make things better. Whereas I think reckoning is gonna come for TV and they're gonna have wasted a lot of time. Like they're barely a lot of them even just now getting into YouTube. And that's been around since 2007, so, you know, or even earlier than that. So I, I don't know what it's gonna totally look like, but yeah, I don't think it's gonna look exactly the same. And I, I think probably there are going to be fewer people doing it. I think that trend of like fewer do people doing more is gonna continue becoming the thing. Like automation is not going away and we have automated cameras and studios now. It, I, it's so funny, like, I remember when the automated studio camera was like the new thing and they had to, so like, they'd lay off like, you know, four engineers for one camera and you know, it was sad to see these guys go because they were like our friends and they had, you know, I'm sure they, they've fallen upwards though and found much better jobs. But the ca you know, I'll never forget, like we would watch these cameras and they would just bash into each other like halfway through the newscast because there's only so much, you know, they, they could try to pre-program and stuff, but if like one little code was out, you know, you're watching like, and you know, your buddy's like coming up blah, blah, blah.

Alison Morrow [00:42:52] And like there's a camera that just like goes right in front of his face in front of the other camera or like runs into the other one because, you know, and I remember everyone being like, see, this is how, why automation's not gonna work. But eventually they worked out the kinks and now the studio camera is like, they're here to stay that no one's say getting those jobs back. Another thing is like the teleprompter, the anchors run the teleprompters now. They, they run their own prompter. There's nobody sitting in a room that usually, I should say, at some places they might still have 'em, but yeah, the anchors press it. So then they're like, sometimes the anchors like gotta love 'em, but they wanna do their makeup while you're starting your report and they forget to run the prompter and now it's like stuck at their thing. And now you're like, okay, so I have nothing in the prompter anymore. I'm totally like, will Ferrell in Anchorman

Vance Crowe [00:43:32] Who writes all the stuff in the prompter? Is it the host that sits there and types out what they're gonna say?

Alison Morrow [00:43:37] The producers usually write like the stuff that is in there for the anchors to read. Sometimes the, the anchors will get like assignments like, Hey, can you write this block and can you write that block? You know, that story or this story. But the producers write a lot and then the reporters write their own stuff. So like if, like, I always, you know, my, I would write the Anchors intro to me and their tag out of me and I would write everything that I did in between and then, you know, usually like, that's it. The anchors get a few, the producers write the most and then the reporter does their own thing. And that's why I like being a reporter. Like I started out as a producer, but I don't really like to nanny other people or like bug other people. I found that to be like, pardon my personality, I like to be left alone and I like to leave you alone. So I like being a reporter better because you just do your own thing. You focus on your own thing, you become your little mini expert and then you just let everybody, if like, if the whole world's crashing around you back at the newsroom, like you don't care. It just, as long as your thing is fine, that's all you care about.

Vance Crowe [00:44:36] Does everybody covet the host job? Is everybody like looking and dreaming and scheming to get into that seat?

Alison Morrow [00:44:44] No, but I remember when I first started in TV as an intern in Tampa, there was an intern who came in and said, I wanna be on tv, I wanna be an anchor. And I was like, I think I wanna be a producer. I don't even know why I said that. I think, 'cause I like, I, I like the behind the scene thing. I like to put things together and, and all I know is because I said I didn't, I wanted to be a producer. I didn't say I wanted to be on tv. I got all the coolest jobs because they looked at me and they were like, okay, this person's legit. Like, that girl is getting coffee. The other one who was like, I wanna be on tv, I wanna be an anchor. Like she's the coffee girl from here on out and Allison is producing the show. And I, I did, I got like so many, you know, insider just opportunities. I mean, I even remember being on the show that I was interning for because the, the producers liked me enough because I didn't come in saying I wanted to be on the show. If you came in and you said you wanted to be on the show, they had already typecast you as a premadonna narcissist and you were never gonna be able to do much. You were just running coffee. If you came in and said you actually wanted to work, then hey, all of a sudden now you get to be on tv. Like, it was very odd how that worked. But the anchor position is like very different than the reporter position. So maybe at the beginning people like, you're in college and you're thinking lights, camera, fame, whatever, and that's what you wanna do. Those people get weeded out very early because the salaries are terrible. My first salary was $18,500. That's pre-tax

Vance Crowe [00:46:15] What year?

Alison Morrow [00:46:16] And so like, I remember having an intern once in Knoxville and she, I told her that and she was like, I can't even pay for my nails on that. I'm like, no. And she was like, I'm going into pr. That was it. She was like, I'm done. I'm going into pr. So those people get weeded out very early. And so then you usually ended up with folks who were like, they really wanted the host job, maybe they were narcissistic. I, I don't totally know. I mean, I know some that are like really awesome and not narcissists at all. And I know some people that are pretty terrible egomaniacs. I'm sure that's in any industry. But I think there's like the folks who they like to, I don't know, they like to kind of ha see like sort of big picture or they like to be a part of the sh the total of the show. They like to do interviews, they like to oversee things and they just have sort of more, it's like a different personality thing. And yeah, they do make more money and they, and people know them more. But like for me, I wasn't really interested in that because I like to see history. Like I wanted to be there for it. I wanted to see what the world was watching on their television set. I wanted to see it in person and I didn't wanna sit in a studio. Like, to me that was very boring. And so, yeah, I think sometimes people look at it like, oh, you couldn't cut it as an anchor or a host or whatever. So you end up being a reporter. I think a lot of reporters, like once you get to that level, like I said, you've been, you know, weeded out by salary or like the toughness of the job or whatever else. There are people who just like really like being reporters and there are people who really like being anchors and they're like, you know, oil and water, they're not, they're just very different types of

Vance Crowe [00:47:53] People. They're not fighting for the same thing.

Alison Morrow [00:47:54] Not usually. No. No.

Vance Crowe [00:47:58] So people should watch the beginning of your YouTube video because it would actually, like on your channel when you put it out there, you do a little bit of an introduction and then all of a sudden you're like watching Allison do her reporter thing standing in in waist high water. Yeah. And then out on a gun range and then, you know, flying with a helicopter and I mean, I completely relate with the electricity and the, and the excitement of, of being right there as the world is going. You have this sense about you, but then you just decided that you were going to sell your house, get, I think you got recently got married, and then buy an Airstream trailer, strip it out so you can live in it. Like what in the hell is going on.

Alison Morrow [00:48:42] I know it sounds like very multiple personality disorder if you really don't know. Well, so yeah, I got married in oh, 2017 and my husband is former Special operations Marine Corps guy. Has always wanted to like, kind of live out there. I think like just, yeah, I think it helps like mentally for combat veterans to live in quieter places, places where they can hunt or fish and build things and you know, just participate in life in a way that you can't necessarily in a city because like utility companies and other corporations, like they do it for you. And so there's just a sense of like, I don't know, just self-reliance that, that he was really after. And then for me, as I covered the environment more and more I realized that I wanted to like live the message. Like I wanted to participate in growing my own food. Like I was, you know, covering stories about how hard it was for farmers in today's world and, you know, so I wanted to, you know, I wanted to see what it's like, like I wanted to figure out how to like get my own water. And I don't know, I mean, just like you, you start picking apart all of these systems that like, I think in a lot of ways, and this is something that irks me about consumers nowadays, is that you see a lot of people complaining about like the man or, you know, a a particular corporation or institution is like, it's, it's gotten us to this terrible place.

Alison Morrow [00:50:16] And I just look at each one of us individually and say like, okay, yeah, but when was the last time that you spent as much time thinking about your groceries as you did about that pair of jeans that you just bought, or your cell phone or on social media? Like, when did you actually sit down and start intentionally thinking about like these little things that you overlook every day, your food, your water, your housing, your transportation, like all of that stuff in the way that you, you know, you may be scrolling through and arguing with somebody about politics on Facebook. And so I, I just, to me it was kind of a life experiment. It was like to say, you know, I wanna stop handing over these seemingly unimportant choices that I now have realized are actually very important. They're far more important than voting for a president once every four years. They're far more important than any conversation I'm really ever having on Facebook. And I want to slow things down and be more intentional about these things that are little apparently, but not really once you add them up day in and day out over the course of 70 or 80 years. And so we both kind of came at it from different perspectives, but we're like, okay, ultimately, like what we want is a family homestead. We wanna, we wanna just like build our house and, and, and live like a quieter life where we have a more, you know, in depth understanding of like the environment around us to support us and take care of us and to give back to our communities, to know our neighbors more intentionally, to just to live like a more responsible life instead of just kind of going through the motions where really the reason that we have the time to do all this stuff that in a lot of ways I think is hurting us.

Alison Morrow [00:51:57] Like I, I, I mean I obviously here I am, I'm on your podcast and I have a YouTube channel. I'm not anti-technology, but there's, you know, in a lot of ways I think like when you look at depression or like our divisiveness politically, like I think you can trace it to the way we're communicating nowadays over these platforms. And so, like here I am like, well, what if I were to start having different kinds of conversations or, or to start from the very beginning, like instead of being in a rush to get everything done every day, I, I have coffee with my neighbor for the first time because, you know, the stuff that I used to, I outsource to a grocery store or somebody who makes my clothes or whatever else, I, I outsource all that stuff so that I have time to do all this busy work. But what if I, what if it was the opposite? What if I had less expenses? So I didn't need a six figure salary anymore. I, I, I, I just, I could reduce my expenses and now I'm gonna take all that stuff that I outsource to somebody else and that's gonna start taking me a long time. But maybe that's the most fulfilling stuff. Like maybe that's where, where the real grit of being a human is. And maybe that's part of the reason why we're depressed and we have anxiety and we don't get along with each other anymore. 'cause we don't do real things anymore. We don't, we don't build houses or chairs or cribs or barns. We don't ride horses together anymore. We don't round cattle up anymore together. We, you know, we just don't know each other anymore because we're doing all these superficial things that, you know, now that somebody else does all the, the gritty stuff for us. I wanted to sort of flip that on its head. And that's

Vance Crowe [00:53:25] Our, I think that's really, really inventive. I've known a lot of people. So I lived in Mendocino, California, which was a big back to the earth movement, back to the land movement back in the seventies and eighties. And those people lived out that ideal. But you look at today, you know, when I joined the Peace Corps 10 years ago, I remember we got into a big circle right as we were about to leave our training and go out into the rest of the world and they said, everyone take a turn and go around and describe something you taught yourself to do, something you taught yourself to make or build. And like, I loved my Peace Corps class, they were good people, but they did not grow up in the country the way that I did in the rural areas. So their answers were, I programmed my VCR, right? I set up my parents' stereo system, I had to like read the schematics and they were answers like that. And I'd never, until you just said this, started piecing together, like we have outsourced all of these things. We have created hyper efficient systems, but all of that extra time, most of us didn't use to apply towards something where we can feel progress. And progress to me is human satisfaction. It's moving towards something.

Alison Morrow [00:54:34] Well, yeah, and like, I mean, so now you have all these people signing up for the Peace Corps to try to find meaning for their lives, right? Because they, like, they don't have this meaning that they, you know, could find in exactly what you're talking about. So then we, we were looking to, you know, these other adventurers and like giving back in other ways. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I mean, I, if I didn't think you were

Vance Crowe [00:54:55] So right, I'd be offended by that. But I'm not at all like, like I think that one of the reasons that people would go into the Peace Corps, and for the most part it was people that they could have used those extra years to work and, and better themselves, but they didn't see that they had much meaning and that's that's what they were going for. Yeah.

Alison Morrow [00:55:14] Yeah. I I I don't think it's like even a question anymore that our generation and younger is dealing with pretty severe dysphoria with like the world around us, whether it's like anti-establishment, like we don't trust politics, we don't trust the big political parties anymore. We don't trust corporate media. We don't like, we don't trust anyone in a position of power. So we was sort of like, we're re recoiling from institutional authority like that you did, that's kind of gone out the window

Vance Crowe [00:55:43] If you did trust somebody. If you or I were sitting here being like, that politician right there, he's somebody I could get behind, everybody around you would be like, what's wrong with you? Yeah,

Alison Morrow [00:55:51] Yeah. Right. Yeah. So it's like that, you know, that's, people are skeptical of that. And then, you know, where, where like when you look at mental health for instance, like the, the rise of depression and suicide, like especially a young, among young people, like that's frightening. And, and everybody's sort of grappling for try to figure out why. Is it because, like, I remember watching a podcast once that we literally can get addicted to our cell phones. Like we have dopamine releases when we pick up our cell phone. And so now we have, you know, these, these like relationships with these things that like give nothing back to us really. And I, I do think there is something too, the like false sense of relationship that we get on social media platforms, which there i, it's like almost like a drug. It gives you this like little injection of feeling like you're part of a community so that you don't have that anxiety to go actually seek a real community and you just keep coming back to it. But the problem is like, it's not real, you know? So you don't have real relationships. You're not in real community with people. You're in these fake, superficial communities. Not that there isn't a place and a and a purpose for, I mean, like I said, here we are like this is, there's a lot of good that can come from this kind of technology, but it will never replace like having, you know, having a a an afternoon with your neighbor where you're bailing hay or you know, you're helping like fell a tree for firewood or whatever, and you're actually talking, you're holding a new, you know, your neighbor's new baby or, or whatever. Like these don't count as the same things, but unfortunately they've become like part of our idea of like what community means now to the point where it's starting to replace that.

Alison Morrow [00:57:31] And then it starts to screw up our, our our ideas of like meaning and purpose in all other areas too, I think anyway, like whether it's your career or, or whatever else you're talking about, like, it becomes these, you know, a very, this the, the sort of imaginative virtual world we keep thinking is, is gonna be enough. And, and to me, like that's what my decision was leaving TV and moving into this Airstream was to say, no, it's not enough. Like, it's not enough the old way of doing things like the old, the founding fathers and, and responsibility for your, your actions and, and pioneering something new and building something tangible like all of those things that, that that made America what it is. Like those still matter whether you have YouTube or not, maybe YouTube's where you go talk to people about it, but it doesn't replace making the rocking chair itself.

Vance Crowe [00:58:20] I think I would've pushed back on you a lot harder about these things with community and social media before two months of coronavirus. And the reason that I'm, I'm, I'm like, actually I think she's got a really good point here is during the first month, maybe month and a half of Coronavirus, I actually spent more time with people than I did in my regular life because I cut out all the airport traffic where I was with my headphones in and not talking with anybody or all this travel time. And instead I replaced it with Google Hangouts and FaceTime and just on all the time. But it wasn't until this morning that I, one of my buddies came over and we lifted outside socially distanced, but we lifted at my house and instantly it became clear that there's something about being in people's physical presence and, and exerting yourself that you're like, oh, wait a second, this is what we had before we just forgot all about it. And if you've grown up in the world where social media is a substitute, it's, it's saccharine compared to sugar, right? It's always gonna taste a little off, right?

Alison Morrow [00:59:27] Right. Well, besides the fact that people will say and behave in ways on internet platforms that they would never say or behave in real per, you know, life. So it's like tends to bring out in some cases the worst of us. There's plenty of research that shows that, like actually when, when you hold someone's hand, for instance, or you give someone a hug, like you exchange electrons, like there, there's a very molecular level to human relationship that requires physical presence, whether it's your bare feet touching the earth or me holding my new baby. Like the, there, there is stuff that we still don't even know about, like the importance of what happens to human beings from, you know, a relationship standpoint and from a health standpoint when we're in each other's physical presence. You know, there are studies that I, in my training in grad school, in seminary where I was a psychology child development specialty, and you know, we talked about like for instance, like kids who aren't held right in orphanages and like their, how that stunts their development later in life. Like if, if no one holds it, like there's actually syndromes that have names to them from that are basically like, the point of it is like you didn't get touched enough when you were a little kid. Like no one held you and I and, and no one looked at you. You never looked at another face. So you know, you didn't get to learn how to smile and what does smiling do? What, how does that replace, you know, or, or, you know, release dopamine and other neurotransmitters that are like important to growth all that something's

Vance Crowe [01:01:01] So important. You're hitting all of my, like, so we are on the same page. I, the other day I put out a tweet, and I didn't mean for it to be as divisive as it was, but it was about, look, if you require everyone to wear masks, you're now gonna cut off their ability to signal to you anything like your eyes can't deliver enough of a message. You need to smile, you need to frown, you need to, and people could, people push back on me and they're like, oh, this guy wants to be able to smile at his friends. That's why he doesn't wanna wear a mask. And it's like, I don't know that everybody has projected out forward, let's imagine not just one person seeing another person with a mask on. Imagine being in a crowd where hundreds of people are wearing masks and you can no longer detect their emotions. This is not a parallel world i, I wanna be in. Right? Like, and, and I think that it's, we haven't even begun to grapple with the fact that if we bring everybody together and we suddenly change these cultural norms, whether we shake hands or whether we cover over our faces, this has major implications for our psychology of which we should not underestimate.

Alison Morrow [01:02:11] Okay, so two points on that vein. The first is like, there are actual scientists, doctors who have come out and talked about how the mask thing may not really be doing what we're thinking it's doing anyway. So that's definitely another conversation for another day. And it's, it's a valid criticism and I think people should explore that instead of just jumping on someone like yourself saying like that, you know, you just wanna kill everybody in your presence. There are, there's certainly criticism out there, like as to whether this whole mask wearing thing is really doing what we think it's doing. But secondly, it brings up the point that really has bugged me too with COVID-19 and its predecessors before this, like, topics that just became these sacrilegious topics that like the mainstream media or just the general public, like if you ask a question on that vein, you are, you are, you know, this is some misanthrope who just like hates the world. And, and, and I think that's just terrible. Like, I think if, you know, I don't know, I didn't see your tweet, so I don't know if it was like in jest or if it was serious or what, but it's like if you're asking a question, like especially if, if you have a COVID-19 where, come on. Like, we really don't know a whole lot about this even still. So to just like ask a question is a fair thing to do at this point. Like, it, it doesn't have like decades of literature behind it or anything. People should be asking questions and I think it's really unfortunate that we're at that point with each other. Again, I don't know what the cause is, is it the way people communicate on Twitter? Not sure, but I think it's unfortunate that we're at that point where even if you ask a question, which is a valid question, you know, people just can't handle it and they, and they all immediately like assume the worst about you.

Alison Morrow [01:03:49] And that, that happened. Like, again, like when we were talking about back being in journalism and everything and being able to have empathy for people who are different than you and be able to be curious about how they think about things. I mean, we should be listening and asking questions at a time like this. Like to me, if all of a sudden like you're watching your rights go away, you're watching society as you know, it completely change. Like this is exactly the time that you should allow for there to be questions and not just like easy softball questions, but tough questions like, should we be social distancing at all? Should we be wearing masks? Should we have business shutdowns? Or should kids go back to school? Like these are all valid questions to ask and they should be explored, especially at a time like this, not, not, not looked at as like, you know, you just hate people and you want grandma to die and whatever else. Like, these are valid questions and and if you don't ask them now, then like, when do you ask them like, what, what, at what point in time, you know, is society gonna change so much that now you're gonna sit back and be like, okay, may you know what, now I maybe now I wanna ask about that mask thing. I yeah, that, that's, I just think it's unfortunate

Vance Crowe [01:04:56] You wanna be miles ahead before we've crossed a line that says we've taken away too many liberties. Like, you wanna be having that conversation. And frankly, that's what we all learned when we were in school. Like when, when, when I was growing up, like this idea of arguing back and forth and that, that you would put out, forward an idea and then it would change. But there's something about the, I I think, I think it has a lot to do with the financial incentives of, of social media, right? It doesn't really matter whether people agree with you or disagree with you. What you're trying to do is to peak their, their, you know, their brain, they're trying to shove off this amount of aggression because then they'll click and then they're exposed to ads and then you've achieved what you needed to do. And we've created this incentive system where you're trying to drive emotion as opposed to having a valuable conversation,

Alison Morrow [01:05:49] Right? And like the way the platforms are set up, whether it's like Twitter where you can only have so many characters and so you're not gonna be able to really delve into a complex topic anyway. Or, you know, Facebook, like you said, like you just tend to be reinforced in this feedback loop of whatever it is that come confirms your bias initially. It's just not set up to, to progress us towards more complex thinking individuals. That said, I still don't blame them because I, you know, humans, adults should be able to look at this and say, what am I trying to get across by pressing send or, you know, enter on this comment like, you know, am I contributing in, in a good way or am I just unleashing on people and is this really the best opportunity for me to have this conversation or not? Like I, I think people need to really sit back and just do some inventory a little bit about how they, you know, converse with people. And it's funny, I, there was somebody that I saw the other day on Facebook and she's like, you guys are all complaining, God, what a negative way to live being a complainer all the time. And I'm like, but you're complaining about them. You know what I mean? Do you not see that you are complaining about the complainers? So like, who's better? Like, and, and it's like people don't see it like you're, but if you do it, I'm gonna call it out. But like, I can't see that I'm engaging in the exact same behavior. I, I don't know, IIII think people should be able to figure out at some point how to use these platforms and have in a positive way and you know, and stop blaming 'em for everything.

Alison Morrow [01:07:30] But I do think like it is like, you know, a kid in a candy store and you gotta be careful how you use it. And, and there is going to be, I mean, I think there, I can't remember the guy's name. He was an NYU professor who he wrote about this topic. Jonathan, he specific. Say it again?

Vance Crowe [01:07:47] Jonathan Het.

Alison Morrow [01:07:48] Yes. Yes. And he's so fascinating. I mean the, the stuff that he talks about with like, just how, what, what is it? How bad ideas with good intentions or like making a, you know, making a generation of like weaklings or something. I can't, I basically just rewrote the title for his book. But yeah, I mean, hi, his ideas of, of how this has changed us and, and made us like just worse human beings I think is really interesting. But at the end of the day I do sit back and say like, you know, we are responsible for how we use things so figure out how to use it in the right way. And

Vance Crowe [01:08:28] That's why I love Twitter. That's why I, that's why I'm making the case that you have got to jump onto Twitter. Yeah. And come hang out in, in the areas where Dwayne and I are at because I've cultivated my Twitter feed not to, not to only have people that agree with me, but people that bring me the ideas from the furthest away that are still Yeah. Somehow relevant to me. And for me, during Coronavirus in particular, I found that the level of anger on social media went way down because it was, oh really? People being like, this is information I have that I wanna share with people, and what do people think about it? But you only get that if you highly cultivate your Twitter feed. If you make it so that people are trying to drive outrage or trying to cause problems is kick 'em out.

Alison Morrow [01:09:12] I see. So you block people.

Vance Crowe [01:09:14] I don't block. I mean it's, if you've done something to block me or if I've done something, if you have done something to me for me to block you, it's because I believe you have malice in what you're doing. I I think you're trying to either hurt me or somebody that I'm connected with. And so anytime there's malice just gone, I mute a lot of people. Like I, you know, you can just come and bark at my, my, my page all day long and I never know it. But, but, but I don't have that many problems on Twitter. And I would say that it's helped me meet people that are way different than I am.

Alison Morrow [01:09:49] Okay. Maybe I'll consider it.

Vance Crowe [01:09:51] Oh, you'll love it. You'll love it. And, and, and the podcast group, like the people that are on that have been on the podcast, people that are listening to the podcast, they're, they're great at Twitter because they're always bringing new ideas and new people. Yeah. So you are reformed journalist and you, you worked with heroin as a part of your theology while you were studying about heroin

Alison Morrow [01:10:15] Addicts, not heroin itself, but, okay.

Vance Crowe [01:10:18] So, so tell me about that. Why, why theology and what were you doing with heroin addicts?

Alison Morrow [01:10:23] Ooh, so when I was a kid, my parents are both MDs and I was the first child and they had me, I say I was a miracle. My parents say I was unplanned. So I was born at a kind of a tough time for them. They were like, you know, back in the day there wasn't even a cap on how many hours you could work. I think now it's like 120 hours. You can't make a resident work more hours a week than 120. But back when my parents were residents, there was like, you could be at the hospital forever and nobody cared. So they would take me to the hospital when I was really young and not realizing at the time that like, I was old enough to figure out like where I, I knew there was something up about like, people with tubes down their noses and like laying on stretchers and hallways and unlike them, I never wanted to fix these people. I always wanted to know like who they were, where they came from and where they were going. You know? And so, so I figured out pretty early on, I, I actually have memories of this that like, it hit me that, you know, and, and, and my parents were doctors, right? So we grew up okay, like, you know, we, we didn't hurt for like food or housing or anything like that. It hit me very early that my lifestyle or like even people who were like way richer we're gonna end up exactly the way that a homeless person with nothing was gonna end up.

Alison Morrow [01:11:54] We were all going to the same place, like in the ground, you know? And that there had to be something more than a long CV or a, you know, seven figure a salary or, you know, job, lots of job titles after your name or whatever else. It was fame, fortune, because it didn't matter. We were all gonna die when I was a kid. I didn't know. That was the great question of all the philosophers really from the beginning that we've had records of. Like that's what's, you know, gotten us our greatest texts is like the, the ponderings of like why we're here and what happens when we die and what the point of all of this is. And I was asking those questions like very, very early. In fact, my grandmom told me that once when I was three, she was babysitting me. It was Easter, I was like glued to the tv, very close to it, like a foot away. I was just intently watching it. And she's like, Allison, what are you doing? And I looked at her and I said, what's the matter granny? Don't you know about the resurrection of Jesus Christ? I mean, I was three, so who knows where I got that level of intensity. But as I, you know, progressed later in my life, like now I'm 10 or 15, not four or three years old, I was still asking those same questions. But now I was reading texts, I was reading like Descartes, k Cs Lewis, I was, you know, I, I anything I get my, my hands on to understand like how the greatest thinkers Plato were looking at these things.

Alison Morrow [01:13:26] And so I got actually into TV right really early. I mean, I knew that I wanted to do television journalism, but I didn't like being a, I was a producer, like I said in New York and I didn't love being a producer. Now I know it's because I like leaving the newsroom. I like doing the stories and being out there, but I was kind of reassessing my career like, well maybe TV news isn't for me anymore. 'cause remember I didn't wanna be the person that walked in and said, I wanna be on tv. So I was like, well, I guess I can't do this anymore. And my mom said, well, you always like, you know, thought about like this, you know, the theological conundrums, like what about going to seminary? Have you ever thought about like, you know, studying theology or philosophy and, and going into that field, which pays really well, let me tell you. And I was like, no, I guess, you know, I hadn't. So I sort of threw a line out and I applied to a bunch, bunch of different places and Boston University offered me a full scholarship. So I was like, well, I don't really have a reason to turn this down. Now the interesting thing though is that BU only was gonna gimme a full scholarship if I did a three year master of divinity degree, which is what pastors go do, which I didn't really wanna do. I wanted to do a two year shorter degree. And then my thought after that was that I was gonna study psychology and be a therapist. That was kind of like my long-term goal, but to get the full ride, I had to take the three year degree. Now, because of that, I had to take preaching class, which I tried really hard to get out of, but I was forced essentially in order to graduate. So I waited until the last semester of my last year and I sat in the back of the room and I probably had a really terrible attitude. And my professor opened his first lecture by talking about how we're all storytellers.

Alison Morrow [01:15:00] Whether you're somebody who sells ice cream or you're a pastor, or you're a journalist or whatever, you, whoever you are, like, we're all telling stories. That's what we do all day long. We're constantly framing meaning and purpose in our lives in the form of stories. And we have a choice. What kind of storyteller do we wanna be? Somebody who moves our communities forward, or somebody who moves them backwards with divisiveness and, you know, and, and, and negativity. And, and I had never really thought about like the higher purpose of journalism, of like what I had thought I had wanted to go into. And that was what got me thinking. I was like, well maybe I'll, I'll try this again and I'll try it as a reporter. So it was that class that I never would've had to have taken if I hadn't, you know, been forced to get, you know, if I had given me the full scholarship, I hadn't been forced into preaching class, I, I probably would have ended up a therapist. Now to go back to the question about being a therapist, my brother was a heroin addict for quite a while. He's, he's alive now. He's like one of the very few beat it, it was farming actually that got him clean essentially. Like he became an or, or he like literally moved to like the northern most hip in Maine and, and worked on an organic vegetable farm, had some chickens and was a couple of hippies that had retired from academia and he stopped using heroin and he's one of the few success stories out there. But for a while I think what was happening to me was that I wanted to save my brother and I couldn't. So I went to school to save other people and I luckily had a very attuned professor who picked up on that and said, maybe you wanna go to therapy yourself?

Alison Morrow [01:16:35] And I was like, I don't need therapy. I'm perfect. You know, I thought through all this stuff, I've read all these really big books, these people with long names from Russia, doki, you know, I do not need to go to therapy. And he was like, Hey, here's my friend's card. And I tried it and then I ended up in therapy twice a week for two years. And by the end of it, you know, during, I should say during it, I was working at a methadone maintenance clinic for heroin addicts thinking that this is what I was gonna do. And you basically, they line up every morning and they come in for their dose and it's to keep them off opiates and, you know, to chronicle like how much they're actually taking and to help 'em eventually like get off of that too. And yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:17:14] My, my college apartment was two doors down from a methadone clinic, so that was an experience.

Alison Morrow [01:17:19] Okay. You know, where was that?

Vance Crowe [01:17:21] In Milwaukee.

Alison Morrow [01:17:22] Okay. Yeah. I mean, and it brings a rough crowd. I mean, no, no joke. Like it, it's, it's, it's definitely a different crowd. I'm glad for that experience. Like I said before, it's been those experiences that made me the journalist that I, I was and hopefully will, you know, continue to be like somebody who is able to see the world through the eyes of people who are very, very different and have very different backgrounds. But because I was working with them on a regular basis, so I saw what this was really like, and I was working with a therapist who was helping me deal with the fact that my brother could die at any minute. We didn't know where he was living at the time and was essentially killing himself. I got to the point where I was like, you know what? I don't think I wanna do this anymore. I think I don't wanna be a therapist, I don't wanna see my clients every week. Like that's the thing I, I used to think about journalism, it was like, you know, you see your clients once and then you never see 'em again. So if you really didn't like interviewing 'em, you never have to see 'em a second time. But, you know, a therapist, it's like, sorry, like you're stuck with this person for, I don't know, God knows 10 years. But, you know, I got over the issues with my brother, so I was like, I I, I don't think I wanna, this isn't me. I'm, I'm a storyteller. I I like shooting video. I've been doing it since I was a little kid. What am I doing here? And, and so I, you know, finally kind of free from, from working out that, and I don't know, like if you have people who listen who are in that field, but I'm sure like a lot of psychologists can tell you that there are folks who go into their industry to work out issues that they have, you know, and unfor that's an unfortunate negative consequence when people go into that world without having done self-exploration, is that they're drawn to it because, you know, there's this, this introspection that allows you to kind of touch into your emotions without actually having to deal with them.

Alison Morrow [01:19:13] But you work 'em out on your patients, but that's not what you're supposed to do, right? That's not what a therapist is supposed to do. So I'm glad for that. So that plus the preaching class, that's how I ended up back in news.

Vance Crowe [01:19:24] Well, you have been an adventurer's life and it sounds like you're about to take your newborn daughter and, and special forces husband on a, on a wild adventure. The, the question that I've been asking everybody during the coronavirus, I was doing one to two interviews a day. I was cranking 'em out. Now I'm gonna slow back down, but I still like the question, which is, what is the world gonna look like two weeks from today,

Alison Morrow [01:19:52] Two weeks from today? I think it's gonna look a lot like today, unfortunately. I think, I don't think that much is gonna change with like the lockdowns and stuff anytime soon in, in our area anyway. I, I, you know, they're ramping up contact tracing and stuff now in Washington. However, I do think the resolve of people is going to change. And I hope that what comes out of this is that people start to think a little bit more critically about their governments, about their health, about their communities, and ask tough questions about who they wanna be in those places and, and how they wanna live and, and the, and the communities that they wanna build around them. Because first off, not that we don't all have time 'cause we're now at home not going to offices. And I feel, obviously I feel terrible for the people. I, I still have work, but like my husband's lost a ton of work and I know that there are millions of people who are dealing with the same thing. This is a time to really reflect and sit back and say like, do we wanna go back to normal or do we wanna create something new? And, and I tend to be somebody who's like on the other end, like I, I wanna sit back and say like, there's a lot about the way that we used to do things that I don't think I wanna go back to. Like, I, I wanna start working on newer, like communities where we have like the stuff that you and I talked about during your podcast, like we have more intentional relationships where we think more critically about the world around us, where we take responsibility for our actions.

Alison Morrow [01:21:31] Whether that's like actually really looking at our political leaders and whether they're fulfilling what they promised or like helping just our neighbor down the street in a way that we just completely overlooked. That this is like a kind of, you know, a, a positive opportunity to reinvent ways that perhaps were not serving us well before. And that, not necessarily just going back to the way things used to be, but taking this as an opportunity to create something even better. That's what I hope. But in two weeks is where we gonna be there. I don't know.

Vance Crowe [01:22:09] Amen. Alison, if people wanted to check out your YouTube or find you on Twitter, how would they do that?

Alison Morrow [01:22:15] YouTube's just, my name Alison Morrow and it's one l Allison Morrow, like tomorrow without two. And on Twitter, Alison Morrow tv I think Instagram also Alison Morrow tv and Facebook. It's just my name and I'm all over there. But I will say like Vans, like you said, Twitter is definitely one of those places I dip my toe into every once in a while, but is not, not my favorite place to hang out yet. But I will take to heart what

Vance Crowe [01:22:41] You said, come join us. It's, it's, it's a good, it's a good place. And there are very interesting people. Allison, thank you so much. I, I, I've never had an inside view on the news like this and thank you for sharing. So thank you very much

Alison Morrow [01:22:52] For Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks for having me.