This Land: Oklahoma’s Past, America’s Future
Switchyard
In January 2025, just after the Inauguration of President Donald Trump, Switchyard organized a gathering of journalists from across the country to discuss how we would go about covering the new administration. We gathered together the biographers of Michelle Obama and Mitch McConnell, authors of books about the Koch Brothers and The Family, about Amazon and Google and Facebook, about the rise of white supremacy and the cash value of racism. We featured writers and editors for the New York Times, the LA Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Mother Jones, for StoryCorps, This...
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Immersion: What Media Gets Wrong by Not Going Deep
Switchyard
In January 2025, just after the Inauguration of President Donald Trump, Switchyard organized a gathering of journalists from across the country to discuss how we would go about covering the new administration. We gathered together the biographers of Michelle Obama and Mitch McConnell, authors of books about the Koch Brothers and The Family, about Amazon and Google and Facebook, about the rise of white supremacy and the cash value of racism. We featured writers and editors for the New York Times, the LA Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Mother Jones, for StoryCorps, This...
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Merchants of Fear: Stirring Hatred for Political Gain
Switchyard
In January 2025, just after the Inauguration of President Donald Trump, Switchyard organized a gathering of journalists from across the country to discuss how we would go about covering the new administration. We gathered together the biographers of Michelle Obama and Mitch McConnell, authors of books about the Koch Brothers and The Family, about Amazon and Google and Facebook, about the rise of white supremacy and the cash value of racism. We featured writers and editors for the New York Times, the LA Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Mother Jones, for StoryCorps, This...
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The Place of Literature: A Roundtable Discussion
Switchyard
In January 2025, just after the Inauguration of President Donald Trump, Switchyard organized a gathering of journalists from across the country to discuss how we would go about covering the new administration. We gathered together the biographers of Michelle Obama and Mitch McConnell, authors of books about the Koch Brothers and The Family, about Amazon and Google and Facebook, about the rise of white supremacy and the cash value of racism. We featured writers and editors for the New York Times, the LA Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Mother Jones, for StoryCorps, This...
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Echo Chambers: The Destructive Effects of Silos and Misinformation
Switchyard
In January 2025, just after the Inauguration of President Donald Trump, Switchyard organized a gathering of journalists from across the country to discuss how we would go about covering the new administration. We gathered together the biographers of Michelle Obama and Mitch McConnell, authors of books about the Koch Brothers and The Family, about Amazon and Google and Facebook, about the rise of white supremacy and the cash value of racism. We featured writers and editors for the New York Times, the LA Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Mother Jones, for StoryCorps, This...
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The Forgotten Man: Reporting on Class, Race, and Poverty in America
Switchyard
In January 2025, just after the Inauguration of President Donald Trump, Switchyard organized a gathering of journalists from across the country to discuss how we would go about covering the new administration. We gathered together the biographers of Michelle Obama and Mitch McConnell, authors of books about the Koch Brothers and The Family, about Amazon and Google and Facebook, about the rise of white supremacy and the cash value of racism. We featured writers and editors for the New York Times, the LA Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Mother Jones, for StoryCorps, This American Life,...
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The Slow Civil War: What Happens Now?
Switchyard
In January 2025, just after the Inauguration of President Donald Trump, Switchyard organized a gathering of journalists from across the country to discuss how we would go about covering the new administration. We gathered together the biographers of Michelle Obama and Mitch McConnell, authors of books about the Koch Brothers and The Family, about Amazon and Google and Facebook, about the rise of white supremacy and the cash value of racism. We featured writers and editors for the New York Times, the LA Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Mother Jones, for StoryCorps, This American Life,...
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The Truth of What Happened: In Conversation with Ted Conover
Switchyard
In this episode, Switchyard magazine editor Ted Genoways speaks with award-winning journalist Ted Conover about his book Cheap Land Colorado, set among the rural poor in the San Luis Valley, and his style of investigative reporitng, known as "immersion." By spending months or even years with the people he is writing about—working alongside them, living with them—Conover comes to understand his subjects as few journalists do. That style, however, also raises thorny questions of objectivity and truth-telling, especially when Conover is writing about people who are suspicious of the...
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Switchyard at Mayfest: A Journey into the Heart of America
Switchyard
In this episode, Switchyard magazine editor Ted Genoways brings together author Jeff Sharlet and political organizer Jane Kleeb for a conversation about the nation’s political divide and a path toward a positive future. Ranging from the deep-rooted divisions fueling hate and violence to the beacon of hope emanating from rural America, this dynamic conversation promises to spark your imagination and ignite your spirit. Sharlet and Kleeb delve into the heart of America’s complex political landscape and explore the power of community as we navigate through uncertain times together. ...
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Switchyard at Mayfest: Exposing the Ku Klux Klan in America
Switchyard
In this riveting episode, Timothy Egan, author of New York Times bestseller A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them, and Kevin Willmott, the brilliant director and Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman, join Switchyard magazine editor Ted Genoways for a conversation about the role of the Ku Klux Klan in America’s past and present.
info_outlineIn January 2025, just after the Inauguration of President Donald Trump, Switchyard organized a gathering of journalists from across the country to discuss how we would go about covering the new administration. We gathered together the biographers of Michelle Obama and Mitch McConnell, authors of books about the Koch Brothers and The Family, about Amazon and Google and Facebook, about the rise of white supremacy and the cash value of racism. We featured writers and editors for the New York Times, the LA Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Mother Jones, for StoryCorps, This American Life, and Reveal. We also had musicians, filmmakers, novelists, essayists, and poets.
As we had hoped, the gathering was a source of solace, a call to action and a chance to recommit ourselves to our values and best practices and a rekindling of our belief in the power of storytelling, in all its forms. In these unprecedented and difficult times, we are once again reporting on a president who characterizes journalists as enemies of the state and jokes about killing us. And he empowers and emboldens state and local level officials to indulge their most authoritarian impulses. Here, in the heart of Tulsa, on the grounds of the Tulsa Race Massacre and the end of the Trail of Tears, we have state officials who have sought to block the teaching of that history while requiring schools to buy Bibles branded with the new president’s name.
The solemn question each of our panels addressed: What are we going to do now?
In this live episode we hear from Jeff Sharlet and Molly O’Toole with a response from Mazin Sidahmed. Jeff has given years to studying what he calls “the slow civil war,” the dividing of the country and the rise of an angry, aggrieved, alienated ultra right wing. Molly has reported on Trump’s immigration policies and their effects on migrants and their families. She’s completing a book that documents her journeys alongside people traversing the Darien Gap and making their way north over hundreds and thousands of miles to the U.S. border. Mazin, who leads the Q&A, co-founded and co-directs the groundbreaking immigration news site Documented.