Beth Macy: "When the Local Paper Dies, the Community Follows"

Summary

The Gist – “Beth Macy: ‘When the Local Paper Dies, the Community Follows’”

Date: October 30, 2025
Host: Mike Pesca
Guest: Beth Macy, journalist and author of Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America

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Overview

In this episode, Mike Pesca interviews acclaimed journalist and author Beth Macy about her new memoir, Paper Girl. The conversation explores the decline of small-town America, the erosion of local newspapers, the real-life obstacles for upward mobility, the devastating impact of addiction, and how national discourse and economic policy have left communities like Macy’s hometown of Urbana, Ohio, fractured and vulnerable.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The State of Small-Town America

• Urbana, Ohio (Beth Macy’s hometown) is emblematic of “flyover country” decline, a place once seen as a haven now dotted with Confederate flags and wracked by economic and social breakdown.
• Macy highlights the difference between urban and rural coverage in the media, noting how narratives created in cities often miss the reality on the ground in places like Urbana.
  “Unless you have a reason to go to a place like Urbana, you might not have even seen how distressed the so-called flyover country has gotten.” (Beth Macy, 12:52)

2. Addiction as Symptom and Cause

• Much of Paper Girl tracks addiction’s role in the community. Macy stresses addiction is “a number of things—moral failing probably the least of them,” with corporate manipulation, inadequate healthcare, and self-medication playing major roles.
• The generational impact is stark, with foster care rates tripling and emergency mental health calls multiplying by nine since Macy left Urbana.
  “It just kept coming up. Like, the kids I interviewed, their parents were addicted. Foster care numbers had tripled since 2015… Emergency mental health calls had gone up by a factor of nine since I left 40 years ago.” (Beth Macy, 14:58)

3. Upward Mobility Has Collapsed

• Macy set out to find a modern-day version of her younger self in Urbana, leading her to profile Silas—a trans student, band leader, and determined overcomer.

• Silas’s story demonstrates how, despite drive and intelligence, the weight of poverty, family addiction, and instability make college and escape nearly impossible.
  “There are too many stressors on a young kid to achieve escape velocity from a place like Urbana.” (Mike Pesca, 20:25)

• Silas’s attempt at college ends in less than a week due to unreliable transportation and caregiving burdens.
  “He doesn't make it past the first week, initially, because his clunker car fritzes out. And then his mother… gets in a car wreck… And the caregiving falls to Silas.” (Beth Macy, 17:42)

4. The Role (and Demise) of Local Institutions

• Macy describes how the social fabric is weakened as institutions (bands, newspapers, schools) shrink. Band was once discipline and community; now it’s a shadow of itself.
• Public schools suffer from funding loss, open enrollment, and a shift to unregulated homeschooling, often resulting in worse outcomes for the neediest children.
• State and federal aid has declined. Macy recalls her full Pell grant now being replaced by a paltry 30% coverage for the same kind of student.
  “Now, a similarly poor student would only have about 30% of those same expenses covered at a four-year university.” (Beth Macy, 26:12)

5. The Collapse of Local Journalism

• Macy laments the decline from robust regional newspapers (“160 employees at the Roanoke Times in 1989… now it has three reporters and an editor for four papers”) to “barely being able to cover city council” today.
• The loss of local news coverage exacerbates social divides and conspiracy thinking: “They don’t know what their neighbors are doing… It’s a real loss for community and a real cesspool place where people can get almost immediate support for pretty crazy ideas.” (Beth Macy, 34:00)

6. Conspiracies, Media Distrust, and Political Division

• Macy recounts her experience reconnecting with a once-liberal ex-boyfriend now radicalized online; despite initial cordiality, the relationship ends due to deep-seated paranoia and hostility tied to right-wing disinformation.

• Many in Urbana regard mainstream media with suspicion, blaming elite “outsiders” for their woes and retreating into conspiratorial thinking and alternative news sources like the Epoch Times.

  “He was reading Russian propaganda four to seven hours a day… by the end… he just became verbally abusive.” (Beth Macy, 35:29)

• Bridge-building lessons (“focus on what you have in common”) fall short when politics eventually intrudes.
  “All those pieces of advice about bridging divides, I always find [they] work up till the point that you do talk about politics.” (Mike Pesca, 37:56)

7. Racism, Self-Perceptions, and Community Memory

• Macy shares memories of her Black second-grade teacher who confronted racism head-on in the classroom, noting “you’d be fired today if you did that.”

• Racial attitudes remain complex and contradictory—one of Macy’s Black childhood friends now denies George Floyd was killed by police (“a fentanyl theorist”) and is deeply skeptical of media and mainstream narratives.
  “Joy, when I write a piece for the New York Times, that fact-checking department is so rigorous—it’s like I’m getting a brain colonoscopy.” (Beth Macy, 40:45)

• Despite these complexities, those in Urbana often feel looked down upon or dismissed by national discourse, fueling defensiveness and isolation.
  “The messages that someone in a place like Urbana get… it’s not crazy or conspiratorial to think that much of what you define as the mainstream media looks down on them, has, doesn’t understand them, is dismissive of them.” (Mike Pesca, 41:24)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On addiction’s impact:
  “I mean, you have no idea… at one point, I was so depressed after Dopesick that my husband said, you should write a cookbook next.”
  – Beth Macy (14:12)

• On struggle and talent:
  “The trans part, ultimately… was the least interesting part about him, honestly, once I got to know him.”
  – Beth Macy (18:28)

• On closing opportunity:
  “I don’t think in good conscience I could… tell them even to go into journalism today. You have to be really, really exceptional to get a job—and most of those exceptional people came from exceptional parents.”
  – Beth Macy (32:48)

• On bridging political divides:
  “She brought up the best quote in the book, which was, ‘How do we still love each other beyond what we can’t understand or agree with?’ And after all these interviews, I don’t think I can answer that question.”
  – Beth Macy (41:24)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• [12:33] – Introduction to Beth Macy and her memoir’s focus
• [14:12] – Addiction in small towns, effects on youth and family
• [15:45] – Introducing Silas: poverty, trauma, struggle for mobility
• [17:42] – Silas’s failed college launch, caregiving burden
• [20:25] – Systemic barriers and roots of small-town distress
• [21:01] – Declining middle class and public school unraveling
• [24:01] – The rise and consequences of unregulated homeschooling
• [25:25] – Comparison of educational opportunity (then vs. now)
• [32:48] – The collapse of local journalism and its consequences
• [35:29] – Interview with ex–boyfriend: the path to conspiracy and division
• [38:45] – Racial attitudes, memory, and teaching in Urbana
• [41:24] – Feelings of being looked down on, and defensive isolation
• [44:41] – Reflections on J.D. Vance and political cynicism

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Tone and Language

Beth Macy brings a thoughtful, clear-eyed, and empathetic tone to her stories, blending personal memories, deep reporting, and sharp observation of social decline and resilience. Pesca challenges and explores with curiosity and a bit of wry humor, maintaining an atmosphere both serious and accessible.

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Conclusion

This episode is a searching, sometimes heartbreaking look at the unraveling of America’s small towns, the institutional failures that fuel it, and the personal repercussions for those left behind. Macy’s reporting in Paper Girl ties together economic collapse, addiction, shrinking opportunity, and the vital—now threatened—role of local journalism in binding communities. The conversation is both a warning and a call for greater understanding, bridging of divides, and much-needed attention to the stories outside our national spotlight.

Transcript

[Mike Pesca]

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[Jeff Bridges]

Morning Zoe. Got donuts.

[Dana]

Jeff Bridges, why are you still living above our garage?

[Jeff Bridges]

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[Dana]

Oh no, I'm not really prepared. I couldn't possibly at T Mobile get the new iPhone 17 Pro on them. It's designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet and has the ultimate pro camera system.

[Jeff Bridges]

Wow, impressive. Let me try. T Mobile is the best place to get iPhone 17 Pro because they've got the best network.

[Beth Macy]

Nice.

[Dana]

Jeffrey, you heard them.

[Jeff Bridges]

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[Beth Macy]

Dud.

[Dana]

My work here is done.

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[Mike Pesca]

It's Thursday, October 30, 2025. From Peach Fish Productions, it's the gist. I'm Mike Pesca. The New Jersey governors races kind of close. They'll tell you it's a nail biter. It's deadlocked. It's kind of close. With Congresswoman Mikey Sherrill having a small lead in most polls within the margin of error. Congresswoman Mikey Sheryl. Remember that title because neither she nor her opponent wants to emphasize that credential. For Jack Cittarelli, Mikey Sheryl is a doddering, dishonest environmental nitwit. Here is AD1.

[Beth Macy]

We need to move into clean power.

[Mikey Sherrill]

It's going to cost you an arm and a leg, but if you're a.

[Beth Macy]

Good person, you'll do it.

[Mike Pesca]

Unbelievable. Talk about out of touch. While those words out of Cheryl's mouth might sound damning, she didn't really say that. I mean, she said the words. There were some in the middle cut out. But what she was saying was a longer quote that started with Sometimes our messaging in the Democratic Party was not great. And then she went on to say, but now things are better because that clean energy is actually cheaper. Note to everyone running for office, you can never, ever express any sentiment for rhetorical purposes that you don't believe in to say, pivot off it or to say, some people think that. And if you do so, you need to hold a flashing red sign underneath that says, I do not believe that.

[Libsyn Ads Host]

You know what?

[Mike Pesca]

Not underneath, actually obscuring your face. Maybe also accompanied by another sign or a voiceover also saying, jack, CIA Torelli killed thousands of people through his pharmaceutical investments. Also not true. But one of the allegations of this campaign here is another example of Cittarelli telling New Jersey voters why the congressman is unfit for service. And it's just him playing an answer to a question, an answer she actually gave.

[Beth Macy]

If you could pass one piece of legislation, what would it be? Wow.

[Mikey Sherrill]

I would love. That's a really good question because there's so many that are coming to mind right now. But right now, I would love at this point to pass legislation to.

[Beth Macy]

Send.

[Mikey Sherrill]

A federal block grant back to states, back to the state of New Jersey to run some really key programs and innovate on them.

[Mike Pesca]

I mean, not great. No one really knows what block grants are. And if you're running for office, you gotta be bang, bang, bang. You gotta be buttoned down. You gotta be almost robotic, which people hate. But it's good to have an answer, else Jack Cittarelli's gonna mock you, and then the other thing he's gonna do is play that same ad and cut it off before you actually talk about block grants, making it sound like she never gave an answer or I trust you that block grants weren't in the offering. By the way, the big block grant vote they're going for. Cheryl, massively. I cannot believe that someone would withhold their vote for governor based on the fact that in one interview, she said a few too many times before coming out with a great answer. Cheryl, in response, she has not gone on the trail trying to explain the block grant thing, which is smart people hate block grants, apparently including members of Congress. No one really knows what a block grant is. If you do, you're certainly voting for the Democratic member of Congress. But Cheryl does vow that she's going to bring costs down, which is a great thing to emphasize. No idea if she could do it. But what she mostly does is to sidestep all of that. Not mention, hey, I'm in Congress, because that's not popular and to Go on TV again and again and again and talk about what she used to do.

[Mikey Sherrill]

The Navy taught me in a crisis, you either find a way or make one.

[Jack Cittarelli]

For governor.

[Mike Pesca]

Navy helicopter pilot Mikey Sherrill. Yes. In the race for governor, it's this lady once fumbled an answer versus vote for me. I'm a helicopter pilot. Mikey Sherrill's campaign slogan is her name with yellow and green army imagery and a picture of a helicopter. I'm a helicopter pilot. Vote for Budgie. Other pros and cons of each candidate. Cheryl's pretty serious, with more or less a centrist, sensible position on every issue. But as a member of Congress, did engage in what in other professions might be called insider trading. Chitterelli reminds me of the guy who hosts bar rescue, which I like. I'd elect that guy to Congress, you know, just to mix things up and tell people to flush the taps every so often.

[Jack Cittarelli]

It's all about his ego.

[Beth Macy]

Mr.

[Jack Cittarelli]

Entertainer, Mr. Magician. How about that?

[Mike Pesca]

In fact, Cittarelli, some of his critiques, some of his ads, the standup that he does, and as the common sense guy going, what the heck? He records those in a bar for some reason, I have no idea why. Maybe someone else said you're like the bar rescue guy. There's also in this race a lot of nonsense about a scandal at Annapolis in 1992 in which Cheryl didn't walk at graduation. I don't know if most people know or care what it means. If you dig into it, there was a cheating scandal in 1992, which Cheryl wasn't part of. But she also didn't tattle on the people who cheated, though she said she had no idea who cheated. Like most races, there is substance to each candidate. But listen, that has already been priced in. It's not as if no voters are very substantive. It's just that the voters who might decide later or have never heard of these candidates or really, really, really hate it when you say, before mentioning the word block grants, those are the reachable voters. So that's what goes on during the air war, as does helicoptering. And by the way, if it all comes down to it, I do kind of think being a helicopter pilot is pretty cool. Bar rescue is okay, too, but I'm going with the helicopter pilot.

[Jack Cittarelli]

And I'll tell you one thing. You take one drink, I'll fire you in front of everyone. You hear me? You take another drink, I'll fire your ass in front of your brothers. That's the deal. Who the talking to? I'm talking to you, you couldn't pull it off. So you curse at your wife and your drink.

[Mike Pesca]

Tomorrow we'll talk about another race. Seattle mayor. Oh, and also listen, tomorrow at 4pm I have what's called a Substack Live because that's what it is with Michael A. Cohen. He's a Michael Cohen. And the least scandalized Michael Cohen. He's a liberal thinker and I guess I'm a centrist thinker and and yet somehow we butt heads like no others. We're friends and I said we got to do this on the air on live. So join us on Substack Live. I'll open that up to all non subscribers. But if you wish to subscribe and get the gist list the paid versions thereof, text Mike 33777. That's the just Substack channel. But on the show today, I am joined for the full interview by the author and newspaper journalist who wrote Dopesick. If you saw that on Netflix, a about what happened and what explains the opioid epidemic. But now Beth Macy is here to talk about her memoir, Paper Girl, a memoir of home and family in a fractured America. Yeah, she goes back home, talks to an ex boyfriend. He's not doing well. Neither are most of the other people. But Beth Macy is at least as a guest on the Gist. Beth Macy. Up next.

[Beth Macy]

Foreign.

[Mike Pesca]

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[Beth Macy]

It's an honor to be with you, Mike.

[Mike Pesca]

I was really taken by your book and your writing and just stories of the hollowed out places of middle America. I don't know. They always get me. Maybe because they're underreported and they're so important. I know why they get you. Because they're your story. Right?

[Beth Macy]

Yeah. And I think most of our news is manufactured in the city. And unless you have a reason to go to a place like Urbana, you might not have even seen how distressed the so called flyover country has gotten. And when I started seeing Confederate flags waving in my hometown, which was once heralded as a. As a haven on the underground railroad, I was just like, what is going on here?

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. Ohio was not on the fence in the Civil War. They gave us Grant, they gave us the best generals they were allied with. Well, against the forces of slavery. So I can't ask what happened. We have to get there. But I want to start with this. So much of Dopesick and much of the book is about addiction. And you make it clear that addiction is a number of things. Moral failing, probably the least of them. It's manipulation by corporation. It's the lack of real health care, it's self medication. But it also is escape and an acknowledgement that things aren't working out. Well, you tell me. But I would think that most of the people you chronicle, including your dad, who have some addiction, we wouldn't consider these recreational drugs, would we?

[Beth Macy]

No. And of course, I had done all this reporting in Virginia for Dopesick, but I hadn't really noticed the impact on the current generation of kids until I went back for this book, Paper Girl, to. Basically, I was trying to find a young me to report on as a way to show what the barriers are today for a promising poor kid who wants to become upwardly mobile. And everywhere I turned. I mean, I was not going to write another book about addiction. I mean, you have no idea. Like. Like at one point, I was so depressed after Dopesick that my husband said, you should write a cookbook next.

[Mike Pesca]

But until you get to the addictive qualities of ultra processed food and there.

[Beth Macy]

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. But it just kept coming up. Like the kids I interviewed, their parents were addicted. Foster care numbers had tripled since 2015. Children in poverty had tripled since I left. Emergency mental health calls had gone up by a factor of nine, multiplied by nine since I left 40 years ago. And it's not like Urbana is this unusual place. It's a microcosm for what's gone on in much of America.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. And the kid that you found, Silas, is this. Did Silas become the new Beth? And it kind of the story fritters out A lot less promisingly than yours did. So tell us a little about Silas.

[Beth Macy]

So Silas was recommended to me, and I'm a former band geek. I was band president. We didn't have a drum major when I was in high school, but we were so proud of the band, and we would. We would script out script Ohio. But also we could. We were so big, we could do the word hill climber, which we were there, a band of hill climbers. It has one tiny little hill that we were.

[Mike Pesca]

Did you dot the I in Ohio like they do?

[Beth Macy]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. The best tuba player always dotted the I and took a vow. And band was one of those things that, like, taught me discipline. And I had this really tough band director who would, like, was very kind of mushy in the inside and was instrumental in my growth as a human being. And so when I began casting about For Young Me Today, not just the English teacher and the counselors recommended Silas, but so did the band director, and he had been the drum major of the band, which is now about a quarter of the size. They can. They can still script out Ohio, but they can't spell a big word like Urbana or hill climber anymore because they're so small, because the middle class has imploded. But I saw through Silas's eyes the impact of not just globalization and offshoring, but the opioid crisis. Had lost his dad to overdose when he was 14 or 15. Mom was in and out of jail, went to live with caregivers and was molested. I mean, just all these things. Was homeless junior and senior year, and yet managed to be the drum major of the band, a very important role. And I was just like, how did this kid do it, and why is it so hard?

[Mike Pesca]

Well, the other thing about Silas. Well, there are a few other things, but you get recommended this kid. Okay, Maybe you'll follow this kid's story as he tries to go to college. I mean, it fritters out. I'm not giving anything away. It's on the first pages. This lasts how long? His college dream.

[Beth Macy]

Oh, he doesn't make it past the first week initially. Week, yeah, because his clunker car, Fritz, is out. And then his mother, who is in and out of recovery and in and out of probation, gets in a car wreck and can't be left alone because she has a concussion. And the caregiving falls to her falls to Silas, as it almost always does. And so he has these incredible commitments that somebody like me, who was just as poor, but because I had one functioning Parent. I didn't have to deal with that.

[Mike Pesca]

And also, Silas is trans. So is that just in terms of trying to construct the study in the best way? Did you worry that that was a confounding variable, as scientists might say?

[Beth Macy]

Well, funny you asked that. My editor was very worried about it. He's like, this is apples and oranges. I'm like, yeah, but he's the one. I did interview other kids. There's that girl Maddie, I talk about a lot. Another young woman that I report on through the youth center. But Silas was the one because he had that drive and he had that discipline and just a really smart kid. The trans part, ultimately, because it really wasn't an issue for him. Hasn't been yet. Knock on wood, right? Kind of made him. Was the least interesting part about him, honestly, once I got to know him, he passes by, which I mean, everybody thinks he's a boy named Silas, unless you knew him before when he was Elizabeth. And once you get to know him, which I realize most Americans don't know a trans person, but once you get to know him, you don't even give it another thought.

[Mike Pesca]

Right. And I took that. The people who recommended him kind of didn't give it a thought. They weren't pushing him forward as some sort of example of trans excellence or something like that, that he was the one who just qualified for the most scholarships and awards and was the drum major and was the person who fit the bill.

[Beth Macy]

And the band connection just slayed me. I mean, the fact that he relied on his band director, David M. Sapp, to the extent that in his phone he's called David M. Dad.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah.

[Beth Macy]

You know that I could so relate to that.

[Mike Pesca]

Right. Because in places like this, I mean, band and the football team and their stand, I guess it could be the high school newspaper, but they're stand ins for community that the community isn't always giving and certainly stand ins for family that the family's not always providing.

[Beth Macy]

Absolutely. He would. Silas would spend every lunch period in the band director's office, you know, sometimes getting advice on his wardrobe or what to wear to a job interview, but sometimes just crying and talking about what was happening at home.

[Mike Pesca]

So there are too many stressors on a young kid, too. And we follow his story, but there are too many stressors on a young kid to achieve escape velocity from a place like Urbana. And you do talk about where those stressors come from. And there are a lot of different places, but most of them, I think, come back to in your telling, the macro the macro economy, everything that you wrote about in terms, in Dopesick, in terms of addiction, the hollowing out isn't. Didn't just happen based on personal choices of the people of that area.

[Beth Macy]

Absolutely. I also profiled this teacher who comes to Urbana to teach history, civics and coach at the exact moment that I'm leaving. And he was such a great window because he could narrate what happened in that 40 years I was gone. And what he said was, you know, when I first came to Urbana, they made fun of us as the hick school, and now they make fun of us as the thug school. And how he described it was as the jobs began going away and people got less, well, less healthy and the middle class imploded. And so unlike me, whose best friends, parents were teachers and professionals and I mean, even my mailman was a huge cheerleader for me, not just my band director, but my, you know, I had a. I had a friend, a best friend in high school whose mom made me lunch every single day. Chicken salad, egg salad, tuna. And then we go back to egg salad, chicken salad, tuna. And like just in her. Her father had also been an alcoholic, so she was. I had like these counselors and, and advisors who showed me that there was another life out there. And Silas had a few teachers looking out for him, but he didn't have that, that middle class, like that shrunk band. Those kids who would have been in the band were no longer in it, and they had either moved out of town or their parents had pulled them out to homeschool or open enrolled them in a nearby school district because that school district now had better test scores. So you saw the impact of the winnowing of the public school funding big time in this story.

[Mike Pesca]

Do you think if you chronicled that school district, you'd get a much different story? I mean, I'm trying to essentially steel man the argument here. As the economy changes, prosperity goes from place to place. And Urbana, for a number of reasons, is perhaps the place prosperity falls behind. It is sad for the people remaining, but then it is visited upon. I don't know what the new district was. Maybe that's the story.

[Beth Macy]

Maybe that, that is a good story. But you look at that story. So the superintendent Urbana said, you know, he's so ticked off, but two busloads of his kids are now going to West Liberty, which is adjacent stories. He said, we call West Liberty the Harvard of Champaign county now. You know, and, you know, sort of mocking that idea, but that certainly hurt as well as just the state legislature totally taking away educational requirements for people who are homeschooling. And so no longer does a retired teacher have to sign off on the curriculum for homeschoolers. I mean one parent just handed the truancy officer a post it note saying I'm homeschooling now it's a one pager. But they don't even have to do that.

[Mike Pesca]

Tell me about Cuz I have read about homeschooling as part of the white evangelical Christian movement, but in your telling it's mostly just an opt out from a system that isn't working, but into a system that seems to be working less when you graduate or when the typical homeschooled candidate who should be graduating as a hilltopper graduates as whatever graduation means. What do they know and what are their prospects in the world?

[Beth Macy]

Well, I think if you've got college educated parents, I mean I'm thinking of one family I know that homeschooled all their kids and then they all got into college with prestigious scholarships. That is the very 1% of Urbana. What what the unintended consequence of that open enrolling and that lack of regulation around homeschool is. You now have parents who haven't been very educated, who perhaps are suffering with addiction and poverty themselves, who are fearful that they'll get a truancy charge because they can't get their kid up for school in the morning. And maybe they can't even get themselves up to get their kid up for school in the morning. They're yanking their kids out and using quote homeschool as the reason why and there's nobody checking up on those kids.

[Mike Pesca]

Was state funding much more generous when you graduated school? Were the resources there? Yeah.

[Beth Macy]

Oh yeah. So we were so poor my dad died my sophomore year of college, but we were and was basically non functioning my freshman year. So it was all reliant on my mom's job. She tested, drove cars for a Honda subcontractor and I did the financial paperwork. She made $8,000 a year test driving cars. And that made us so poor that I got a full Pell grant to go to a four year state college. And I not only got tuition, room and board, they gave me money to buy books. I had three work study jobs almost every semester. That was basically pizza and beer money and gas money. And 10 years later most of that aid had gone.

[Mike Pesca]

Now.

[Beth Macy]

A similarly poor student would only have about 30% of those same expenses covered at a four year university. And part of that is started underweight.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, I'm Sorry to interrupt. The 70% uncovered exploded in terms of stable dollar costs.

[Beth Macy]

Yes, yes. Tuition skyrockets because state legislatures stop funding their state universities at the same level. A variety of other things. But the upshot is another thing I don't think it's explored very much is that at the same time we're supposed to be preparing kids for the so called knowledge economy. We also, I mean, and we always had viewed community college and vocational trade certifications as a stepchild. I think that's starting to shift now. But that would be rhetorically.

[Mike Pesca]

It is, but what about monetarily?

[Beth Macy]

Right. You look at Silas, he had two full scholarships to go to a community college. It was in Springfield, Ohio. By the time he graduates from high school, he's living with his mom in Marysville. Turns out that's an hour away. And so he's got a two hour commute every day. I told you, he went through five clunker cars in the 10 months it took him to finish that program. Four jobs, four low wage jobs. And the best job was a factory job he got. And they made him work overtime because of the attendance issue that was impacting the factories. So if you could go to work, then they mandated overtime. And it was just so hard for him being in school full time, working full time, and so much harder than it was for me who just got dropped off on the first day. Right. I would catch rides home on the weekends sometimes, but mostly I just got dropped off and then I was in that world. And maybe even more importantly, I was away from the chaos and the trauma of my family.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, I always wonder. I've read a number of books, a number of quasi memoirs where a main character is used to as the through line. And the more interesting the main character, usually, the more interesting the book. Sometimes a great writer can get over that. Like in the Blind side. I don't know that Michael or himself was a great main character, but if you consider the sociology around him, maybe he was. But what happens for you as the constructor of such a memoir, if Silent, if Silas thrived? I mean, there's a range of outcomes and things were tough for him and that's typical. But what if you follow this kid and things went great for him? Does it destroy the point of the memoir?

[Beth Macy]

I mean, I just tried to be open with it. I had these three kids I was following. His was the most like mine. The other kids haven't fared quite as well, honestly. Silas is actually, as of right now, this is a bit of a spoiler doing Pretty darn good. But only because finally after so many setbacks, he managed to remove himself away from the trauma of living with his mother.

[Mike Pesca]

How much does the state's law and crackdown. Crackdown, I don't want to use the wrong words. How much do state laws and restrictions on trans medicine. He is now over 18, but how much did that have an effect on his life? I know that Mike DeWine, the governor Republican, compared to other Republicans was more sympathetic to the trans experience, but ultimately, like many states, it passed pretty restrictive anti trans laws.

[Beth Macy]

Yeah, I think it would have been really hard if he was still a minor when he decided to transition, but he wasn't. And he basically purchases his testosterone that he gets now and it's affordable. He works full time, he's got a really good job and he's kind of apolitical. He's maybe a little libertarian. He didn't vote in the last election, which shocked me. And he told me the day after, I was like, oh man, I think this is going to be a really hard time for trans people. And he's like, you know, honestly, I was just too busy with the kids. He's now raising his two teenage siblings. I was too busy with the kids to vote and work and you know, I don't know if he's going to regret that decision, but he's making it so far.

[Mike Pesca]

And we'll be back with more Beth Macy right after this. The gist is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.

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Jeff Bridges, why are you still living above our garage?

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Nice.

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Jeffrey, you heard them.

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[Mike Pesca]

We'Re speaking with Beth Macy, author of Paper Girl, A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America. There was another institution that you're affiliated with besides all of these in Urbana that has been hollowed out, that if the current state of it were transplanted back to the 1960s, you wouldn't be able to tell this story. And that is journalism itself. Tell me about, tell me about your jobs, your early jobs at newspapers. And how would that experience have been different from if a student wanted to get into journalism and work at the same newspaper or a similar newspaper where you got your start?

[Beth Macy]

Yeah, I mean, it would be really hard. I don't think in good conscience I could. If it was my kid, I'm not sure I'd tell them. Even to go into journalism today, you have to be really, really exceptional to get a job. And most of those exceptional people came from exceptional parents. So now you have even more national reporters whose parents went to college. No economic diversity at all among national reporting, but what I saw was my own paper. I came to Roanoke in 1989 to work at the Roanoke Times. I was a feature writer. The newsroom had 160 employees at the time, probably 80 of them reporters. Now it has three reporters and an editor who is forced to edit four different papers in the chain. I mean, you have seen a paper go from being Pulitzer finalists to barely being ever able to cover city council. And the paper in Urbana that I once delivered has even fewer resources. And so we can walk through the steps that led to this. The abolishment of the Fairness doctrine in the 80s and then the Communications Decency act in 1996, making places like Facebook not accountable for things that are being posted. But I mean, it's all of that story. And so I think when the First Amendment wasn't written with the idea that somebody could reach 220 million followers in one minute. Right. So everything changed. We got way ahead of our skis with the technology and it wasn't regulated as it should have been. And now you have people like many of my former classmates just spending hours and hours online every day going down these QAnon and other conspiracy rabbit Holes and they don't know what their neighbors are doing because you're not even learning about the bake sales and the city council meetings and, you know, the firehouse fundraisers. It's a real loss for community and a real cesspool place where people can get almost immediate support for pretty crazy ideas.

[Mike Pesca]

Are they is the median idea if you really surveyed someone on the streets when you were a high school junior, do you think the median idea of the current Urbana ITE is two or three orders of magnitude crazier than whatever that guy had in his head but maybe didn't share publicly?

[Beth Macy]

I don't know. Honestly, I was, you know, one of the stories I tell was, I go back and this was, honestly, it was a fluke. It occurred to me on a Saturday when I was first starting the book. I said, because I had been told by a mutual friend that my ex boyfriend Bill, who was the most liberal person I ever knew, had flipped and was to the right of the right and reading Russian propaganda four to seven hours a day. And I thought a bit of a reporting stunt. What if I texted Bill and see if he would give me an interview about this? I was totally transparent about what I was doing. He, he didn't know who I was. I told him like, oh, I write books now, blah, blah, blah. I hadn't talked to him in 38 years. And so we sit down the first time and it's this very cordial thing. And then he starts like bringing up these crazy things like we're having this nice dinner and Hillary how she ordered Muammar Gaddafi anal raped and like all these things that weren't in my news fe. And then we would go back to talking about gardens and our children. And I had done all this research on how to connect across the divide and it would work with him to some extent. Like we would share gardening tips and I would send him clips of my kids band and things like this, things we had in common. But he would always bring it back. And then by the end of say a year and a half talking to him, I was trying to make an appointment to have a fact checking session with him and he just became verbally abusive. And I, I didn't talk to him anymore. I mean, I was scared of him. He was, you know, calling me bad names, he was accusing me of being a liar. And it was just like, wow, you saw the vitriol. Because he perceived me as this elite. He went to college, he was, owned a home. I mean, it's not like he was way Poorer than me or didn't have the same opportunities I had. He had much easier growing up than I did. But to see him shift and then. I don't want to give too many spoilers away on this, but basically he doesn't have health care because he thinks Obamacare is such a racket. So he's uninsured, and then he gets really, really sick.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. All those pieces of advice about bridging divides, I always find work up till the point that you do talk about politics so you can have a nice relationship if you talk about anything other than the real thing that you wanted to talk about to bridge the divide. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I think you got to get them beforehand and not afterwards.

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[Mike Pesca]

What about racism in Urbana? Has it increased? I know there is. It was. You mentioned Spot on the Underground Railroad. The town kind of forgot that a local put up and erected a sign to remind everyone of that. But I would also think that. Well, you tell me, 40, 50 years ago, attitudes were just everywhere. Much more racist than they are now.

[Beth Macy]

Sure.

[Mike Pesca]

So. Yeah. What's the picture like?

[Beth Macy]

Sure. I interviewed my second grade teacher, Pamela Bullard, who was of black teacher, had been the first black cheerleader at Urbana High, first black woman on the homecoming court. And she remembered, you know, growing up in the mid-60s, not being able. When she went away with the basketball team would have her and the black players would have to go to a different restaurant. I mean, it was no picnic. But she taught us about Martin Luther King in 1972 and Angela Davis. And I remember my dad complaining about it, and I was like, keep him away from the school. Because this woman was like a demigod to me. And when I reach back out to her for the book, you know, she remembered the story where she heard the N word being told in our class. And I remember she wrote it in big letters on the board, and she said, boys and girls, somebody just said this word. We're going to have a conversation about it. And you could have heard a pin drop. And. And she really taught us that we were more alike. And I don't. I don't know that that's even. She said, I'd be fired today if I did that. I said, yeah, you probably would have been fired then.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. Why? Why? Why does she think? Maybe for different reasons, though. I don't know.

[Beth Macy]

Yeah, I don't know. Urbana has a very small black population. One of my very first friends I met the first. First day. Well, my first two friends, my whole life. One is Korean and the other is black. And we're still really dear friends. I'm probably the lefty. The Korean one is in the middle. And my friend Joy, who is black, is very right wing and evangelical. And she doesn't believe, for instance, that George Floyd was killed by a police officer's knee on his neck.

[Mike Pesca]

Oh, she's a fentanyl theorist.

[Beth Macy]

Yes, yes.

[Mike Pesca]

Which is interesting since you know so much about fentanyl.

[Beth Macy]

But she doesn't. I don't know that she will agree. She hates the media. And I'll say, joy, I'm the media. Joy, when I write a piece for the New York Times, that fact checking department is so rigorous that it's like I'm getting a brain colonoscopy. I mean, they'll spend. They'll put a smart person on a fact check for a week and she'll say, yeah, but who fact checks the fact checkers? So she brought up the best quote in the book, which was, how do we still love each other beyond what we can't understand or agree with? And after all these interviews, I don't think I can answer that question.

[Mike Pesca]

Well, I agree with her. I mean, the New York Times, especially for. Right. For the magazine, that's fact checking. You know, the newspaper is great editorial, that's the New York Times. Most media isn't up to that snuff, as you know. And I would also think that the messages that someone in a place like Urbana get, it's not crazy or conspiratorial to think that much of what you define as the mainstream media looks down on them, has, doesn't understand them, is dismissive of them. I remember a couple, a year or so ago, these, there was a book called White Rural Rage that came out. Urbana wouldn't technically be considered a rural county, but they were trying to. Or Champagne wouldn't. I don't think they were trying to speak broadly of this and the scholarship was criticized, but, you know, they went on MSNBC and they talked about how the white residents of rural America are the most racist, the most inclined to violence. I mean, just unbelievably insulting in a way that, you know, I wouldn't say wouldn't be done to an urban setting. We see it done to an urban setting, too, but that's.

[Beth Macy]

There are more Trump voters in places like North Myrtle beach per capita than in Urbana.

[Mike Pesca]

Right, but the point is that Urbana does get spoken down to, doesn't it? And how, and how. How big a problem is that or how much does that serve to kind of circle the wagons and shut out any sort of critique or openness and retreat to your Muammar Gaddafi theories.

[Beth Macy]

Yeah, I mean, I think that's exactly right. I. But I do think the managerial class, the people who live adjacent to the impoverished people in Urbana are the most who have some money, are the most likely to see the distressing effects of it and most likely to be in that conspiratorial rabbit hole. I remember a factory member manager telling me, you know, Kamala's going to win, but it's going to be because she cheated. And I said, what do you mean they're gonna like futz with the machines? No, no, no. I don't know exactly how it's going to go down. And he also thought January 6th was, was a lie, that the media made that up. It's fishy. They leaders kept telling you that was fishy. And the newspaper editor told me she would get calls for running Associated Press wire copy because that's just a bunch of woksters, you know, they wanted her to run the wire copy from the Epoch Times instead, which is this ultra right religious newspaper. And it was just assumed Reverend Moon.

[Mike Pesca]

Reverend Moon's newspaper. Oh no, sorry. Epoch Times is Falun Gong, the Chinese religious movement. Yes, sorry, go ahead.

[Beth Macy]

And it was just assumed that everybody thought January 6th was fishy. Everyone thought Trump won in 2020 and not everyone because there is a very small active group of Democrats there and sort of this, you know, the education teacher class. But they're a minority now for sure.

[Mike Pesca]

You've written a lot about J.D. vance. How could you not? You're both from. People mistake it and say he's from Appalachia. He's not. You're from the, I guess what could be called the Rust Belt. So what's the most disappointing thing? And you wrote an essay. I'm from Ohio. Where from Ohio. How come he doesn't see the Ohio? I see. And your answer is mostly about political exigencies. But what's the. I'll ask you a two part question. What's the most disappointing thing about J.D. vance? Knowing what he should know and does know that he's not doing. And do you give him any credit for bringing, even just bringing to light any issues that other national politicians have it.

[Beth Macy]

Yeah. I mean the first time I read Hillbilly Elegy, I thought this is a pretty good story about a first generation college student, you know, of which I am also one. And, and I. We all want to see ourselves on the page. It's kind of A rare story. Somebody gets out. And the most disappointing thing as I really talk to people in Appalachia as I was working on Dopesick about Vance's take on it was that he totally missed, you know, the two centuries of rapacious behav on the part of out of state coal companies. And then that had, you know, mountaintop removal, etc. That had harmed the community, followed by Purdue pharma and the like, which came in and targeted those same counties where the jobs had gone away and brought us the opioid crisis. And you know, he, his mother was impacted by that. He was certainly impacted by that. And I thought those were some of the most moving scenes from book where he's for instance, riding in the car with his mom who wants to kill the whole family by crashing the car and things. That must have been really, really hard. And then he calls, at one point he calls Trump cultural heroin. And then at one point he says he's going home to Ohio to help save it from the opioid crisis, but he doesn't do anything. And then for politically expedient reasons, he joins forces with Trump whose policies to cut Medicaid, which has been the number one thing to help people recovering from substance use disorders, are totally against any kind of evidence based care for the things that have happened to the people in Appalachia. So that's, that's the most disappointing. Using the politics and the wealth to sort of rope it up and hit Appalachia hard without really explaining why it is like it is or even trying to address it in a meaningful way.

[Mike Pesca]

Beth Macy is the author, previously of Dope Sick and now her new memoir slash reporting effort is called Paper Girl because she is and was a memoir of home and family in a fractured America. Thank you so much.

[Beth Macy]

Thank you. Appreciate it.

[Mike Pesca]

That's it for today's show. Corey Warr is the producer of the Gist. Jeff Craig runs our Social. Kathleen Sykes helps me on the GIST list very much and Michelle Pesca helps us all so very much. See the error of our ways and the wisdom of our future. And thanks for listening.

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