Restoring grounded discourse in an anxious America

What am I up to? Context from an interview with Robbin Laird and Ed Timperlake.

Last September under a heavy rain, I ducked into a barn in Rappahannock County, Virginia. It wasn’t chance. The barn, converted into a beautiful gathering space, was host to community members who care about journalism and, more specifically, local news. I was there for a fundraiser for Foothills Forum, a nonprofit supporting research and reporting of fact-based, nonpartisan news for the region.

I clipped on a name tag that identified me as a “reporter” and poked around the room, looking both for hors d'oeuvres and friendly faces in the crowd. A towering man in his 70s, his white hair as bright as his smile, locked onto me and asked what kind of a reporter I was. In other settings, I might have felt uneasy, since threatening and intimidating journalists has become sport in circles that don’t value or understand the role of the press in holding power to account and bearing witness to inconvenient truths. I relaxed once I learned the man, Ed Timperlake, was the Foothills Forum secretary …