Today on Question Everything from KCRW and Placement Theory, we have four badass local journalists on the ways they're keeping pressure on powerful people in towns and states across the country.

What are local reporters doing on the ground that stops politicians and the like from behaving badly?

Makes them hesitate for a second and say, you know, I was considering doing something corrupt today.

But now I'm going to think twice about that.

He paused for longer than I've ever witnessed a pause in an interview.

And I actually sat there very calm and was going to let that pause.

Just totally play out.

Stick around.

So last week, we flew four local reporters from all corners of the country,

San Diego, Baltimore, Jackson, Mississippi, and Austin, Texas to drink after hours at the wine shop we take over from time to time,

Bibber and Bell in New York.

And we're going to jump right into that conversation.

But just real quick, before that, I want to share a fact I learned not long ago that I found really helpful to have in mind as I was hanging out with these local journalists.

And that fact is, when a local newspaper vanishes, that directly causes corruption to go up in that area.

Two academics recently did a study where they were able to prove this.

They looked at 65 communities that have lost their local newspaper and used a statistical method that showed that it was the loss of the newspapers specifically,

and not other factors, that led to public officials being more corrupt.

When people talk about the importance of local reporting,

they tend to throw around these terms like accountability and watchdog journalism.

It's all kind of high-minded and abstract.

The U.S. has lost a third of its total

newspapers in the last 20 years, more than 3,300 of them. And what I wanted from this conversation

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