I'm Alan Alder, and this is clear and vivid conversations about connecting and communicating.

There's a real fear, a reasonable fear, of not being able to make a living in a profession that they love,

and in a craft that they love. The other part of it is a real fierce determination. These are

people who see journalism as a benefit to society, as an indispensable benefit to society. They love to chase stories. And for people who

have ever done journalism, it gets under your skin. You know, it's a profession, it's a job.

But for people who are really, really journalists, I think it shapes the way that you operate in the world.

That's Jolani Cobb, Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism.

A regular contributor to The New Yorker, he recently published a collection of his essays spanning a dozen years.

It's called Three or More as a riot, and he describes its theme as

democracy and its challenges. One of those challenges has been the seismic change journalism has

gone through in those dozen years. This is really great as dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, the most distinguished school of

journalism in the world. You're the one to answer my question. And my question is this,

how much trouble is journalism in right now? For me, one of the most distressing signs is the report

by the Gallup organization, and in the past 50 years, we've gone from 70 one of the most distressing signs is the report by the Gallup organization.

And in the past 50 years, we've gone from 70% confidence and trust in the media to 28% now.

And that seems like a serious drop-off.

So what do you think?

What's causing this?

I think it's a combination of things.

One thing that's important whenever we start talking about the declining trust in media

is that it hasn't happened symmetrically and it has not happened in isolation.

So the distrust in media has disproportionately happened among people who consider themselves

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