For nearly five decades, Daily Herald Managing Editor for Opinion Jim Slusher has been writing about the moral center of journalism — the “why” behind what newsrooms do. In his new book, “To Nudge the World,” he reflects on truth, transparency and the shared responsibility between journalists and the communities they serve. During a recent conversation with E&P Magazine’s Mike Blinder, Slusher discussed how opinion journalism, transparency and even a little humility can rebuild trust in an age of doubt.
The mission hasn’t changed — only the medium
Slusher’s career spans a time when journalists worked with glue pots and typewriters and now, when algorithms shape the news people see. Yet he insists that the essence of journalism remains steady: “Our job was to go out and talk to people who were making news, who were making our communities better, and translate that to an audience to help people understand what was going on in their community,” he said. “The biggest change, of course, is the mechanism that gets it to them. Since it’s now literally 24 hours and right at your fingertips every second, that changes some of the dynamics, but the basic goal is still the same.”
That mission, he says, still hinges on connection. “Help you understand who your village manager is, who your city council president is, and what’s happening in the world. People need to know those things; you just must get it to them differently.” The challenge, then, isn’t the purpose — it’s the process. Technology has redefined how journalists must earn attention while maintaining trust.
Transparency as trust-building
For Slusher, pulling back the curtain has always been part of the job. His long-running column, Letters to Readers, was designed to “explain how the sausage gets made,” long before transparency became a newsroom buzzword. “We really needed to have a better conversation with readers,” he recalled. “I never approached it like an ombudsman; I always approached it like an interpreter. I wanted people to understand why we made the decisions we made, why we made the mistakes we made sometimes, and the type of thinking that goes into it.”
That openness, he believes, helps humanize journalists in their audiences’ eyes. “If people understand us as people — if readers understand us as human beings trying to do our best for our community — they’ll relate to us better and have more faith in what they can believe and what they can’t believe from what we have to offer.”
As public skepticism toward media has grown, Slusher argues that transparency has become more urgent, not less. “I think it probably matters more than ever,” he said. “When you make the decision-making process visible, you take away some of the mystery and give people a reason to see you as credible, not as some abstract institution behind a wall.”
Why opinion still matters
Some publishers have retreated from publishing editorials and endorsements, wary of fueling polarization or legal threats. But Slusher argues that eliminating opinion journalism weakens democracy itself. “I think it’s more important than ever because so much of what people perceive and hear and read in media comes from all of these different silos,” he said. “The purpose of an opinion page is to help people focus on that and think about it critically.”
He sees the opinion page as a forum for reflection rather than persuasion. “No one ever changes anybody’s mind immediately,” he said. “What does happen is people read an article by us or by Deborah J. Saunders or Jeff Robbins or another opinion maker, and they read it and think about it later. They might get angry at first, or they might be happy — but it’s the process that that opinion piece starts — that’s what’s really important.”
Removing those pages, he cautions, leaves readers lost in a sea of noise. “If you take that out of the newspaper, all you’ve got are all the disparate voices, and you don’t have any focus.”
Skepticism vs. cynicism
One of the core ideas in “To Nudge the World” is the distinction between healthy skepticism and corrosive cynicism — a difference Slusher believes is vital to preserving democracy. “Skepticism is being aware that something may not be accurate, may not be true — you’ve got to be careful. I always say trust but verify,” he explained. “Cynicism is the certainty that it’s wrong.”
That cynical mindset, he warned, has taken deep root in the public discourse. “ ‘I’m sure that the news media is out to get me, and they’re just trying to twist it for some agenda, so I can’t trust them at all.’ We have to fight that cynicism,” he said. “What happens when you create a bunch of cynics is you create people who say, ‘Well, the only person I can trust is the one person who agrees with me.’ That becomes dangerous to a democracy when people aren’t actually thinking for themselves.”
Trust begins with conversation
Despite surveys showing low trust in “the media,” local journalism continues to stand apart. “Yeah, there’s very little trust in cable news,” Slusher noted, “but local newspapers — the trust is over 65%. People still believe we source news on a local level.” He sees that as a mandate for deeper engagement. “One of the chief ways that we’ve tried to do it is through columns like mine, where you talk directly with readers,” he said.
He’s also taken that conversation beyond the newsroom. “I do this program with libraries where I talk to the public about why we make the decisions we make and how we make some of the choices that we make,” he said. “You have to be out there — on Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok — to help people see who we are and see us talking about what we do.”
Slusher has been in touch with the Center for Integrity in News Reporting (CFINR) and credits its mission with aligning perfectly with what he’s been doing for decades. “Helping people understand what your values are and where they come from — that’s a big thing,” he said. “The big thing is that we're people putting out a newspaper. Of course, we have biases. Of course, we make decisions based on our own lives and opinions. But that doesn’t mean we can’t still be trusted.”
Bridging divides, online and off
Slusher’s community talks often turn to how algorithms and bias shape what people see. For him, the challenge isn’t just producing accurate journalism; it’s helping people build a healthier information diet. “Critics of the media are constantly telling me, ‘I want to see the truth, I want to see the whole story.’ But then when you give them the other side, they don’t want to hear it,” he said. “You might not trust that person, but why not at least listen to it and engage with it?”
He believes meaningful conversation — real human interaction — is the antidote to online toxicity. “The scary thing about social media is that too often people can hide behind a screen,” he said. “But if you’re actually talking to somebody face-to-face, it’s much harder to be uncivil. It’s much harder to be discourteous and not really listen to that person.”
Slusher wants local newsrooms to become catalysts for those conversations. “We’ve got to find ways — maybe through Facebook, maybe even TikTok — to make those conversations more human again, with journalists acting as evangelists for that civility.”
Words that nudge the world
The title of Slusher’s book comes from a line in a Tom Stoppard play: “Words are magical things. If you get enough of them and put them in the right order, you can nudge the world.” For Slusher, that idea captures journalism’s power and restraint. “I think that’s what we do,” he said. “If we talk to people reasonably — not trying to push them around — we can make change.”
He believes progress is made not through confrontation but conversation. “The world never changes through shouting. We’ve been pushing each other around for 2,000 years and look where we are,” he said. “But if we can respect each other, talk to each other normally and say, ‘Hey, take a look at this,’ — maybe you're skeptical, that’s okay — but take a look. If we talk as reasonable people, nudging gently, I think we can move people in directions where they eventually realize they’ve changed.”
Hope for the next generation
After nearly fifty years in journalism, Slusher still has faith in the next five. “As you get older, you get a little bit more grizzled and you kind of wonder what's happening with these kids today,” he admitted. “But a lot of that, I think, is because I don’t understand it.” He reminds skeptics that journalism has always been messy, even in the time of the Founders. “People today complain about, ‘Look what the media is today — it used to be Walter Cronkite and you could trust everything.’ But if you go back to the early days of Thomas Jefferson, it was really like the internet on print. People could say whatever they wanted. It was a Wild West environment, but look what it produced. It produced this wonderful country that we have.”
Even with new threats like AI, Slusher remains optimistic. “I think AI is scary as hell, but it’s also something that good people are going to find ways to use in positive ways as well as negative,” he said. “And that’s what helps us grow.”
After all these years, he still believes in journalism’s capacity to nudge the world and in journalists’ duty to try.
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