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What’s in today’s May 17th, 2026 issue
🗣️ Talking about: why people trust independent journalists more
🍝 Eating: Everything in Little Italy
👀 Watching: this interview about AI use
📖 Studying: men’s mental health in 2026
👨🏼💻 Analyzing: why last week’s video was our most popular … ever
It’s been a busy week and we’re gearing up for the busiest summer of Local News International’s history (granted, we started LNI last July). We’ve got more travel coming up, a new long-form series show FINALLY coming to you very soon, and all the while I’ll continue to produce 4-5 short-form videos a week. I’ve never had a more hectic time in my career and I’ve never been more excited. Thanks for supporting us.
As always, if you have any feedback or answers to my weird questions in these newsletters, please shoot me an email at [email protected]. With that, let’s dive into all things on my mind this week!
Why do people trust this guy?
🗣️ Talking about …
Yesterday, at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, I spoke to their brilliant alumni in a conversation moderated by my former Washington Post colleague, Simone Sebastian.
The alumni are spread across all kinds of newsrooms in all kinds of formats. But despite my hyper-specific role of vertical (and soon-to-be horizontal) video journalism, one pervasive question continued to crop up in this conversation, as well as many I’ve had in recent months: why do people trust independent journalists more than legacy media?
This isn’t just a feeling, it’s based on data. Trust in newsrooms continues to fall, according to Pew Research Center. This paper from Harvard Kennedy Center underscored the trust audiences have in news creators, and how the journalism industry is dwarfed by the creator industry.
And even if there weren’t data to back up it up, no one is really surprised by this when you mention it. I’ve seen the comments in my videos. In the months after leaving the Post, I found people constantly saying how happy they were to see “Dave unchained” and not “under billionaire ownership.” Believe it or not, the internet comment section is right! But as I told the audience in New York yesterday, my videos haven’t changed that much. They are longer and more in-depth, but that was my own decision and enthusiasm. No one would’ve complained if they got longer while I was employed at the Post.
The key clear difference is my use of language. When President Trump lies, I say he lied. When’s he’s racist, I call him a racist. In the welcome letter for this newsletter, I promised I’d do that (you can read our full Transparency and Ethics guidelines at the graphic at the end of the newsletter, or on our site).
At the same time, as was the case in last week’s video about the Reflecting Pool, I’m quite happy to highlight when Democrats don’t meet expectations. Legacy newsrooms are afraid that they will alienate the right if they call Trump racist or highlight when fascism rears its ugly head. But it turns out people just want the truth. They want you to speak plainly and clearly about everyone and everything. In my view, old school journalism has worked so hard to avoid a “liberal bias,” that they’ve twisted themselves into a knot to sugarcoat actual problems.
Local News International has a conservative audience. It’s not massive, but it’s there. Many of you read this newsletter, and I’m so appreciative of your email feedback, especially when I asked to hear from Never Trumpers last week. That first study I referenced from Pew explains how when it comes to local news organizations, Republicans have more trust than Democrats or centrists. This is one of our goals with Local News International: to have that local news feel you can trust, while still covering national and international stories.
One last thing I’d like to add that I also mentioned yesterday: our work doesn’t exist without the help of legacy media. The vast majority of our explainers are sourced from these stories, which I happily reference in every video. So when I talk about trust and what legacy media is getting wrong, I want to be clear: legacy media remains very important. My hope is that independent journalists, news creators and legacy media can work together and more closely to earn back the trust that has been lost.
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🍝 Eating
After speaking with the brilliant alumni at CUNY, I headed to Little Italy with my wife and daughter (they came along for an extended Mother’s Day weekend celebration). I’ve been to many corners of NYC, but had never experienced Little Italy. We ate at a touristy spot called Casa D’Angelo. It was outstanding. The veal, the pizza, the spaghetti … I just want an Italian family to take us in and cook for us every day. Is that too much to ask?
Mariana also took us through Elizabeth Street where she tried every perfume known to man, and tried some of them on her man. If you can smell me through your email, I wouldn’t be surprised (that’s bergamot, by the way).
👀 Watching
There’s a long list of journalists I admire for their coverage and Charlie Warzel is near the top of that list. I came across this clip of an interview he did with Chris Hayes. I thought it was a really thoughtful take on AI.
If you’re having AI do your brainstorming, “your brainstorming muscles are going to get weaker,” the MS NOW host Chris Hayes tells @cwarzel.bsky.social. They discuss the possible effects of letting AI take over creative and generative thinking: www.youtube.com/watch?v=da8U...
— The Atlantic (@theatlantic.com) 2026-05-15T23:15:02Z
This makes a ton of sense to me. In some instances, AI is getting dumber, as I discussed in a video this last week. On the flip side, as Hayes explains, AI is also making us dumber. It can be a solution to organizational problems, but it’s not a solution to your lack of creativity.
Two years ago, I sat through a Washington Post town hall where someone literally said “AI is for people who can’t be creative but want to be.” This person said that with their full chest and complete sincerity. It never sat right with me. I can appreciate someone who wants to be more artistic. But I don’t understand why the solution is to then ask a machine to be creative for you. As long as you are creating something yourself, you are creative. It’s that simple! As Seth Rogen put it in another interview from last week, you shouldn’t be a writer if your instinct is to use AI.
For what it’s worth, I do not use AI in any of my work (also outlined in our transparency pledge!). I think there are totally ethical uses of AI and I look forward to seeing how AI, and legislation around AI, develops. For now, as a person making video, frankly … it drives me nuts.
Great writing. Great parody. Good impact. Get a red tie ;)
📖 Studying
Our second of two videos on men’s mental health in high-risks jobs comes out this week. This part of our ongoing partnership with Harry’s razors (starting with our Will Dave Shave? series last year). No part of our partnership requires me to write about it in the newsletter. But honestly, the impact has been so immediate and big, that I just wanted to talk about it.
A still from this week's upcoming video on mental health.
The study Harry’s oversaw found suicide rates were especially high for men in these job for a few reasons:
There are few, if any mental health resources at their jobs
Leadership makes decisions that have massive, sometimes catastrophic impact on their jobs.
The public has little respect of understanding for what they’re going through.
The long days and hours keep them away from their families.
Deaths of their co-workers, as a result of their job, are swept under the rug, with again, very few mental health resources for those affected.
After posting the first video, we heard from a ton of people in these industries in the comments, as well as family members confirming the impact these jobs have on their family.
The reaction here has driven me to read more on this topic, because the study from Harry’s. I’d love to hear from you all. Is there an area of mental health you’d like to see us cover? Shoot me an email at [email protected].
👨🏼💻 Analyzing
As of 11:31 am ET on Sunday, May 17th, this video about the Reflecting Pool “repairs” has almost 7 million views on YouTube, 1.8 million views on TikTok and 1.1 million views on Instagram Reels. And I’m still sitting here wondering: how?! Why? What about this video made it take off everywhere. It even did well on Threads. Nothing does well on Threads!
Don’t get me wrong. I loved this video. I had fun making it. I’m very happy with how it turned out and I felt it did a solid job explaining what was going on with President Trump’s Reflecting Pool American Blue dreams. But why did this one take off like it did?
From our YouTube Analytics page.
So much of my time after posting a video is spend analyzing what worked and what didn’t. So I thought I’d let you into my brain for this process in what has become our most successful video to date. Here’s my guesses as to why it worked:
It was shorter than our average video. At around one minute, 40 seconds, it was a solid minute shorter than most of our videos these days. I won’t shy away from longer videos - I like to pack as many details as the 3-minute limit on YouTube and Instagram allows. But it’s a good data point to keep in mind.
It had high engagement. While this video was shorter than my average video, it’s still longer than most videos on these platforms. If people are sticking around for a long-ish vertical video for the entire duration, the algorithms are going to be happy and show it to more people.
It was published just as the story was becoming more prominent nationally. Up until I posted this video on Wednesday, it seemed like it was something really only taking off in DC and New York media circles. But the story had become more national by end of week.
It’s one of those stories that people around the world love to guffaw at (and fair enough). So while our silly little pool project in DC has no international ramifications it’s interesting to an international audience. As of today, over 60% of the audience on YouTube for this video is non-Americans.
Generally, it appealed to all audiences, possibly across the political spectrum too. Some videos naturally just find their way to a smaller audience, our own regular viewers, because of the subject material. This was not the case here. Everyone had an opinion on what was happening, if Trump was in the right or wrong, or if I had not placed enough blame on Trump or Obama or some other random factor.
The unusually even spread across audiences, from YouTube Analytics.
Whatever happened here, I’m glad it did! We’re only ten months in here at Local News International and these bangers help prove that our work can reach people all around the country and world.
