Q&A W I T H
CHRISTIE HEFNER *Questions / answers were edited for conciseness. Q: Tell me a little bit more about the First Amendment and civility, as you [spoke on it at TEDxFargo] and also touched on it in an interview with the Inforum. So, reiterate a bit why that is so important to you. A: I grew up with an interest in reading and writing and then got interested in journalism. My first job out of college was working as a film critic for the Boston Phoenix, which is no longer around, but was one of those free alternative weeklies that became very popular and focused on a combination of arts and culture coverage, progressive politics, and investigative journalism. I started with a strong interest in the power of the written word and the importance of journalism. When I wound up coming to work at Playboy, thinking I would only be there for a couple of years initially, nevertheless, I was offered the opportunity to join the board of the American Civil Liberties Union—which I did for about 20 years. When I was on the board of the Playboy Foundation, we started the HMH First Amendment Awards, which were designed to celebrate, in contemporary times, the battles that people were fighting— whether they were whistleblowers, librarians, school book editors, or authors. It's been a throughline for me. Christie Offutt originally asked if I would consider coming out for TEDx and I talked to Greg [Tehven] about it. We got on the phone, and he asked, 'Well, what would you like to talk about?' And I said, 'What do you think people would be interested in?' We just started kicking things around and that seemed to resonate.
You can watch Christie's and all of the other TEDxFargo speakers' TED Talks! Keep an eye out on the TEDxFargo's social media and website to see when this year's TED Talks are uploaded. tedxfargo.com /TEDxFargoND /tedxfargo /TEDxFargo
Q: You talk a little bit about the local press in your TEDx Talk. Tell me why that is so important to you as well? A: I worked with the Chicago Reader, the first alternative weekly in the country, in helping it transition to a nonprofit business model, which is not the right business model for all press, but it's nice to have that as an option. And, out of that, I have started working with a couple of large foundations to raise charitable money for independent local media. So to answer the question of why I think it's important—there are a number of reasons. First of all, I think we're all conscious of the fact that trust in many institutions, the media included, is much lower than it used to be. That's a problem because, as I mentioned in my remarks, we should look to the media for information, for perspective to hold government accountable, whether it's the school board or the state legislature; so if
people aren't trusting the media or if they're only going to their media bubble, democracy itself is harmed. And, in fact, there's a fair amount of research that when a local newspaper dies—because there are now what is called news deserts, where there is not a local newspaper anymore— the percentage of people who vote goes down, the percentage of incumbents who get reelected goes up, the confidence in government goes down. So at some level, I think local media is really important just in terms of democracy. And then there are issues like, there are about 100 local media outlets in Chicago in all different languages because Chicago is very multicultural. They don't all publish physical print papers, some of them are podcasts, and some of them are digital and print. But, they were really instrumental and effective in educating people around the census, because there was a lot of misinformation that was leading some people to feel they shouldn't fill out the census, because maybe they didn't have their green card. They were really instrumental in educating people about vaccinations and about voting registration. Some of it is just about a trusted source of information. The last piece of it is I think it's a pipeline for both stories and journalists. Chris Hayes at MSNBC started his career at The Reader. There are a lot of people, whether they're arts columnists, or political columnists, who got their first jobs in smaller independent places, whether they were in smaller markets or big markets. And so for all those reasons, I think that it's really important for readers and advertisers to support media.
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AUGUST 2023