the underview.
The underview is an exploration of the shaping of our place viewed through the medium of bikes, land, and people to discover community wholeness.
The underview is a series of discussions within and about the community of Northwest Arkansas. The underview explores our collective understanding and beliefs about the place we live.
These discussions will include topics that are foundational to the identity of our region, the history of our communities, the truth of conflict with the land and its people, and the current challenges and opportunities for our community.
the underview.
the journalist with Sam Hoisington (ep 2b, 48).
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What happens to a community when no one is paying attention? Since 2005, America has lost more than 3,200 newspapers and the number of journalists per capita has dropped from 40 to just 8 per 100,000 people. The consequences are measurable: voter turnout drops, fewer people run for office, and communities lose the capacity to know what's happening to themselves. Bentonville had local journalism since 1857, but when local papers consolidated into regional coverage in 2015, nearly a decade passed without a news outlet focused solely on one of the fastest-growing cities in America.
Sam Hoisington, a Bentonville native whose father worked at local newspapers for 30 years before the layoffs came, returned home in 2023 after building a successful news startup in Wisconsin. What he found was a gap. In 2024, he launched the Bentonville Bulletin, and his analysis reveals that 69% of the stories he's published have no equivalent coverage anywhere else. In this conversation, Sam discusses the real cost of growth, the infrastructure challenges facing the city, why belonging and local journalism are deeply connected, and what it takes to rebuild the connective tissue that helps a community see itself.
https://www.theunderview.com/episodes/the-journalist-sam-hoisington-bentonville-bulletin
About the underview:
The underview is an exploration of the development of our Communal Theology of Place viewed through the medium of bikes, land, and people to discover community wholeness.
Website: theunderview.com
Follow us on Instagram: @underviewthe
Host: @mikerusch
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there are a lot of different gaps that have been left in the news and I can't get to all of 'em. I went back, I compiled all the articles that have been published in the Bentonville Bulletin since April, 2024. That's hundreds. And I try to find equivalent coverage, b basically a duplicate of that story or a different version of that story, same topic from a different outlet. And 69% of the things that have been published on our website, the, there is no equivalent, there is no other version of that story out there. So to me, it's proof that what I'm doing matters, but it's also really concerning. 69% of those stories would go completely untold in the news if it wasn't for the Bentonville bulletin.
mike rusch.:Well, you're listening to the underview and exploration and the shaping of our place. My name is Mike Chen. Today we're asking questions that I've been wrestling with for a while. What happens to a community when no one is paying attention? What do we lose when people whose job it is to show up, ask questions, and write things down, are no longer here. The reality is, is that there's been a steep decline in local journalism, and that has come at a cost. The numbers are really hard to look at. 25 years ago, there were about 40 journalists For every 100,000 Americans. Today, there are eight. One in three counties doesn't have a single full-time local journalist. Since 2005, we've lost more than 3,200 newspapers. The old model has collapsed and the new model hasn't fully arrived. The consequences are real. When local news disappears, voter turnout drops. Fewer people run for office. Incumbents win more easily because no one is informing voters about alternatives. And now public media, institutions like NPR and PBS, that have helped fill gaps in local coverage are facing the impact of the federal funding cuts that threaten their ability to keep doing that work. But it goes deeper than elections and accountability. When local journalism disappears, something else goes with it. The capacity for a community to know what's happening to itself, to see the connection between a vote at city hall and the water bill that just doubled to know who's arriving, who's being pushed out, and whose voice is being heard. You see, a community without journalists is a community that can't see itself. Bentonville has had local journalism since 1857. The Northwest Appeal, the Benton County Sun, the Benton County Democrat. For over 150 years, someone has always been paying attention. And then in 2015, the local papers consolidated into the regional Northwest Arkansas Democratic Gazette, and for nearly a decade there has been no news outlet focused solely on Bentonville. Bentonville and the surrounding areas are one of the fastest growing places in America, and for a long time hasn't had anyone whose job it was to watch it and report about it. So today I wanted to sit down with Sam Hoisington, the founder of the Bentonville Bulletin. Sam grew up here, he's a local, his father worked at the local newspapers 30 years ago before the layoffs came, Sam went off to study journalism anyway, and he was part of a successful new startup in Wisconsin. And then came home, and when he got here, he saw the gap. So in 2024, he launched the Bentonville Bulletin, picking up a tradition that stretches back before the Civil War. I don't have all the answers to the questions that I'm wrestling with, but I can't think of anyone better to start with than someone on the front lines, someone trying to recapture what we've lost and trying to bring this vital service back to our community. Alright, we've got a whole lot to work through today. Let's get into it. I have the privilege today of sharing a table with Sam Hoisington, who is the founder of the Bentonville Bulletin. Sam, welcome to the conversation. Thanks for being here today. I'm so glad to be here. I'm excited too. You're a journalist and I get to ask all the questions. Yeah. And we need to have a kind of a reciprocal agreement to where like we say nice things about each other or something. I don't know where to go with that. No. I'm gonna pin you down on some stuff. I don't, I'm gonna make it hurt. It's like the real scoop on what happens behind the microphone. No, in all seriousness, Sam, welcome. I've been really looking forward to this conversation. I know you grew up in Bentonville. You're a local journalist. You've started the Betonville Bulletin. I'd love to hear a little bit about your story. You're, this is your home, Bentonville is your home. You grew up here you graduated from high school here, if I understand correctly. Uh, gimme a little
sam hoisington.:context of who you are. Yep. So I was born and raised in Bentonville, technically born in Rogers. If we wanna be really accurate at the Old Mercy Hospital, let pass. But I am a Bentonville High School . Graduate, graduated in 2014 and it's been a little bit since then and I have had a really interesting career. So, And the more that I reflect on that, I really do have to thank Bentonville Public Schools for that. They gave me a wonderful foundation, ended up getting a scholarship to go down to Arkansas Tech University. And then my last year of studying journalism there, things just happened. Opportunities that you would never expect. One thing led to another. I actually ended up in Washington, DC for the final year of my university career, and I had some internships at the Chronicle of Higher Education and NPR, and then stayed around there for a little bit. So I think I was in DC for two years, and then I moved to Madison, Wisconsin for about. I think I, I think that was like five years or so, and I moved back here in 2023. I've had a couple stops. I've had several different jobs in journalism. I've never actually been a beat reporter before. So I was always doing audience engagement or newsletters or journalism support stuff. I wrote, but this is actually my first beat reporting job. And I moved back here in 2023 and I was just looking around and I was looking at how much stuff had changed and how much things hadn't changed. And I was really worried that the level of local news is, we're such a wealthy community overall. There's a lot of resources here compared to other communities our size. We really don't have the local news coverage that I think we should. And so that's the genesis of the Bentonville Bulletin.
mike rusch.:I grew up here as well, and I remember when the record was actually the record, I think the Benton County Daily record. They were printing newspapers there and everything. Bentonville has got like a really long history of local journalism . This is not a foreign thing to our area. But you came back here and all of that has had, had really gone away and been acquired by larger news organizations. So I'm curious, like when you moved back here, tell me more about what you saw what was missing.
sam hoisington.:So first of all, I will say the record is a beautiful venue. I love going to events there. It does break my heart knowing that, when I was a Boy Scout, I actually toured the printing press. So you saw it too? I did because my father actually worked at the local newspapers for about 30 years. And so he, and so for. The folks that are listening to this that might not know, we had the Benton County Daily record, and we had basically a daily newspaper in each of our core cities. And they ended up getting merged and merged until we got the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette. And my father worked for several decades in ad design for the newspapers. And then somewhere around that period where I was in high school, he ended up getting laid off from the newspaper. He finally got, his ticket was finally, called on that. And it big hit to the family. My mom's a school teacher. There was five of us kids, and so I know very much the uncertainty that caused. And then for some reason, a couple years later, I went to college and said, oh yeah, you know what I should do? I should get involved in that industry there. But it is a sad decline. But it happened really slowly too. So I will also say the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette is family owned and it is staffed up more so than maybe some other metro newspapers are in o other cities. We do have something to be grateful for with the Democrat Gazette here. But obviously, most of the news organizations that we have here are regionally focused, broadcast stations, regionally focused radio stations, regionally focused. And really, when we identify with the kind of updates that we want, I personally really want Bentonville updates. I live in here, I don't live in Siloam Springs. It's nice to, if something big's going on, I, Hey, tell me about it. But, I think people that live in Bentonville want to hear about Bentonville. They wanna know about Bentonville businesses, Bentonville City Council. And that really is the thesis of the Bentonville Bulletin. So it is. Bentonville. Sometimes Centerton does sneak in there if it's got something really interesting or Bella Vista or whatever. But for the most part it is just 100% Bentonville. And that's what I'm bringing back here. As those newspapers merged, it led to that regional coverage. It's good regional coverage, this is hyper-local.
mike rusch.:I think this is fascinating because as those cities really lost that local news coverage, like what does that really mean in practice? This used to be a small town that I grew up in, and by all rights, I would say there's not, not a lot happening here, but there was news sources here and when that declines, what stories weren't being told or what was not brought to the public attention?
sam hoisington.:So there are a lot of different gaps that have been left in the news and I can't get to all of 'em. So I really focus on growth and local government coverage. And recently I went back, I compiled all the articles that have been published in the Bentonville Bulletin since April, 2024. That's hundreds. And I went back and I looked. And I try to find equivalent coverage, b basically a duplicate of that story or a different version of that story, same topic from a different outlet. And 69% of the things that have been published on our website, the, there is no equivalent, there is no other version of that story out there. So to me, that's really, it's proof that what I'm doing matters, but it's also really concerning. 69% of those stories would go completely untold in the news if it wasn't for the Bentonville bulletin.
mike rusch.:Talk to me a little bit from your experience, what happens when those stories aren't told? What's at risk for us as a, as as a community,? sam hoisington.: So I do outta stuff in newsletter. No, this is an opinion show. Yeah, I know. I've gotta be human with you. And honestly, I think people do want that from me. They don't want a voice of God that tells the news. They wanna know you're a real person. And so I think we, we lose a whole lot. So the national partisan stuff, this just, this anger and stuff has seeped down to the local level and we are not spending nearly enough time on local issues, I think it's great that people are engaged and have opinions with national politics. It's obviously an unprecedented time with all of that, but what I'm always asking people to think of is, Hey, where should we be spending our attention? Should it be. 90% national and 10% local.'cause that's what it feels like to me a lot of the times. I would love if somebody would take my coverage of the sewer to their family Thanksgiving and just fight about it. let, Let's do that. Let's switch it up a little bit. Yeah. Because these local businesses, they matter where our tax dollars are going. That matters a lot and we just don't have enough focus on that. And we lose a lot when we're, virtual instead of in person when we're not going out and seeing our community when we don't have time to read an update about a neighbor. And so I think we lose a lot and, honestly, newspapers were a pretty darn good idea. So right now, in the absence of, a new startup in the absence a lot of people don't get the newspaper anymore, getting your information on social media. There isn't there isn't no influencer. They're all ethical people. They don't have the same code of conduct that a journalist has. Correct. If I get something wrong, I will do anything in my power to make sure that's known. Earlier this year, I messed up, I had to send an email about how I messed up to 12,000 people. And the crazy thing about that is, about, I think it was five or six people scroll to the very very bottom of that email where I said, Hey listen, before this gets outta control, I messed up five or six people scroll to the bottom of that and chose to donate to the Bentonville Bulletin because I did that. And I thought that was crazy transparency. Yeah. I thought that was wild.'cause obviously I wasn't gonna turn that into a fundraising unit. Yeah. They just found that little small link in the footer. And so I think that means a lot to people and sometimes I think it's easy to, with how slow things you know, happened over the years. I think it's. It's not until maybe you hold the Bentonville bulletin in your hand and you realize, oh my gosh, all this stuff has been happening and I didn't know. Stay with that. I'm really curious, like this process, or to me, of what happens when local journalism is not there and this place that you I would say right, rightfully filled or rightfully, needs to be filled in our community to really understand the importance of why someone needs to be paying attention to this and why does it matter so much from your opinion you're pouring your life into this, but why does it matter so much to pay attention to these stories?
sam hoisington.:I think we have lost a lot of our neighborly connections and things like that this is probably a hot take, a lot less people attend church these days. For a variety of reasons. And that used to be one of the places where you interacted with people that you didn't really like all that much. There was this one lady and she's, gossiping a bit and you're pleasant to her and stuff like that. We don't interact with people the same way anymore. It's very virtual. And every single story that's in the Bentonville Bulletin, you can do something about. You know that if there's a charity that needs help, you can do something about that. You can go to that shop. So these are all starting points for you to connect in some way with your community or with a different subsect in the community that you might not have known existed. We recently did a story, I had a freelancer do a story about the DJ culture in Bentonville. I didn't even know there was one. There is. And they're doing some really interesting stuff. They do ambient noise nights at the, Bentonville Community Radio, their their studio there. Yeah. Really interesting experience and yeah, you might not have known that even existed and you might not even wanna get involved in that, but, maybe you know somebody that does. I sent my brother that link and I was like, Hey, this is something that you might be into.
mike rusch.:I think one of the things that I've heard you say is that the real story of Bentonville is in the story of growth and who gets pushed out and who's being brought in. I'd love for you to unpack that a little bit. What does growth look like in a place like this? Because you're paying really close attention to
sam hoisington.:it. I am, and I will tell you. There are a lot of people that are getting squeezed real hard right now. People that I grew up with, former teachers that are retired now, they're looking around and going, is this for me? This is this getting real pricey. And so I am deeply concerned about that. And I've been able to do a little bit of housing affordability coverage, but not as much as I'd really like to. But I think that is the question. So for, I think for the past few decades, the growth has been, it's been really hard to argue that it was anything other than positive. Opportunities opportunities. But we're now at the point where we've done such a good job of branding ourselves. Villes a tourism destination. We've got all this great stuff. We've been nervous to talk about the negative side effects of this. And I think now people are ready to have that conversation. Might be a little, a couple years too late here, but I wanna shout out Brandon Gengelbach at the Chamber of Commerce, because, it would be really easy for him to stand up and just do 100% Bimal great. But they're one of these entities that is coming up and saying, Hey, we have gotta pay attention to the sewer. Or, we're in trouble. We have got to start taking these affordable housing concerns really seriously. Or we're gonna be like some of those ski towns out in Colorado that can't find anybody to work at the ski resort anymore. And so I think we are ready to have that conversation. I think the Bentonville bulletin is definitely part of that.
mike rusch.:I, I'm really curious from your perspective, you spent a lot of time with city Council. We've, I've sat next to you in some of those meetings. But you're there a lot paying really close attention to a lot of these decisions that are being made around what growth looks like. I'm curious, what do you see that maybe isn't always in the headlines, but maybe behind the scenes, how the city is working and how we're moving towards meeting some of those challenges of growth?
sam hoisington.:So I feel like a really common refrain. So just something I hear all the time is, oh, Bentonville didn't plan for growth. Bentonville doesn't have a plan for growth. And you know what? I think that's a valid opinion. I do. I think a lot of stuff happened to us instead of us leading that charge. But I think what you've seen over, especially the past year is we, the local entities in charge of that are making a really good plan, plan Bentonville the future land use map that the city made. I think it's phenomenal. It's it's a plan that people have been looking for, right? Every single parcel in the city is now mapped out by what the city thinks it's gonna be used for in the next few decades. Is that a new neighborhood? Is that gonna, remain farmland and stuff like that? The sewer upgrades. Obviously the sewer capacity issues have been building for decades. The water leaks, all of that has been happening for decades. There is a plan to do something about that now. And so it's funny though, because the plans require money and some of the money is coming from rate payers and it's putting some people in quite a pinch doubling water rates is tough, but we're just now going back and paying some of those costs for those things that we were ignoring, and I think that's, it's gonna be a painful adjustment. It really is. So there's a lot of upgrades that need to happen. But in addition to Plan Bentonville, the future land use plan, visit Bentonville is doing a destination master plan about what tourism should look like. The Chamber is, releasing, I've been writing about it recently, releasing a new economic development strategy. So by the end of this year, or maybe early part of next year, you'll be able to look at exactly what local leaders think the plan is for Bentonville. Whether we follow it or whether it goes according to plan. That's one thing, but the plans are gonna be there and any resident is gonna be able to look at that and say, Hey, like this is, this is the plan. Am I on board? Do I have something to do? I agree with that. But they'll have some sort of plan and I think that's probably a good thing.
mike rusch.:I I'm curious if you could help me maybe bridge into the activities that you see in city council all the time, and then maybe the general awareness in the public of how that really plays out. I think you mentioned it, people say well, they have these opinions about what's going on that may or may not be necessarily rooted in the facts of what's happening. How do you view your role in bridging that gap between the general public and the reality of what's happening within those places?
sam hoisington.:Yeah. So that one's challenging. Because I think hating our politicians is like the most American thing you can do, like apple pie baseball, and I hate the mayor. Yeah. And I think it's important again, to separate, the national stuff and then the local stuff. All the time I hear, oh, city council, it's, they're idiots, they're incompetent. And really what I want to say to that is if we, if we all elect'em and they're all idiots, then what does that say about us? Does that say we weren't paying attention and we did elect a bunch of bozos? Or is it perhaps that, this group of people has totally varying opinions on how to approach this, and they're us. They're regular people that got elected to make these huge decisions. And I will tell you, there's been several times that I've sat in a city council meeting and I've thought, oh. Y I know exactly how I'd vote on this and there's been a couple of times where I walked into something and I had, this idea that it was gonna be one way. And then I listen to everybody talk about it and at the end I go, you know what? I have no idea which way I would vote on this. Sometimes you have two bad options, sometimes you have two good options. And so I wish that we had space for the nuance that comes with making these decisions, but I understand, it's really my job to hold space for that, but also to make it simple enough that you can catch up on something. It's a tricky balance, but I will say when I got started, I thought, I was gonna have to sneak those city council updates in, right? You know, new bar, new bar, New bar, and then oop, infrastructure story. That's not the case. So now that people have this source, the Bentonville Bulletin that is getting into this, they're really interested in it. Those are these infrastructure, these city council stories. They're often the most popular stories that we do. In fact the story about Alice Walton extending the Alice Walton Foundation extending an offer for a line of credit to upgrade the sewer recently, that is the number one story that the Bentonville Bulletin has ever published in terms of page views. It's about the sewer. So I think that's probably what I think about that. And also, I understand that people largely, and this is really important to remember, they have no idea how the city council works. And you can't blame 'em for that. I recently wrote a guide to what is a city council meeting? What happens first? What happens? I saw that it was really good. Thank you. Because I realized, I'm over here barking about city council the whole time and people are like, what is that? And that's a fair question because if you go and look, there isn't another place to find out that information that's in that city council guide. The only other way is probably to be somebody that works in an industry like development, that you have to go there a lot to keep up to date for work. So it is, an inaccessible kind of foreign feeling thing. And I do hope to be a point of entry for people into that.
mike rusch.:I was looking through kind of the relationship between local journalism and really this kind of civic involvement, if you will. And I was really surprised, maybe in a bad way to really look at just the statistics around that when local news is not there, voter turnout drops, few fewer people run for office. Obviously there can be corruption in instances. I'm really curious, like, how do you. See the relationship between these things and what's at stake for our community in that?
sam hoisington.:Absolutely. The holy grail of local journalism has always been framed as accountability. An investigation, you uncover a malfeasance of some kind and stuff like that. But really in, in this situation where we're at, that idea of accountability really starts with awareness. We like baseline level stuff. How does the city council work? This, that, and then we can go back and get into some of this more complex stuff. But I absolutely think that our water leak coverage is some of the stuff that brought people to those city council meetings, and one of the things that we, that I experimented with earlier this year is we, instead of just writing about our sewer treatment plant upgrade. I said, let's go on a tour. I need to take a tour anyway. Why don't some of y'all come along with me? Got 15 people and it was over spring break actually. And some teenagers got brought by their parents and so I'm sure they had the best story. Thanks, Sam. They had the best story to tell when everybody, got back from the beach and they were like, I was with a journalist at the sewer treatment plant. But we had a member of the community who was really smart and really successful. And, but she came in really hot, she really didn't think we needed all these upgrades and stuff like that. She's one of those people that has seen the water leak stuff. She just, she thought city government was just being irresponsible and stuff like that. And by the end of it, she had totally changed her perspective on that 'cause she got this new information firsthand. And I like to think that's happening more and more at home, and I just can't see it. But I think about that a lot because, we really did change how somebody thought on that. And again, she's a marvelous person. She's a very successful career and stuff like that. But, she went in thinking it was one way and really, once all the facts were there, she ended up thinking it was something else.
mike rusch.:Yeah, I think this is necessary, right? I think it's really easy to sit back and to assume we know what's happening, but to, to go into the places where these stories are taking place and to understand is the work that many people are not really willing to do. And I think this idea of civic engagement, I, I. I'm I'm really curious do you view your role with the Bentonville bulletin as trying to push forward this idea of more civic engagement as an end result of the work that you're doing?
sam hoisington.:I definitely do, and there is a really interesting project called Civic Lex. They're out in, I believe Lexington, Kentucky, I believe it is. And they've taken, they started with local news, but they took it one step further because, and I feel like I do have to do that, like me writing about city council all day long doesn't matter if you don't know when you haven't been there, so I do think I am the perfect person, and I've considered this idea. What if I just get some snacks and I invite you to come watch along with me One city council meeting. That's absolutely something that I can do. But this outfit called Civic L, they've really taken things one step further with their nonpartisan, advocacy for their audience. And for example, one of the things they did is they surveyed their audience and they found that their audience was really confused by the terminology in city council agendas and how they work. They really weren't self-explanatory. And this news organization worked with the city to update their agenda templates to make them more audience friendly for somebody that was just walking in off the street. I believe you were at the mural meeting at the library. I was there a few times, yes. And there was a big meeting at the library, and you probably remember this, there was a point where the mayor was reading off names of people that had signed up for public comment and there were several people there that said, oh, I actually don't have a public comment. I just thought that was a sign sheet. I remember that. So obviously to me, okay, that was a big controversy, that was an entry point for a lot of people. I think a lot of them would frame it as a negative entry point, but to me that's an identified point of friction there. That's not self-explanatory. What's going on there. I could probably do something about that. And so I'm thinking a lot about that in the new year where it doesn't have to just be, I wrote about your city government, is there an opportunity to do a tour, to arrange a meeting, to bring people along with me as I do some of this stuff. I don't have a, I don't have a ton of, free time or anything like that, but I'm thinking about it and I would love to do a lot more.
mike rusch.:That's awesome. Sign me up. I'll follow you around.'cause I think it's fascinating and I'm sure probably like yourself I've just, I've been in a lot of situations where I thought I knew what was gonna happen or I thought I knew what to expect, and I've just been pleasantly wrong a lot. And it happens because you're starting to interact with people and their stories in a really beautiful way. And so I love that approach. I just, for whatever it's worth, keep doing it.
sam hoisington.:And I'll tell you the thing about being a journalist and this mindset that you're, that is just drilled into you is you don't know. There are so few things that you know for a fact, right? So when you write something down, you have to think, is there any possible way, even if it's 0.0, zero, zero 5%, that I'm wrong on this. And, that is not the mindset, honestly, that I use in a lot of the rest of my life and my personal life. I'm not always interrogating every belief, but that practice has really made me a little bit more open-minded and. I often say the more I learn, the less I know. The more you learn the picture on, on, just about everything gets more complicated. For just about any problem in this city that you think is simple. It's just not, it's really not. If you get into the details on some of these things. And I think that's probably the case with, honestly most things in life.
mike rusch.:As you look at the city and what's happening here, what's your criteria for what stories you're gonna follow, which ones you're gonna publish?
sam hoisington.:How do you think about that? So I, it was really important just to pick a lane, right?'cause, you can't do everything. And so I looked around and I looked for what was missing, and that's always what I'm doing, what's missing, so if I get a press release about a big development, i'll probably skip it or, not spend a ton of time on that.'cause I can just link you out to that. I know how the news media works, I see the press release go out. I get it. I'm grateful that somebody let me know. And I know that in a couple hours the broadcast stations are gonna have a post about that. And so I know that, I can just link you out to that. I know they're gonna get to that. What are they not gonna get to? Is it a story that somebody mentioned to me while they were having a couple, drinks at a bar or something like that? Is it an untold story? Just somebody has a really interesting backstory. Is it just going one level deeper on something, but if I know that somebody, another news organization's gonna get to it, most of the time if I don't have anything like unique, a unique angle or something else to add to that, I'll let 'em have it and I'll just link out to it. So the duplication of things is something that kind of frustrates me a little bit. Every newsroom has less and less people. The Bentonville Bulletin has one person that works there. And I wish, as an industry, we did collaborate a little bit more and shared a little bit more. I do collaborate as much as possible with other people. You will sometimes see the Bentonville Bulletin articles on the five news website. They've been talking about getting me on tv. I'm just nervous about it. But you're great from behind a microphone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And we also we work together with NWA Daily, which is a daily aggregator newsletter. And so actually, if you go on our website and you sign up for the Bentonville Bulletin, the very next screen is gonna say, Hey, do you wanna sign up for NWA daily? Do you want to get a little dose of regional news every day? That costs both of us nothing. It's the same thing on their website. We both grow together and, they go, I don't wanna say shallow, but it's a broad overview and it's daily and it's regional, and it's d. And over here I'm going a little bit deeper on one community. And so it's a nice compliment. And again, stuff like that, I'm always looking to do a little bit more of that. That does take a different mindset than what would probably happen in a traditional newsroom, but I've made some inroads and I think it's been beneficial for everybody.
mike rusch. (2):Sam, I'm curious as you think about the community's like role and maybe news sourcing , I don't know. I heard you mention that sometimes, you may hear of things from relationships and people that you're interacting with that really warrant maybe more attention for the good of our city. And I'm curious, how do you view that relationship between you and the public in that kind of news gathering process?
sam hoisington.:I get most of my tips either, Probably 50 50 split. Somebody, slips me a little, Hey, look at this kind of thing. Emails me, sees me out and about in my Bentonville bulletin hat. And then probably the other half is just a follow up to something else that I wrote. I still have this unresolved question about X, Y, or Z and so I'm gonna do a follow up story on it. And, I send it, I send the weekly newsletter out to 14,000 people now, and I really need to do a better job of saying Hey, this is an email. Just like any other email, you can just reply to this and I will respond to you. And so I take great care to make sure that anybody that isn't just like outright call me like a weird name or something, they do get a response. It might take a couple days sometimes up to a week. But it is important to have that open dialogue. And the funny thing is, I spend a lot of time just walking around, I'll walk in people say, Hey, Sam, what do you need? I don't need anything. What are you guys up to? Can I peek in the back? Is here. And I think at first that kind of freaked out some people, but now I'm a pretty regular presence a lot of different places around town, and I purposefully schedule time to drive around, to walk around and just see, did something change? Is there a sign out somewhere? And that is where I find a lot of stories. So people are always, able to reach out through the email or through the newsletter, and that is where we get a lot of the tips. It's a dialogue.
mike rusch.:You've been doing this, you said since April of 2024, What are the things that you didn't think you would see happening here? Or the kinds of interactions or the kinds of problems that were dealing with? Yeah. That maybe surprised you a little bit and gosh, I really didn't think that kind of thing happened here in a good way or a bad way, but maybe it's something that you feel like you've discovered about the city along the way.
sam hoisington.:I think the problems that the city. Is facing are not the problems that I thought they would be. I think everybody in downtown Bentonville and in some other places were always a little bit suspicious about why their lawns were soggy when it hadn't rained in a while. But my word this, the scale of these water leaks is just, was just so massive. Thousands of water leaks have been identified across the city. They're making really good progress actually at, getting 'em solved now. But I think the scale of that problem surprised me. I think the scale of the sewer situation really surprised me. And then I just have this overwhelming, looming feeling that we, that all the local leaders are doing what they can to address this, but there's a cliff that's coming with some of these expenses. So we have basically, as residents not been paying the full cost of infrastructure for the past couple decades. We really haven't. And so you're seeing those bills go up, we're catching up. There are also some people that feel that developers haven't been paying their fair share. You could make that argument. But the thing is, all of the infrastructure needs upgrading in a really major way. And, this is also a situation actually at the school district, which financially speaking the last time that they had an auditor come through, the guy was like, I could only find three things. And it was like in the football booster club, and it wa it was like a receipt was missing or something. I don't remember exactly. But, their books are clean and it's a well-run operation according to, experts. But one thing that people don't realize about the school district is the state changed their funding model a couple years ago. And they used to, and forgive me, I, I don't have my notes in front of me, but they used to fund I believe it was 33% of a new school building. So you could really get, them to chip in quite a bit. Now the latest number is like 0.5%. They totally changed that funding. And so people look at the school district and they're like, Hey, they're tucking away millions of dollars every year. That's why my property taxes are so high. And what they don't realize is, a new high school is gonna be perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars. And so what they're putting back, that's not even enough to build the next school, and they're gonna need a couple in the next few years. So these problems are really big and they require a lot of time to understand. And I honestly feel like I'm just barely getting a grasp on some of these things still.
mike rusch.:As you look back over your time, since 2024 I'm curious, what do you see that really draws people to the news? What do you see that's capturing people's attention and imagination here?
sam hoisington.:So I, I think people really appreciate that civic coverage. That's what I hear all the time. I was at a meeting about downtown Bentonville. I don't remember when that was. It was sometime this year. And a very nice woman came up and slipped $50 in my tote bag and said, you're doing a great job. Keep it up. And that is the kind of coverage that has gotten people to give financially. And you're never more engaged with a story than when you pay me voluntarily for it. So I really look at that as the core mission is that civic coverage, that local government coverage. And I'll tell you there are a lot of interesting stories of people that I really haven't gotten to. There are a lot of interesting profiles that should be written and time of day sort of thing. But I would love to be able to tell more stories about individual people as well in the coming year.'Cause a lot of what I have been doing is very. Things that feel a little abstract, like a system sort of thing, but really Bentonville, iss made up of people. And so I, those stories do well, for example sometime next week by the time this is out, it'll probably be live, there is a retired Walmart executive that is now a second grade teacher at Thyden. What, dude, what, like, how'd that happen? There are a lot of stories like that I'd like to get to.
mike rusch.:What are some of the biggest, most consequential stories that you've written about or you've seen happen?
sam hoisington.:I will say a lot of what is known about some of the city government problems, by re residents. It's 'cause of the Beneville bulletin, so you still cannot find any other explanation of the sewer capacity situation out there. I've looked, there's been a couple stories that I've touched on it from other places, but nothing that actually sits you down and walks you through, Hey, what's happening, with that. And so that is new knowledge. That is creating new knowledge for people. Of course, it existed in some consultant report that was a few hundred pages long, but I know that has had ripple effects and one way that I see it is sometimes now I'll see, comments on other, like news organizations or just on social media about something else. And they will be referencing mostly correctly some facts that were revealed in other stories that I've written and. That is the only place to find that information. A lot of the times, especially with the water leak stuff and the sewer stuff. Local news, the impact is hard, right? It's like Tinkerbell, it's this makes a difference to you if you believe it does, if you care about these things. But I can't make you care about, a neighbor with an interesting story or new businesses that open or city council. But there are enough people out there that intuitively do care and they really wanna know, especially with local businesses, a new business opening, a new bar, restaurant. Those are some of the most popular stories. And I always tell people, one reason to support local news is we always say shop local. Everybody, agrees shop local is good. How are you gonna shop local if nobody tells you that these places, opened and stuff. So I think that's a real service to the community too., mike rusch.: What do you think, stories that you feel like have mattered to you over the past year and a half? I'm gonna be honest I'm gonna keep hitting pretty much the same things here. The sewer situation, the water situation, one and the same on that. Basically all this growth that has happened above ground, that happened below ground too, and we weren't ready for it. So those are big stories. They're gonna keep being big stories. And then another one, it unfortunately, boring things matter a great deal, and a lot of the times, the sales tax rebates situation at the city. Oh my God, you're telling me I gotta care about sales tax rebates. Now my word, what don't I, ugh, let me get into that. But that really matters, like the budget for Core City Services is really looking like it's flatlining. So if you care about the library and the parks and things like that, there's no emergency right now. We're not gonna do a GoFundMe for the library right now, like we are not in a bad spot, but we absolutely need to keep an eye on that. Nobody's even really sure why that sales tax rev revenue is flatlining. We have some early indications, but that is absolutely something that we need to keep an eye on for next year and the year after that. Because if it's really staying flat, that really means effectively it's going down, right? Inflation, every, are any year bills going down, not that I've noticed, right? Not mine. If things are staying flat, like that is gonna be a problem in the next couple of years. Yeah. And then in terms of like impact, I think the smaller stories are the ones that are, easier to judge impact on. The things that I treasure the most, the things that I have in my folder of nice things that people have said to me that I open up and click through when I had a bad day. A lot of them are these small local businesses that are just trying something new, have put all their heart and soul into it. And I was able to do, honestly, a pretty quick blog post about 'em. And a lot of people will, will stop by and say, yeah, no, I saw you in, the Bentonville bulletin. And I think I, I think that's the that, that matters a lot to me. I it's hard to be small and it's hard to be local and anybody that's doing that, if I can help 'em out I like doing that. I love that.
mike rusch.:I'm curious how you view your role, and this idea of belonging, we talk a lot about what, within this, within these conversations about what it means to belong to a place. And I guess I have my opinions, but I'm curious, how do you view your role in helping to form and shape someone's understanding and belonging to this place?
sam hoisington.:I did an analysis. It wasn't scientific. I clicked around a little bit. On the Bentonville subreddit. Most recent, most famous post not famous, most viewed, most attention the things that are asked the most often, and I'll tell you one of the most common questions on the Bentonville subreddit is how do I make friends? I just moved here for Walmart or something else. I'm 35, I work from home. All these different situations. A lot of people are just looking for friends. It's hard. It's actually kinda hard to make adult friends, it's hard to find that spot that you can plug into. And so I think, I've really taken on this civic engagement sort of thing. I think I could have just asea easily gone with the belonging route. I, if we talk about impact, like if I helped, you may make your first friend in Bentonville. That could be the most impactful thing that anybody's ever done, in local news ever. That's you getting plugged in. And so I know with all the new residents that are in town it's hard to find your place a little bit. When I first moved back, I was like, do I still fit in here? I don't know, I tried out a couple different things before I really found some friends. And, of course I reconnected with people, but. I think with the number of new residents that we have here, we really do need to come together some sort of way, I don't know what it looks like, but a community wide effort to help people literally just make friends, for 20 26, 1 of the things that I would love to do is just do profiles of clubs. It doesn't sound like the most rigorous journalism, if there's a button club, if there's a sewing club, if there's book clubs, just a list of that I think would be really helpful. So we've done a, I've done a little bit of that and I would love to do more.
mike rusch.:I'm curious then to that point, like where do you see the barriers for that ability for people to belong based on the work that you're doing?
sam hoisington.:So on, honestly, you're asking my opinion. I think one of the answers is people work. A lot these days it, it takes a lot to, keep food on the table. And so people are really busy, with work and life and stuff like that. So it's hard to carve out that time. That's just a basic human, situation that we're all in. I think there aren't any organizations really that help you make a friend, which is funny, there are organizations that might accidentally help you make a friend, by promoting bars or things to do, or events or hosting events. But really would it be so crazy to have a friendship and connection bureau or department at the city? I don't, I really don't think it would. There's not a lot of money sitting around there these days. But if you look at what really matters to quality of life and what really matters to health, and longevity living a long time, it's having friends, it's having connections. And so I think maybe it, there's a little bit of shame that goes along with it too. And I think that's why that subreddit is such a place for people to come and be like, Hey man, like I think I'm pretty cool, but I just haven't found my people. I've been here a year and a half what's going on? Like, where'd you guys find people? And I think it's not talked about enough, but if you have this many new residents, then you probably have a large number of people that don't feel like this is home, that haven't been introduced to somebody. And so visit Bentonville doing some pretty interesting stuff on that front, but I think we could always do more.
mike rusch.:I love that. It's a interesting thing to hear from a journalist. Yeah. Like it's, I love your insight because I feel like you are paying attention and you probably talk to a heck of a lot more people than I do. And to have that as maybe one of the barriers for a community I guess I'm not surprised to hear that, although I hate hearing that and it feels there are definitely opportunities for that.. Sam, we talked a little bit about earlier about how people can support that, the work you're doing, and if they value this role of independent journalism in our city. What makes the most sense for people to support you, to subscribe? How can people help, or maybe what are some of the barriers for people getting engaged to support this work?
sam hoisington.:So I have thought about that a lot because for things to be different, the equation has to change. So if ad support in media, local media, if there was gonna be enough ad revenue to give you good, high quality local news, then it would've already happened, right? There's bigger places trying to make that happen, but most people still don't have the local news that they want. So that formula has to change. And, un unfortunately, the honest truth is it requires readers to chip in and sacrifice a little bit and chip in financially a little bit more, and. Probably my biggest struggle is converting people from being really big fans that say, Hey, thank you so much for your work. Or writing me, that was a great article. And stuff like that. And helping them see that there is a direct line from me continuing to do this and you financially supporting me. And in our particular community. It's really tricky, I think because so many of our causes are underwritten by philanthropy and large, corporate entities. And we get a lot of stuff for free that I think we might even be programmed to just expect good things to be free. And not everything is free, right? It can't be. And so everybody intuit, like nobody seems to disagree that readers need to support local journalism and that things have gotten pretty bad on local journalism, but the, there's these blockers. And I, I saw recently that your membership came through Yeah. And you financially supported me and. But you've been a fan for quite some time, and so I'm wondering what it was for you that finally made you say, yes, I want to do it?
mike rusch.:Okay. I see. I see what you're doing there. You're gonna ask me the questions. We, and that's not fair. I, no, because you're probably a much better question asker than I am. No, but I think in all seriousness, I think for me, I think it's really easy in this world that we have of what news looks like that I guess maybe under this, I have this bias that there's an agenda, right? And that maybe with political organizations and news organizations seem to find some affinity that they want me to do something right. That there's some sort of influence. And I think the more that I've sat there and thought about that and really start to understand the role of what happens when local journalism isn't there, and what happens civically in our city becomes really problematic when people don't vote or they don't run for office, or not that there's corruption issues, but like people aren't being held accountable. I think it turns the equation a little bit to say I'm not investing in someone to go write stories for the sake of my entertainment. This is someone who's doing the work to understand what's happening in my city. So that that civic engagement becomes more effective so that people are more engaged. And I think by virtue of that, we have a healthier city. We have a health healthier process by which we can all live in this place together. And so I think for me it's a, I think I know these things on one hand, but at the same time, I think it's really probably my own leaning in to try to understand that yes, you are providing a value but the value is for me and my quality of life and my city. And that without that the ability for that to fly under the radar or to not be as good as what we want it to be there's some real consequences to that. So I think it's absolutely a fair question, and I think that's part of the challenge that you have, and probably reframing how we think about news in our space. And I think the challenge is understanding that it's part of my civic responsibility to support the institutions. I would say journalism is an institution that are going to help bring about what the best possible way for our community to be. So that'd be my soapbox for that. I don't know if that's a good answer or not, but I think that's how I've been thinking about it lately. And I think if more people thought about it that way maybe that makes those conversations
sam hoisington.:easier. I think so. And it's weird because local news is infrastructure, right? But if I was just like going around asking you to give. As much as you'd like to the road department. We probably wouldn't have that. Nice. That's right. It's really, it's a tricky place to be in. It used to be such a wonderful industry and they had buildings in every town and it was like the New York Times building, and that's not the case in most cities around here anymore. So things change so fast. And also I think really what, I think there's a missing part to your answer. I think. Please. And let me say it. And then you say, if you think it's the case, I think things started to change for you. Maybe when we shook hands outside of City Hall that one night at that meeting.
mike rusch.:Yeah, I think that's fair. I think when you understand there are human beings that are doing this work, that care about the city, this is not a job for you. You could go get a journalism job probably somewhere else and be just fine and don't have to worry about trying to convince people to support it or go sell ads or whatever that may look like. I think it's part of you're here because you want to understand what's happening. I'm here 'cause I wanna understand what's happening. And that there are real people that are trying to make their contribution to our city. And I think, shame on me, shame on any of us. No. For not understanding maybe to the depth of what of what local journalism can really. Really see, and I think we're seeing the repercussions of that, frankly, nationally, whether that be rollbacks in NPR funding, those public institutions that are providing local news or opinion or whatever that may be. When those things become under threat or they become less it really does threaten the other institutions that we rely really heavily on. And but at the core of it, yeah, I think there's human beings at the core and we need in many ways to, to recognize that.
sam hoisington.:And there, there's no shame in this game at all. It's other it's y'all's money, and if you choose to give to I'm grateful in whatever quantity you do, but really what we're talking about is, I have to earn that trust, and I'm okay with that, taking several years. It's hard, I got a budget but. It's about earning trust at scale, but also somehow, meeting enough people. Because I'll tell you, as soon as I am, even if I've emailed a couple times, if I meet somebody and we have a nice conversation or coffee or whatever, I'm really likely to see their name pop up the next time I send that fundraising pitch.'Cause they know that I'm, a real person. I'm here because I will say, if you are just on Facebook scrolling and you see a Bentonville Bulletin article versus a CNN article, they look the exact same, don't they? The post structure is the same. You don't know that one of those is necessarily made with love by somebody who's from Bentonville. And once the, it's there's a lot of storytelling that goes into. Making the storytelling happen. And I could always do a better job of that. And so we're gonna do a, I'm gonna do a campaign here at the end of the year where I just go through and I say maybe some of those things that I forgot to say to everybody throughout the year. Who does this? Who is this guy? What does he want? Does he have an agenda? I don't. And what happens if, I don't support it, what happens if I could? Because also, a lot of this is the Bentonville Bulletin is such an early stage project that you're an angel investor right now. You didn't hit a pay wall, you, you were compelled to support it 'cause you saw, there's some early stuff here. I wanna see what happens next here, and so getting people to buy into that is tricky. But it's also a lot of fun.
mike rusch.:No I would agree. I think the, yeah, I, I don't know. Maybe we do grow up. You said the three things that make us American, maybe the trust of the press maybe. Can we add that to the list in some ways? And I think that has probably been eroded in our culture in many ways. And so I think this is part, I would hope that this is part of the reestablishing of that trust and when it's based in a human being that we know and has a vested interest in understanding what this place is for the good of this place I think that builds trust back. And I think this is why what you do really matters in that space.
sam hoisington.:And that's why I think showing up in person matters. I don't do virtual meetings. If I can help it. If somebody really insists, sure, if that's what's, but showing up in person, being there, wearing something identifiable. Being somebody that you could talk to if you wanted to, I think is a big part of it, but also it really does. A lot of, so many of these problems come down to this, just toxicity from the national stuff, like leaking down into it. And there's actually a research report on how to market local news that came out from a big foundation. And one of the things they say is, don't say journalism anymore. Don't say that stuff about democracy.'cause you're triggering these partisan reflexes in people when you use those words, just focus on what you provide, which is a local news update that is un partisan stories that you can't get anywhere else. And I happen to agree with that. It's what I found as well it's like there is a big difference between, Sam, the local journalist and somebody on CNN, but why would I ever expect like a regular human being walking around to be thinking about these nuances, and so it is something that I try to point out a little bit more because it, I, it couldn't be more different, if you really want to, you can find me and complain in person. You can in person, you can. Yeah. It, it's a big puzzle, but that's one of the things that I like about it is, it's gonna take years to solve this puzzle. And every time I chip away at a little bit more it's a great feeling.
mike rusch.:I, I'm curious go forward three years from now or however far you want to go. What's your vision for what this could become?
sam hoisington.:So I think the best thing to do there is to look at some other markets and stuff like that and see what they've been able to produce. And, right now, having one person do everything honestly, Mike, that's a, that, that's a terrible idea. Godspeed to you, Sam. Yeah. And it's not really a matter of if I burn out it's a matter of when. So I'm doing all right now. But in, in the new year I would like to get a second full-time reporter because I would like to stop telling people, imagine what it could be in the future, and I'd like to be in the future, but, you've gotta do it like scaffolding, right? Okay, you made enough money to sustain one person. Now can you do two? But in goal, probably in three years. Five years is a really lean team still. I like, I see three full-time people probably. And then more than anything I would like to get back to that collaboration on other stuff.'Cause not all, the Bentonville Bulletin does not have to be the newspaper of record for Bentonville or something like that. I think it's probably healthier for us to be one of the voices I would love a competitor one day that would be so sick, interesting. And that, yeah. And if anybody wants to start a competing thing, I'll help you out. Let's figure out how to do it. Because there's a lot of room to play here and there's a lot that needs to be covered. And so I think short answers probably like three full-time people including me in three to five years. And maybe just keep growing from there. But people ask me all the time, are you gonna do the Centerton bulletin, the Bella Vista? Are you gonna do the spring? What would you call the Springdale one Springdale? I don't know. The Sentinel. Sentinel. That's good. I was gonna say Roundup. I don't know why.'cause the rodeo there. Yeah. You gotta have the alliteration. Yes. Okay. But, that's not really my end goal. My end goal is to do more and better here. And I don't think the solution is ever gonna be to focus purposefully on increasing the quantity of the news updates. I think it's about the quality of the news updates. Not every news article is created equal, and so that's gonna be my focus moving forward.
mike rusch.:I'm, I gotta ask, I just listening to you talk about this, like what, at the core of what you're doing, like what's driving you to do this?
sam hoisington.:A healthy disregard for my own economic and physical wellbeing. Is that a good answer?
mike rusch.:That may be why. Yeah. No. What do you wanna see happen? Like what drives you that, that pushed this forward, that this work really matters and needs to be done
sam hoisington.:Well? I don't I think it's the only thing that I can do that helps at all with this, just this this what is, what do you call that? The national stuff. The weight the weight, the heaviness, the fighting and all of that stuff. And no, it's sounds like a hippie thing, but I really think that repositioning people to think a little bit more local, it helps a lot with that national stuff. Let's just tone down the temperature just a little bit. Maybe just once a week when you get the newsletter, think a little bit more about local stuff. It really is community focused. There are a lot easier ways to make money. I will also say I do enjoy this work. I enjoy building. Something new. I don't mind the uncertainty. I don't really un, mind the workload. I'd like a little bit more money. We'll get there, we'll get there to make a healthy living. But more than anything I think I'm just, I just want to help. That's how I know how to do it. And also, I'm naturally curious, which has been an issue in some previous office jobs.'cause, they'll say to do something, I'm like, okay, I have five follow up questions about that. And they're like no, you don't. You need to just do what I told you to do. And I'm not questioning your authority. It's just I literally want to know every single thing that has ever happened and will happen. And when I think about the end of my life one day when I'm 250 years old and I'm, on my deathbed, I like get really excited about the idea of like how much stuff I could just know. And so I don't know if that's ego or what, but I'm, I just, I'm just naturally curious and I really didn't think about journalism until freshman year of college when I realized that's the only thing that would let me keep asking everybody all these questions. That's the only thing where you can, pull over your car, a construction site and say, hold up boys, what are you what do you think you're doing here? What are you building here? Tell me, I'm with so and so I guess I like that little badge so I can keep asking my questions.
mike rusch.:Yeah. I think that's a great encouragement. And I think you're in a position to probably understand that a lot better than most. Alright. Sam, I'm curious as you look at this place I do want to ask, within the world that you operate within the stories that you hear? What are your fears for this place?
sam hoisington.:I am deeply concerned about the affordability situation and. I feel like we talk about it a lot. I have not personally seen a lot of solutions to it. Also, keeping in mind that every city in America is also really struggling with housing prices, right? Nobody that I know has figured it out, you see some affordable housing unit developments coming online. But they're not enough and it's not gonna be enough. It's just a fraction of the problem. And so I really do wonder, and I think everybody worries about this, of if you have kids right now, when they're ready to buy their own house, are they even gonna be able to live in Ton Decatur? What happens after Decatur? I don't know. Is that like where they're gonna be commuting in from just to be a part of Bentonville? So I worry about that a lot. So I honestly believe that these infrastructure challenges that we have, there's a solution to those. It might result in extra cost to rate payers or developers. I think those are things that we can figure out, but I'm worried that, people that are in influential positions might not even have enough time to think about this overall affordability thing. It's deeply concerning if you just talk to normal human people. So is the economy of Northwest Arkansas doing okay? Sure. It, things look good, compared to the rest of the country. Absolutely. But, I ask people to do this call it the$20 an hour challenge. Go to LinkedIn. Do the job search, try to find jobs that pay $20 an hour or more in Bentonville. Aside from the obvious players, you're not really gonna find that many jobs. At least I haven't, it's not terribly scientific, but, there are opportunities, but they might not be for everybody. And, regular people, are gonna be left out if something doesn't change. And even when we talk about affordable housing and workforce housing, we're talking, the conversation's always about, teachers and firefighters and stuff like that. I think those are sympathetic characters. My mom's a teacher, I love teachers. We've gotta do something about that. I think the school district is doing something really unique with what they're doing. But what about the person that works at Subway? They have to live somewhere too. And if we're already worried about a teacher that makes 50 or $60,000 a year, what about half that? What are we gonna do? And so that's what I'm worried about and I don't know that anybody has a terribly good answer. But that's obviously the biggest issue that's coming up in the next couple decades is this gonna continue to be good and, are we gonna be able to live here?
mike rusch.:Yeah, I yeah. I, you're gonna be preaching to the choir here at some point.'cause I would wholeheartedly agree and I think this is why I think the attention to these local city issues and these decisions really matter for us all to make the best on informed decisions so that we. To the extent can either catch up with it or would be wonderful to get ahead of some of these issues. And maybe to that, Sam, we talk the theme of this idea of community wholeness that we've, that I've tried to thread through all of these conversations that we've had, and I'm curious when I use that term, wholeness. From your perspective, what does community wholeness look like to you?
sam hoisington.:I think community wholeness probably looks. Like everyone finding like what they would call like their people, you're like what's your safe place? Who are your friends? That, or connections that exist outside of the workplace and or your family. And for me, my favorite place in town is two friends books. Why? First of all, they got really comfy chairs, and I'm not gonna name names, but there are some coffee shops out here that do not have very comfortable chairs, two friends books, that's where it's at. And they just do a lot of events and, book related and otherwise, and I've just found, really good friends there. And that's my place. And I'm worried that, if you're a new hire that Walmart spent a lot of money bringing in here that if you don't find whatever your version of two friends is, then. You, you might not stay here, you might not raise a family, and obviously it's in everybody's best interest if you probably, if you stick around. And so wholeness to me looks like an opportunity for everybody to get plugged in some way, and I know that's a vague answer, but what would your answer be?
mike rusch.:Oh, no, I don't have to answer that question. Yes, you do. Yes, you do. That's the one rule. Okay. I've listened. Yeah, that could be a, that's a whole series of conversations that maybe we can go down. Yeah. I think at the core of it, I think the wholeness conversation, I've, we've had probably 70 conversations and I've asked this question to every person that I've spoken with, and there's a lot of similarities in those questions. And I, I think Barbara Carr, who was one woman deep admiration for her last season, who just point blank looked back at me and said, there's no such thing as wholeness. Dang. And I sat there with that answer to that question for a long time. I processed that with a friend, Emma, who was with me at the time. And I think through that process, it's been a really interesting thing that it's the pursuit of this wholeness understanding that there is maybe a slice missing. That we continue to move forward in these spaces of wholeness, pursuing this idea, not giving up and realizing that the moment we maybe think we've found it we could act actually be risking it. And I think that's the concept that's been rolling around in my head here lately of this idea that it's gonna be in, in the relationships, it's in the people, right? It's in the sitting at two friends having a cup of coffee. Where we're pursuing these ideas and not growing weary of that. And so we could talk about that forever. I probably, I will probably cut this out because Yeah, it's not relevant necessarily to our conversation but it is relevant to our conversation. But I don't want to, we'll go down a philosophical rabbit hole there if, be careful.
sam hoisington.:I don't, I don't have thoughts that deep.
mike rusch.:Yeah. So
sam hoisington.:That's like a philosophy. There you go. I thought you were just asking like, Hey,
mike rusch.:yeah. You have to ask very like black and white questions, very pointed questions. Sam, deeply honored to be able to spend some time with you to share a table with you. Thank you for the work that you're doing. I'm a huge believer. I think it matters deeply and I just wanna encourage you to continue to go forward and be that person that beat reporter in our community for now who's uncovering every stone and helping us really understand and find what it looks like to pursue this idea of wholeness in our community. I think the work you're doing is absolutely a part of that. And yeah, thanks for being here and yeah, keep doing what you're doing.
sam hoisington.:Thank you, Mike. That was such a, that was such a good hype up speech. Can I, I can just call you now, right? You can, anytime I tell you that. Anytime.
mike rusch.:It's true. I wouldn't say if it wasn't true, but Absolutely.
sam hoisington.:Thank you for having me.
mike rusch.:Yeah, thanks Sam. Well, I'm incredibly grateful to Sam for sitting down with me and for the honesty that he brings to this conversation. What struck me most was his clarity about what's at stake. Almost 70% of the stories published in the Bentonville Bulletin had no equivalent story anywhere else. Almost 70%. Those are stories about sewer infrastructure, about water leaks, about sales tax revenue, our school funding stories about the real cost of growth and who bears it. Stories that would simply go untold if Sam wasn't doing this work. And I appreciate his vulnerability about the challenge. This isn't charity, it's not underwritten by large corporations or by foundations. It's one person doing the work trying to build something sustainable. And he was honest that converting people from fans to supporter is the very hardest part. We're so used to getting incredible things in this community for little to no cost. But local journalism isn't free. It never was. Someone always pays for it. The question is whether we're willing to be the ones who pay that now. So here's my ask if this conversation meant something to you. If you believe that Bentonville and even the cities around Bentonville deserve to have someone paying attention, go to the bentonville bulletin.com, click on the membership button, and sign up at the highest level that you can. Because enabling Sam to do this job enables all of us to pursue a community where everyone's voice can be heard. Where the decisions being made at City Hall. They don't fly under the radar, where we can actually see ourselves. Sam said something else that stayed with me. He said one of the most common questions in Bentonville subreddit is how do I make friends, people move here for opportunity, but they're looking for belonging. Something we've talked a lot about, and maybe that's what local journalism really is. Not just accountability, not just information. But the connective tissue that helps us know each other, that helps us know our place. A community without journalists is a community that can't see itself. Let's make sure that Bentonville and our entire Northwest Arkansas can. And it looks like this will, or at least it should be our last episode for the year. But please know we're in the process of building into season three and we have some really incredible ideas that will hopefully continue this work for a long time to come. I wanna say thank you for listening and thank you for being the most important part of what our community is becoming. This is the underview, an exploration in the shaping of our place.
