Friends—
In case you missed it: Last week I published the first installment of America in Person, a new reporting project built around a simple idea—get out of the studio, go somewhere, and listen.
For this first film, we went to Iowa: the State Fair, a small-town pep rally, a barbershop in Des Moines, a campaign stop in Carroll County. I wasn’t looking for a poll or trying to prove a theory. I wanted to hear what people said really mattered in their lives, what they are looking for from our fraught and frayed politics.
The film is about 12 minutes long, and it has begun to find an audience on YouTube—more than 16,000 views so far. But I especially want you, the Real Patriotism community, to see it. This is the kind of reporting I want to do more of: face-to-face, curious, and grounded in the country as it is.
If you watch, tell me what you heard—and where America in Person should go next.
—Terry