Back in the game

Experiments in local newslettering … A Trump highway to Trump prison … And how did he get home?

Good morning, Agenda readers!

We’ve got a little treat for you on this fine Friday.

We finally forced Joe Ferguson — a veteran Southern Arizona journalist who joined our team at the Tucson Agenda earlier this month — to introduce himself properly.

We say “forced” because, like any good journalist,¹ Joe hates talking about himself.

But we think it’s important that you know the reporters behind this operation. And Joe’s story of leaving journalism, working as a public official, and now returning to the beat, is just fascinating.

We never thought we’d hire a former politician!

And, as Joe writes, he never thought he’d be able to come back from “the dark side” to the job he loves: local journalism.

Joe is one of the many examples of why we think we’re doing something special here at the Agendaverse.

Local news is dying. And we don’t think it’s just the internet, Craigslist, Facebook or Google ads that are killing it.

The problem, unfortunately, goes much deeper than that.

It’s fear of change. It’s the cowardice of publications that don’t want to offend a single advertiser, sponsor or reader. It’s a failure of imagination and dogmatic adherence to rules that don’t serve the reader, the journalist or the public. It’s stagnation.

We’re old-school local journalists here at the Agendaverse. We’re not partisan activists or keyboard warriors.

But we’re not doing journalism in the old model.

We’re adding new voices and trying to expand on the best parts of local journalism while shaking off the habits that hold us back.

Just this month, we carved out three new spaces dedicated to the policies we see as the most pressing for Arizona’s future.

We brought a tech entrepreneur into the fold to teach you about artificial intelligence. We hired a water activist and researcher in Cochise County to keep an eye on the battles over Arizona’s most precious resource. And we launched a weekly Education Agenda to help make sense of why we’re near the bottom of nearly every education metric you can think of.

From the beginning, the Agenda has always been an experiment.

The hypothesis of this experiment is that if we put our readers first — above the needs of advertisers, sponsors, billionaires, nonprofit donors and greedy corporate overlords — we can create something special. And maybe even earn enough to survive.

To all of our paid subscribers who have helped prove that hypothesis correct, thank you. Thank you. Thank you!

And if you’ve enjoyed the fruits of our labors over the last three-and-a-half years, please consider clicking that button today so we can continue growing this experiment into a new kind of local, independent, reader-supported news.

Take it away, Joe!

I didn’t think I was coming back to journalism.

I spent the last five years of my life believing there wasn’t a place for me in journalism anymore. If I’m being honest, I genuinely assumed the door closed behind me.

Decades ago, my journalism professors at the University of Arizona ingrained in me that journalistic independence required a near monastic neutrality. Leaving the industry to work in the public sector (or, equally bad, going into PR) would be going over to the “dark side” and earn me a lifetime ban in journalism.

I gave that some serious thought before I decided to leave the Arizona Daily Star almost exactly five years ago to work in the public sector. It wasn’t just a new job — it was the end of my journalism career.

But those lines were drawn in an era when there were at least two daily newspapers in nearly every major metropolitan city and TV stations had helicopters to cover traffic reports. Those days are long gone. And I don’t think public service is tantamount to going over to the dark side.

Today’s journalistic ecosystem operates differently. There’s no litmus test to decide who can get a press pass. And when anyone can be a journalist, it’s important that journalists have a keen understanding of the topics they cover.

Working in local government gave me an excellent peek behind the veil, something that couldn’t be taught in a classroom and that I couldn’t have learned without briefly leaving journalism. What I’ve learned can inform our reporting, and improve and expand the public discourse.

I return to journalism with a new skill set and a better understanding of how the bureaucratic side of local (and to a lesser part, state) government functions. I even gained a little empathy for the pressures of being an elected official.

These past few weeks have been a blast. I hit the ground running, covering public meetings, scouring memorandums and staff reports, talking to old sources and beginning to attend local political events — all while working with the rest of the team here in the Agenda universe.

I’m having the time of my life helping to build the Agendaverse, pushing the boundaries and attempting to reinvent independent local news that actually serves its audience in a way that both engages and informs our readers.

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Those who know me well know that I never stopped thinking like a journalist. And as a journalist, it makes me immensely uncomfortable to talk about myself.

But I am proud of my brief foray as an elected official.

I was part of a small group of “rebel” constables who tried to do the job differently, using my role as an elected official to do more than simply serving papers — we offered resources to those facing evictions. And before the various eviction moratoriums popped up during COVID, we Pima County constables refused to evict anyone until the state issued guidance on how to proceed during a public health emergency.

If you were to ask, I would say I am a recovering politician.

And while I have a newfound respect for anyone willing to enter the gladiator’s arena that is modern politics, I am not going back.

Journalism is where I belong.

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I think I was always destined to become a reporter.

The love affair started early, learning how to read on my father’s lap, sounding out words in the Milwaukee Journal comics section. It was called the Green Sheet because it was dyed green and I thought it was cool to have my own section of the newspaper.

I was reading news stories before I entered the first grade. In fact, I got in trouble because I refused to read the books in my first-grade class, dismissing them as “boring” compared to the news.

By high school, I was hooked. I started working at the school newspaper, asking questions, challenging the status quo — they threatened to shut down the school newspaper for an editorial I wrote about citizen hall monitors (I still never found out if they did background checks on those snitches) — and telling stories that would have likely never been told otherwise.

Decades later, I still have that fire in my heart.

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Ok, enough about me. Let’s talk about the work.

Here is what to expect other than my byline in the Tucson Agenda every morning.

For those of you who’ve followed my live-blogging in the past, I’ve already been getting my thumbs back in shape for those long public meetings. I enjoy it immensely. I’ll be using Bluesky.

For those unfamiliar with my running commentary, it looks like this:

I’m so proud to be able to call myself a reporter again here at the Tucson Agenda. And I can’t wait for my first byline (that isn’t just talking about myself) in the Arizona Agenda.

I’ll be doing public appearances, too. Next week, I will be speaking to the Democrats of Greater Tucson to talk about the Tucson Agenda. You can register here. (I’d be happy to talk to your group too, just drop me a message at joe@tucsonagenda.com.)

To be clear, my return to journalism isn’t partisan. It is not about who is in the White House or any single politician.

But some moments in history feel more important than others. And I’m glad to be back doing the work I love at a moment when it feels more essential than ever.

Thomas Jefferson put it best two hundred years ago when he likened the Fourth Estate to a tocsin (a warning bell) — in that it was the sole entity completely independent of government that had the freedom to criticize powerful elected leaders.

We are living in a world with a lot of uncertainty and chaos. And veteran journalists like myself are tasked with explaining how these new policies — whether good, bad or dumb — will impact Southern Arizona.

I am borrowing a bit of dialogue from The West Wing when I say "I don't know if there's ever been a more important time to be good at what I do."

It’s all a Trump Hotel now: Google Maps is officially renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America for users in the U.S., but that’s just the beginning of Trumpifying names of things, Politico notes. Arizona is among a handful of states which are attempting to rename highways after the president. Other national rebranding efforts include renaming airports, mountains, military bases and other monuments, as well as an attempt to rename pretty much the entire U.S. coastline as the “Donald John Trump Exclusive Economic Zone of the United States.” Even Democrats are getting in on it — they wanna rename a prison after him.

“Donald Trump faces nearly 100 felony charges. He has been found liable of sexual abuse and, subsequently, for defaming the victim of that abuse. He has been fined hundreds of millions of dollars in a civil fraud case. It is only right that the closest federal prison to Mar-a-Lago should bear his name,” Rep. Gerald Connolly, a Virginia Democrat, said.

Hobbs on Hobbs: Gov. Katie Hobbs took to the Republic’s editorial pages to complain about the Republic editorial board’s recent attempt to tell her how to do her job. Hobbs is already doing a great job, Hobbs wrote, and she’s delivering the #ArizonaPromise.

Negotiations continue: Hobbs’ budget director is resigning next month after two years on the job, per the Republic’s Stacey Barchenger and Mary Jo Pitzl. Republican lawmakers speculated it’s because her budgets have been so bad, but the Hobbs administration says she’s just burned out from a very difficult gig.

Stephen v. Stephen: Former Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer’s latest column for the Republic laments the never-ending election cycle, arguing one solution would be to shorten our ballots by not electing many positions like county assessors, sheriffs or the state mine inspector,² and lengthen terms of office for state lawmakers to four years from the current two years. Meanwhile, Phoenix New Times columnist Stephen Lemons laments the “constant lapdog-like fawning from my fellow journalists” over Richer, especially in their coverage of his lawsuit against Kari Lake, noting it’s not clear he actually won anything and Lake didn’t even have to apologize or retract statements under their secret settlement.

We don’t fawn over politicians. We fawn over paid subscribers who help us keep doing the work we love.

Different kind of border crisis: The border town of Douglas has declared a state of emergency, saying Donald Trump’s executive actions threaten to shutter the border and destroy the city’s economy since it basically survives off of shoppers from Agua Prieta, the Herald/Review’s Lyda Longa writes. Douglas Mayor Jose Grijalva wants the federal government to compensate the city if it shuts down the border. The city council approved the declaration by a 3-2 vote.

"While there is no immediate invasion of narcotics and crime within the city of Douglas, I find it necessary and prudent to prepare for the influx of military personnel to the southern border, to take every lawful precaution available in order to protect the health, safety and welfare of Douglas's citizens,” Grijalva wrote in the declaration.

Fitting: Former U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is getting into the crypto consulting business, the Wall Street Journal reports. She’s working for Coinbase’s Global Advisory Council attempting to pass bipartisan crypto legislation.

If you found Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin’s keys somewhere around the state House of Representatives, he would like you to return them, please.

His assistant sent out an all-staff email about it yesterday.

That email also triggered our memory of the time Republican Rep. David Livingston lost the keys to his Porsche and made a big announcement about it on the House floor.

If these people can’t even hold on to their own keys, should they really have the keys to state government?

1. Except Hank — Hank loves talking about himself.

2. We’ve pondered that question before, too.