This week I sat down with Alyssa Rosenberg — dean of the Allbritton Journalism Institute, the organization behind NOTUS — for the third episode of our month-long NOTUS takeover series. Alyssa spent more than 20 years at the Washington Post as a reporter, editor and cultural critic before taking a buyout in 2025 and doing something most journalists would never admit to out loud: going looking for a good pirate ship to join.She found one. And our conversation ranged across the entire landscape of what journalism is becoming — the skills young reporters need now that didn’t exist when we started out, what breaks when a news organization violates the implicit compact with its readers, why politics has become just another entertainment fandom, and what the next five years might actually look like.I’ll be honest: I came in with a theory I’d been testing — that the loss of local journalism is driving the nationalization of politics. Alyssa pushed back on it, and she was right. The parties themselves are driving a lot of that conformity. Having someone challenge a premise that carefully, with that much context from inside the industry, is exactly what I love about these conversations.Three moments I keep coming back to:

“There are so few pathways for young people to come to D.C. and to do so especially if they don’t have family money, if they can’t afford to sort of take a risk.”

“Our politics have become sort of yet another fandom, yet another entertainment arena. And I don’t think that’s particularly healthy from a civic perspective.”

“The ability to go out and find facts in the real world is going to end up being more valuable than ever.”

TAKEAWAY

In a media moment full of doom and gloom, Alyssa’s clearest argument is an optimistic one: the same tools that have destabilized the old journalism business model are about to unlock a generation of journalists whose instincts were never fully matched by the platforms available to them. The nerds are coming — and they’re going to be incredible.

Some of the most interesting conversations I’ve had on this show are the ones where I’m actually talking to a peer — someone who’s been doing this work at the same time I have, in the same city, navigating the same chaos.

That’s this episode.

Deirdre Walsh has been covering Capitol Hill since 2006 — CNN first, then NPR, now NOTUS, where she’s helping lead a newsroom that is genuinely doing something different. I’ve known Deirdre for years, and this is one of those conversations where I kept thinking: more people should hear this.

We got into a lot of things. How being a parent changed the stories she pitched — when Congress was debating a social media bill and she was simultaneously fighting her teenager about Discord, she knew that story from the inside in a way no briefing book could give her. The camaraderie of the Capitol Hill press corps — the informal COVID pool, the shared files, the reporter-to-reporter trust that outsiders almost never see. The shrinking number of members she can trust not to spin her, and why that matters more than it might seem.

And a few things that surprised even me. There is a pickleball court on the fifth floor of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Ted Cruz plays basketball there. Kirsten Gillibrand plays tennis. The Pickleball Caucus has converted it twice a week. I did not know this.

But the story I keep thinking about is the STOCK Act loophole she cracked in 2012. She covered the bill for months. A source offhandedly mentioned that the House and Senate were interpreting the rules differently. She started pulling on that thread with her colleague Dana Bash. What they found: one chamber’s interpretation let congressional spouses trade on insider knowledge without ever having to disclose it. They reported it. Congress closed the loophole a few days later. “You always dream of making Congress react to your reporting,” she said. That’s the dream and she lived it.

The advice she carries from her first job — watching Judy Woodruff prepare — is simple: do the work you can control. Be ready. Then adjust.

That one lands.

For the next month, The Friday Reporter is in the hands of NOTUS.

If you haven’t been paying close attention to what’s happening over there, now is the time to start. In a moment when most Washington newsrooms are contracting — the Washington Post went from roughly 1,000 to 400 people in three years — NOTUS is doing the opposite. It’s attracting some of the best reporters in the business, investing in a serious fellows program, and breaking news every week.

This week, I sat down with two of its newest and most high-profile additions: Kadia Goba, who came to NOTUS from the Post (via BuzzFeed News), and Paul Kane, who spent 19 years and three months at the Post before the February 4th layoffs became what he called his “before and after” moment.

Both of them cover Capitol Hill every day. And both of them see things most people miss.

PK’s framing stuck with me: the public already has a brutally low opinion of Congress — a 10% approval rating in Gallup. But even with that as the baseline, most people still don’t understand how little is actually getting accomplished. Last year was the lowest legislative output in recorded history. The Senate spent three-quarters of its time processing executive nominations. The noise of apparent conflict gives the impression that things are happening. They aren’t.

The counterintuitive insight that surprised me most: the Freedom Caucus — the most conservative bloc in the House — are actually among the biggest supporters of the mainstream press. They beeline for Manu Raju’s camera after every vote. They give reporters their cell numbers. If Speaker Johnson ever tried to curtail press access, PK says the Freedom Caucus would revolt. I believe him.

There’s also a genuinely hopeful note in this conversation. The incoming freshman classes of 2026 weren’t in Washington on January 6th. They don’t carry the same scar tissue. PK thinks that matters. So do I.

It’s a conversation that left me more optimistic about journalism — and more clear-eyed about Congress — than I’ve been in a while.

Watch the full episode on YouTube