Investigating Crimes + City Pages Times Feat. ProPublica Reporters Jessica Lussenhop & Andy Mannix

[Music] Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Racketcast. Still the only podcast from Racket. I'm your co-host Mcastle and with me as always are a pair of scoundrels who I'll tell you about themselves. Hi, I'm scoundrel number one and my name is Keith Harris and now scoundrel number two. I'm Jay Boehler and Keith. I got to press you on a scoundrel-like activity that you engaged in. We have you on a backup computer on a backup microphone because what did you do you little scoundrel? I didn't do anything. A glass of water spilled itself on my computer. Just use that. A glass of water was spilled. We don't know how. Water-related spilling is not my laptop. But we dipped down into our company reserve of backup computers and we got Keith online. He's working, word processing, editing, doing everything on equipment he's unfamiliar with. But sometimes you got to, you know what? We should talk about what we have coming up and we have a wonderful conversation with reporters, Andy Manickson, Jessica Lussenhopp, both of pro-publica and they're going to talk about a really brutal read that was incredibly reported about a church sex abuse scandal in an obscure but growing church called the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church, which has a large congregation in Northern Minnesota and that's where their story began but it kind of spiderwebbed all over the country and they were there doing the reporting all over about how this church covers up horrible abuse and the kind of light that they're shedding on it along with a lot of really brave people who are coming forward to tell their stories. And then we take a really, really, really hard and defined break to stop talking about that and begin talking about memories that Andy and Jessica have from when they worked at City Pages where we all worked and they were there in the 2010s which was kind of a different era than certainly from when Keith was first there and then from an M and I were there but City Pages is really in the eye of the reader in any given era but a lot of fun more stories from those two about that before any of that we have to do what I learned in the racket and what did you learn? I learned that while many of our museums and theaters, music venues, even our big stadiums are becoming more aware of people who have sensory needs or who are neurodivergent and who might need special care while they're at one of those establishments our restaurants are really not doing that. This is a story that I started thinking about when I was on the website for a local coffee shop, dogwood coffee and I saw that they had published social narratives for all of their cafes which are for those who don't you know have autism or who don't know anyone on the autism spectrum. There's basically a school itself that if you have these stories on your website and people can sort of read about what to expect before they go into a new place it just helps everyone feel more and control it's a better experience. They're a great thing to have a very easy thing to implement and dogwood is literally the only local food and drink establishment that I have ever seen published one on their website and it just kind of got my gears turning about like how easy it could be to sort of be more friendly and welcoming and accessible to people who have autism or who are otherwise neurodivergent and at the same time how little restaurants have done in this area and I think it probably makes sense that you know a place like the Walker Art Center is more ahead of this like an art institution probably has someone whose job this is right who's like I handle our are programming for people with disabilities I handle our specialized programming this kind of thing and a restaurant probably doesn't but you know as the number of people with autism or who diagnosed with autism continues to climb this just seems like a really easy way if you are a restaurant to make yourself a little more welcoming to all kinds of people and and take some feedback that really I think makes your restaurant a better experience for everybody right like a lot of the things that make a restaurant better for people with autism would also make me enjoy the experience more. Yeah I think to that point to that point restaurants are really fucking loud and getting louder with like the pumped in music and everything and the general clamor of people being in a restaurant together and yeah I think that that makes it especially just difficult atmosphere and compared to like I don't know the Walker's a pretty quiet place in museums I'm glad they have those guardrails in place but yeah restaurants feel especially needed in that arena and when we're got talking about how loud restaurants were I posed to the crew are they getting louder and sure enough we dug up an article from the great Kate Wagner McManchin Hell lady architecture critic in the nation about how yeah restaurants because of the way they're built nowadays especially are just really sensory jarring places and the fact that dogwood is the only one taking this into account pretty wild. Again like a lot of the things that the experts I spoke with people from the autism society Minnesota other local groups said would be things that are very easy to implement like noise calming measures you know again that used to be sort of standard in restaurants and I don't know why it isn't anymore yeah so like something like that makes the experience more pleasant for all kinds of people something like having a really detailed website with information about like where the parking is and where you enter the restaurant and like where to go when you get in there and what food is on the menu like also seems like a very straightforward and helpful thing for all kinds of people and yet you know James Norton from Heavy Table who as one of the people I spoke with about this was saying like in fact restaurants in general kind of moving away from this like it's not unusual anymore for a restaurant to only have a social media presence or to have a website that they just don't really do anything with and yes all these things take time and resources but I I don't know I tend to think that's a place where your time and resources would be well spent I don't know perhaps I am in the minority but no I agree and I mean I think it and it would take time and resources but it would be pretty much like an initial outlay of time and resources and then like a small amount of maintenance man I feel I'm not a I'm not a tech I think I could build a restaurant's website in an afternoon it might be yeah maybe we expand our corporate offerings to to doing that for yeah we'll handle the copy we'll do it all I think in my restaurant you would like Jay to design your website yeah hamster dance is kind of my muse I feel like since we're on this subject we should probably head over to what you learned in racket Jay now say the sort of dumb tails completely yeah I learned and I think I what do we call blue skies at a post what do you do on there is is it the dirty word really good lord of Christian podcast I'm not going to call it that I learned that the things that just prickle and annoy me in my everyday life have a way of turning into racket content which I think M and I are pretty much in the same camp here of how we use Facebook which nowadays is good for groups of things you're interested in in my case I local restaurant and food groups are fun and then marketplace which is the best way to buy shit it just is yeah unfortunately they they did that evil company did do that right but the food groups I started noticing this just ugly typeface and font and graphic style of of flyers and advertisements from local mom and pop restaurants that has the very distinctive just glow of AI one could call it a demonic glow if you wanted to but just repellent makes me not want to eat the food and just makes me wonder that you have theoretically delicious looking food you have a camera or you could I don't know higher photographer for one afternoon same afternoon you hire me to build your website and take photos of the food and then like try and tempt people with that rather than tempting them with a thing that is a composite of things that may be existed but the whole that they're forming is a thing that can never and will never exist it's a digital hamburger you're looking at and why do you expect anyone to come to your restaurant when you're just voicing this AI trash at them and so rather than doing I guess a better job of being a reporter which would have been going up to these places and be like hey why do you resent your customers in this way I kind of gathered that the answer would probably be well it's a fast quick way to turn around posters and I'm being told by literally every marketing just arm in the world that this is what we should be doing what we have to be doing So instead I just went to a, here's a little peek behind the curtain. I began my reporting with Googling Food Lawyer Twin Cities, which got me to a law firm that I called email. It was like, hey, I feel like this maybe amounts to a false advertisement type thing because you are advertising a thing that you can't possibly sell anyone. And they just, they're front desk person. I was like, oh yeah, we have a perfect guy for that. And then I spoke with, I spoke with Tim Sitzman of Winthrop and Weinstein. And he had a delightful conversation with me about how nothing can be done, nothing will be done. And the AI regulatory and legal frontier just will never get better in this arena of the law or regulation. And you know what, he issued his own kind of opinion, which was certainly isn't good for PR, to be known as the restaurant that is utilizing the tech that a lot of the population is kind of turning on. And also again, just not putting your best foot forward when you have food that would be appealing and you're not showing it to people. But yeah, in terms of a just sort of sign of the times, the bleak situation will not get better. I love how it makes you. Are you mad, Keith? Is it bother you or you don't care? Not really. I mean, I just haven't run across it as much as you. I mean, I, no, it doesn't bother me that much. But again, I haven't run into it as often as you have. And how bothered you if I was me. I think it's like, okay, you all every person who runs a restaurant has a smartphone in their pocket. To Jake's point, like, it is really not that hard to take. It shouldn't be hard if your food is good and looks good to take a picture of it and make that the picture that you use. Like an AI generated photo of a cheeseburger to advertise your restaurant to me. Like, I just don't even understand it. I don't understand why that makes sense to you. Again, if I'm a business owner, if I'm a restaurant, like, to me, that naturally seems like it doesn't make sense. That naturally seems like, well, if I don't give a shit about my food enough to actually show you what my food is and why the fuck should anybody come here? Like, it does kind of make me like, then don't open a restaurant. You know what? You can make pictures of AI cheeseburgers at home and share them with whoever you want. Like, if you're not proud of your work, if you're not proud of the thing, then what are we doing here? What are we doing here? Yeah, I will say as someone who's very, very bad at taking photos, I've taken some decent food photos in my time. So it's really, really easy on your dumpling tour, Keith. I had my photographer wife kind of give him a little post treatment, but for the most part they were, yeah, perfectly serviceable photos of a lot of dumplings. When you know AI4, you could ask, how do I take an appetizing photo of my fucking food? Or ask a photographer? Find out the white source. Yeah, there you go. So yeah, there'll be more from the what I've been irked by genre of racket story. Just wait, I'm irritated all the time. Yeah, I'm going to hear a thing again. So anytime anything, anytime there's something about AI that annoys you, like people will respond to that. Yeah, it'd be a bummer if we were with all of our kind of anti-AI coverage. We're running up against, I don't know, popular opinion, but the exact opposite appears to be true as much as we can shit on AI people seem to appreciate it. That's where the, that's where people are right now. Keith, what'd you learn in racket? Well, what I learned in racket this week was we have a story from our intern, Clara Conner, who this is her first real story. Her first like full story. Go, Clara. Yeah, and she talked to Ryan Campbell, who's a guy who run, who's designed a website called live democracy. And he's a local guy. And basically what it does is it puts you, you type in your zip code and it lets you know what legislation and what ordinances are being considered in your, in your area so that you can get a sense of that. And then you can also use that to respond to your elected officials. So, so yes, seems like a super useful tool. And what's also interesting is that he does use generative AI in the process. And Clara also talks to him about that. And he's like, yeah, AI sucks, but there's no way I would be able to pull this together right now without that. And hopefully I'm putting it toward a, you know, toward a good use. And also I'm just like constantly on guard against it, getting things wrong. Yeah, as far as you as far as use cases go, this feels like a particularly good one. Yeah, I mean, it's not pretending to like have beautiful pros or anything. Or it's just literally giving you information that it can scrape from the internet, which yeah, I'm on board. Yeah, and I mean the guy's doing it like he's doing it. It's a free service. He's like, I don't want to charge people for this. And so it can only be so time intensive, although he is looking into grabs. But yeah, it seems like a really useful, useful tool. And he's hoping to grow it like right now. It's only working in in local areas. Like you look, you can type in your zip code, but it won't necessarily pull up too much in a lot of areas. Because he doesn't have relationships with those with those counting. But, but yeah, it seems like something that it seems like the sort of thing where like there are people with website building capabilities who are probably doing lots of little things like this. And we don't necessarily hear about them because they're not getting funding. They're not, you know, they're not self promoters. Where people who are making complete bullshit websites. Get all the attention. Yes, I just, Jay has told us it's pretty easy to make a website. Anyone can do it. But yeah, as a shortcut to being a marginally better informed voter and just, I don't know, resident, bring it on. I mean, that feels like very little downside to making the American voter a little bit less dumb. Because I mean, I don't know if you got in a look at the voting population, but come on, man. But also, it's like, yeah, it's like if you, like if you wanted to be less dumb, how would you do it? You're like, well, I guess I would go to a government website and I guess I would come through here and I guess I would do that. And it's like, you know, it is a job. And anything that can make that job easier for people is good for sure. Not all uses of AI are evil. Like I wrote that story a couple of years ago about how St. Paul and Ramsay County were doing like a better job of recycling, like sorting recycling and compostables and stuff using AI. There are good uses for the robots. I just don't know if making sandwich pictures is what we want. Yeah, in actual way to improve an industry that doesn't result in gutting it of all of its jobs feels like, I don't know, the promise it should be made. But when you have the worst companies on earth leveraged beyond belief that this becomes the number one consumer product in the world. And boy, I don't think a lot, a lot good is going to come from that. But I'm glad we could do one example of it being used in a responsible and I think good for the world way. And you know what, Jessica, Lussenop, Andy Manix, I think they're good for the world too. And I should just issue a warning given the nature of this conversation. Sexual abuse comes up a lot. We want to just give you a heads up about that. But yeah, if you want to skip forward to the end part, it's much more fun. But I think you're going to enjoy the entire conversation and I think we should get to it right now. All right, everyone. We have Andy Manix and Jessica Lussenop from ProPublica, two reporters of renown who just report well, just who last fall. And then again, very recently did a two part series which might become more. We'll get into that on a horrific abuse scandal within a kind of obscure but growing church. And we will get into that initially. And then we'll take a hard hard break. And we'll talk about the fact that both these two worked at city pages which everyone at Racket did as well. We'll go down memory lane there. And I probably should disclose. I think we're on episode 54 of Racket Cast, I believe. I don't think we've ever had a friend on. But we have two friends right here. So the crackling chemistry you'll hear throughout the conversation is indebted to years of actual real world friendship. And in the podcasting business, you can't do better than that. I feel bad for all the people who thought they were your friends that you've had on before. I burned 53 bridges burned and one big swoop there beautiful thing All right, well tonal shift number one we should begin talking about your very ambitious a deeply reported feature story The kind of stuff that you're gonna find at ProPublica and a couple other outlets nowadays this type of reporting is rare and I want one or both of you to kind of do the real just Elevator capsule version to kind of set the table for what we're gonna talk about here and then I've got a bunch more questions for you Yeah, sure so the first story kind of the Table Center was we did a story about the old apostolic Lutheran church in Duluth Which when we first found out about it was not a church or a faith tradition that I knew anything about but there had been a criminal case up in Duluth of a I guess you could say sort of prolific child abuser who is within that faith community and We got a tip about that case. We only found out about it after he had pled guilty and Basically we got a tip which I can get into more Basically saying this is not just one perpetrator and there is a whole backstory to what's going on with this guy and with the church he's a member of and all of his victims are also in the church and This really needs investigation and attention and that sort of kicked off, you know the first story. I think really was Trying to establish, you know, what is it? What is the backstory of that criminal case? what is this church and I think ultimately where that story sort of left off was We're sort of gesturing and then ultimately Andy answers with his second story how big of a problem is this how widespread is the issue with this church and this community is it just in Duluth and I think that can kick to Andy in terms of what he did with the second story Yeah, and and just you know logistically Jessica and I started this story There are there are many job changes that occurred throughout this reporting when Jessica and I started this she was The Midwest reporter for pro-publica and I was on the investigation scene with the searcher Bune and we did as a partnership Jessica went to host a podcast called paper trial Which is out now Again, thank you. That's a pro-publica's flagship podcast and I ended up taking her job at pro-publica and working with another reporter named Jeremy Kohler Leyla Navati a photographer at the start should be and was also a key partner in all of this so anyway It's a partnership with the start to be in but That's just just sort of explaining why Jessica Departed from from the reporting her and I published a first story last fall I set out with with Jeremy and and Leyla to answer this question is this cultural abuse that we saw in in Duluth You know is it about one preacher? One sexual abuser one congregation or is this something more systemic in the oil sea community writ large so you know we we went to North Dakota Washington state Wyoming and talked to quite a lot of people from all over the country and some in Canada You know and basically started over conversation posing that question that they had all read the the Clint Massie story was I think a big deal to see Someone like Clint Massie go to prison in this really insular community so they were all aware of that reporting and and you know We post a question to them Is this the type of thing that you're familiar with happening in your community and everyone said yes You know in fact some people said you really don't even know the half of it You know you you barely scratched the surface and and so we ended up interviewing quite a lot of people 20 people who said that they had been sexually abused and just a lot of other you know experts former members current members Jessica and I layla went to a church service in the loop just everything we could to sort of better understand this church and and what is making these incidents of sexual abuse over represented and you know there there's not I don't think there's a simple answer To why but I you know, I think that this forgiveness doctrine kept coming up this idea of you can ask for forgiveness for For any sin including sexually will be using a child You know maybe sexually abusing multiple children dozens or hundreds of of times over a period of years And it can be washed away and and never never talked about again the victim can't talk about it you can't talk about it Some version of that played out and in quite a lot of the cases that that we looked into um and you know I think at the end of the day you you have a culture where sexual abuse is unchecked Uh and it has been for so long that you have in some cases families where you know, you have three generations who who are all sexually abused in some way and That was the focus of that second story is just that scope and and how it spans and in many families we talk to multiple generations Yeah really really a heroine reporting and I want to go like whole journalism school mode here and just kind of dissect the the lead on the on the story that you both authored and it begins with the girl pleaded not to go really evocative very dramatic and What we have a warning up top that of course we're going to talk about abuse here on the on the pod But you guys jump right in there's not a lot of table setting about The circumstance and the community and all that we get into that later, but there's a pretty vivid depiction of the the abuse and its impact right off the bat. What was the decision to sort of dive in in that way? Yeah, yeah, really was much of a decision it seems really obvious that that this I mean I think one of the unfortunate things that you have to confront when you're doing this kind of reporting is like It is not uncommon to read about sexual abuse scandals happening in churches churches of all kinds This is certainly not the only church that's grappling with this and I think that this forgiveness what we wound up Our short hand for it was a forgiveness session the existence of a forgiveness session and what that meant in the culture of this church really leapt out at us as A as our editor kept calling it a spit out your coffee kind of a thing like um and to be clear this opening scene is a young girl kindergarten age-ish or grade school very very early grade school age Who had told her parents that she was being abused by the perpetrator clip massi and her parents went to a preacher in this church and Rather than her parents or the preacher taking it to law enforcement They elected instead to hold this forgiveness session which they forced this little girl to go to which was Her father brought her to the preacher and to the abuser clip massi they all met and She as a little girl with very little agency You know describes kicking and screaming not wanting to go but being basically forced to go To let Clint massi hug her and to let him ask her for her for her forgiveness for what he'd done to her and That that was sort of the solution to the problem and that once forgiveness had been asked for She was not supposed to talk about this ever again. So That opening scene I think you know, I think it's Shocking, but we didn't do it just to be shocking. I think this is something that is sort of crucial to understand about The church and and the forgiveness doctrine and the impact that it has on the victims kind of right off the bat So that you know the reader the audience everybody understands Why we're telling you this? Not to critique your editor's metaphor. I mean spit out your coffee moment Sure fine, but I just found myself like shouting what the fuck and like shaking my computer that people could be allowed to behave this way and get away with things in that fashion So yeah, just my emotional reaction to rap and Andy take it over Yeah, I you know, I Think that the other thing we wanted to do was So by the time we started reporting this Clint Massey had pleaded guilty to sexual abuse. So I think that When we were approaching this is an investigative story, you know, one of the questions you ask is sort of who Where's that onus of accountability? Um, you know, it's not on a sexual abuser. It's on the institution So we wanted to start the story and sort of be thinking You know with this narrative camera the whole time we wanted it to be on The church and church leadership and people who knew this actually abuse was occurring and and didn't Stop it right the question that we we wanted to pose I think throughout the piece was If this person had acted differently at this time Could it have saved these other girls from the abuse that that they enjoyed? or an after that. This is possibly the earliest moment or one of the earliest moments in the story. And we see, we know something that the transpired after this moment. And if they would have gone to law enforcement, for example, if Clint Massey would have gone to prison back then, would he have continued to have access to these other children? That's the story we wanted to tell rather than a story about. Just one sexual abuser, which Jessica says, a sort of a story maybe you've heard before. So we did spend a lot of time, you know, kind of crafting this and perfecting this lead with our editors. I think the other reason we liked this as a lead was because this girl was very young when this happened and there's interviews with her later with police talking about how she never was able to forget it. Like you see the fallibility of this doctrine, you know, saying, okay, we're gonna forget about it, but for this victim, she carried it with her every day and it caused all these mental health issues. It caused her to consider killing herself. So you see that the pain, the emotional pain that she is saddled with just so unfairly as a young girl is in some ways, you know, put there by the church. It's not just the abuse. It's this idea that she can't talk about it anymore. It's this idea that she has to hug her sexual abuser and you know, with her father present and sort of see these men crying over her and sort of that be what's supposed to be the resolution. And so. - Yeah, it's very effective in sort of driving home how dogmatically committed the churches to not being accountable. I think that is just clear in the interaction that you depict, but we should talk more about the church. I feel like most people don't know about the church. 30,000-ish members, we can't be certain sort of decentralized. 33 in this country, but origins in Northern Europe. The congregants are called boners, which an odd thing to call yourself or people call them that, I'm not sure, but get into sort of the belief system and just quirky practices of this congregation, of this broader church. - You know, I don't know that. I mean, I don't know if quirky is the word I need just 'cause I think a lot of, you know, whenever you look at a religion or an interlude community from the outside, I think things seem strange, but I think if you look at Catholicism or a lot of mainstream religions, there's a lot of things that are also kind of strange about that. - Let me literally drinking blood is strange 'cause I don't buy it. - I, well, you know, I have to behold. But I mean, I mean, I mean, - I met more of the like no pop music, no dancing. The sort of Amish adjacent practices within the church, which yeah, I think people who picture the arrowhead in Northern Minnesota, probably have no idea that there is a big faith community like that up there. - Yeah, it's a, you know, to return to an old way that they would say that they're trying to live like Jesus lived. They, you know, it's the analogy I've used a few times or similarly is it's like it's kind of like the town and foot loose, you know, no dancing, no music, no, like we went to a church service, it's an unadorned, there's no stained glass windows, there's no big cross. It's a lay, it's what they call a lay church or revival church where yeah, it's decentralized, like you say, there is some connection between the congregations. The preachers don't go to seminary. They're volunteers who work mostly in construction, but you know, have other jobs. Yeah, Jessica, what am I forgetting? - Well, I think one of the things that jumped out right away and I want to be clear that, you know, we don't know why this abuse, like I don't think anybody can definitively say why this abuse is so prolific in the church. However, I think one of the things that jumped out to me right away in the reporting was how patriarchal the setup for kind of everything is in this community. So the way women are treated is, you know, that they are sort of first and foremost wives and mothers. They are, and then there's all kinds of rules about the way that they are supposed to appear. So the name "Bunners" comes from the fact that they grow their hair very long and they have to have it up in a bun. This is all according to former members of the church that they wear their hair and a bun kind of all the time. They can't have open-toed shoes. They can't have piercings. They can't dye their hair. They can't, you know, they usually wear longer skirts. So very modest dress sort of muted colors. They don't, you know, you can't nest, if you're, you know, if you live in Duluth, you could probably run into these folks and not necessarily identify them visually right away as members of this community. But if you sort of knew they were around and were sort of paying attention, you might notice like group of girls that all have their hair up in a bun and they're always wearing skirts like it. So they blend in a little. But that to me, you know, and that the women have basically no leadership in the community whatsoever, certainly not in the church. The preachers who hold a lot of sway and who many people told us, you know, when they give you advice, it's seen as coming directly from God. And that advice can be as important as, who should I marry and as minute as what kind of car should I buy? So those kinds of preachers with a great deal of influence on all kinds of decisions that this community is making day to day does not include any women. So that sort of extremely, yeah, like sort of male-centered leadership structure, the sort of like the man is the king of household and his wife is just sort of there to support him, I think is, you know, a powerful undercurrent through all of this. - Yeah, and Clint Massey, the perpetrator in the first story, he is in prison now. And can you give a scope of just how widespread the abuse that he perpetrated was in that community? - I will try, it's been a little while. So I think the earliest, so cumulatively through a police investigation, nine women were identified as either victims or alleged victims, not all of them had their cases charged, but a judge decided that they could all be a part of this criminal case. And when it was headed for trial and it came very close to actually going to trial, like within minutes of opening arguments starting, those women had been identified by law enforcement, a number of them had flown to Duluth to testify. And so I think the very earliest report was an incident in early 90s, and 1990, 1991, an 11 year old girl who recalled Clint Massey as an older teenager, basically forcing her to touch him in the back seat of a car. And this was, somewhere in the Dakota's, during a road trip. That was like the earliest earliest record that we have of a report of him. And then there are some alleged victims in the Dakotas when he lived there for a time. And then he moves to Duluth and then the other victims and alleged victims are in the Duluth community. So it's alleged abuse that spans decades, it spans states. And some of the, I think one of the things that's always been interesting to me about, we requested and got this big fat stack of police records and investigatory materials, which is how we know all of this, even though it didn't go to trial. And I think some of the, most of the women identified did decide to go ahead and cooperate with the criminal investigation, but if you of them didn't. So there are some things that we still don't know about what Clint Massey did because the women were identified, but in this very, for example, it's very telling phone call that we got a copy of the police investigator called a woman who, and says, I've heard sort of through the great fine or through other victims that you may also be a victim of Clint Massey. And she just says, well, yeah, it's forgiven. So I'm not going to talk about it anymore. And he's just sort of like, oh, okay, so you're doing what the church tells you to do. And she says, no, I'm doing what God tells me to do. And so it's sort of like, there are a lot of things that like, we probably will never know about what he did because some of the women did choose to forgive him and not to talk about it anymore. But yeah, the nine is what we know according to the criminal case. - And the victim from your lead, she's a member of the church to this day. - Yeah. - Yeah. Yeah. I thought that, you know, we tried really hard. You know, she's the lead of the story and she's a victim. And we had all these records that go into detail about what she said happened to her. And we got in touch with her. and we were kind of begging her, please, to talk to us, not even necessarily. to convince her to be a part of the story. She's a part of the church still, as you just said. And I can understand that she doesn't wanna further provoke the community that she's still a part of. But we wanted to talk to her so that she at least knew what we were doing. And I think we at least accomplished that 'cause we wanted her to know we're not gonna name you, we're not gonna put anything identifiable about you in the story if we can help it. And if you can engage with us and help us with that process, then that'll help us to keep you as anonymous as you wanna be. And she basically just sent an email back sort of saying, like, look, I'm trying to put all this past me, but I think I'm in the right place in this church. And that actually was the case for a number of the victims. They're still part of this church community. And even though they were aware of, we did our very, very best to alert everyone, even if we don't name them that we were working on the story. A number of them did say, look, this is still my church, this is still my community. I think I'm in the right place. And I don't really wanna be a part of any kind of media. - Yeah, I think what's telling is in terms of what it took or Clint Massey to finally be held accountable into Nelligar have access to young children was for these girls to grow up into women to have families of their own and then to come forward to law enforcement, right? Like, I mean, it shouldn't take someone who's five or six years old when they're abused, who does the right thing and tells the adults in her life that this person is dangerous and harming her, you know, it shouldn't take for that person to become an adult and have to kind of stand up now for the other young girls that they're seeing Clint with every Sunday in church on their lap, which is where a lot of the abuse occurred. That's another thing that we haven't talked about, but like a lot of this use occurred inside the church during church services. So it's not like these girls had the option to not go to church. I mean, they're, this is a huge part of their lives. So they're going every Sunday and Clint's there. And as they go older, they're seeing him with young girls on his lap and getting extremely worried about them. And that's what led to him finally being held accountable. But, you know, that just I think is a reflection of how long this went on. - Yeah, and Clint did not talk with you too, but in a, I believe in a interview with investigators, he had a quote, "There could be hundreds of victims." Was he referring to himself? Was he referring to other members of the church? Himself? Chilling. - Right. Yes, I mean, it's a wild thing to say to a police detective who's interrogating you about your potential victims. I guess I would just say to be cautious, he, the question was something like, how many girls or how many women are going to come forward and tell me a story about you hugging and holding and kissing them and he said it could be hundreds. I think he may be, it's hard to say sometimes what exactly he meant by some of these answers, but there could be hundreds, certainly, as he said. It's a chilling answer to the question. - Yeah, and transition here to kind of talk about Andy's follow up, one of the victims in your story said there are a lot of Clint Massey's out there and she, I'd assume, went within the church and Andy kind of take the baton there, where did you take your reporting? - Yeah, well again, I think of investigative reporting as you're trying to answer a question. And that question that we planted at the end of that story was the question that we had started asking. By the time we finished that first story, so we had heard about victims and some perpetrators while reporting that other story, but I think that I think of investigative reporting as you're trying to answer a question or a series of questions. And we kind of planted that question at the end of the story, which came up a lot through our reporting, which is like, are there others out there? We had heard about some already, but we wanted to set out and just cast as wide of a net as we could and talked to as many people as we possibly could. People who are experts, people who are in the church, people who are out of the church, and other people who have been victims of sexual abuse. And we wanted to understand why and how that happened. So one of the resources we used was social media. There were support groups of former members, which I think that told us something on its face when like a quick Google search, you found people who are survivors of sexual abuse of the church who have found each other online. But I think the Clint Massie case was a watershed moment that because it was someone that was, it was from a well known family in the church, it was kind of an open secret. A lot of people knew about him, but I think a lot of women and girls were surprised that he actually was held accountable and went to prison and that led them to start finding each other. So there was, for example, like a Facebook page where just victims of Massie were a Facebook group where there were just exchanged updates on the case. And that sort of just turned into a place for any victims of sexual abuse in the oil sea to just start sharing their stories and letting each other know that they're not alone. And I think for a lot of people, I mean, I know for a lot of people, that was really the first time they realized what they were going through, was happening to other people as well. So we started just sort of talking to as many people as we could through those groups and it's the kind of thing where everyone you talk to says you should talk to this person, you should talk to this person. And again, a lot of times it was like, you should talk to my mom, you should talk to my sister, you should talk to my daughter. A lot of it was other families. So a lot of the reporting was just having conversations with people about what happened to them, trying to better understand it. You know, a lot of people we talked to, I think it was therapeutic probably to tell their story to somebody. But it was also, it was really hard, right? It's hard to rip off that scab and start talking about this thing that you buried that deep down. So it was difficult reporting. It's difficult to ask people, I think to talk about the worst thing that ever happened to them when you just met them. But a lot of these victims were, I thought extremely courageous and felt like they had an opportunity to put some sunlight on something that they never thought would get sunlight. And that's how it was described to us by so many people. They just thought that this was an attractable wall. Part of life and others would go through the same things. They went through or they would just have to live with that and be silent about it forever. Again, we found any cases we could that had a criminal element, like someone was actually charged with the crime, someone went to police, and anything where there were, where there were some kind of like corroborating documents because what's difficult about a story like this is, so much of this was not reported and so much of it happened years or decades ago, where a lot of it's like he said, she said and with investigative reporting, you try to get beyond that. Especially with people are gonna be anonymous. A lot of people were at the end of the day willing to put their names to their stories, which again, I think is really brave. They know that everyone from the church and everyone else in their lives is gonna know what happened to them. So I think that that takes a lot of guts, but people willing to put their names to the stories, willing to work with us and help us understand what happened and corroborate whatever information we could, that's what allowed us to tell the story. - Definitely brave and I think to butter both of your bread a little bit reflective of the care and trust you established to, which is no easy thing, but we should talk about accountability within the church more broadly. One quote really jumped out to me, let me find it. It is from a preacher from the Duluth congregation. At one point he was asked about why Clint Massey is still interacting and touching kids during church services and the preacher responded, "I don't know, like we've told him that he's not supposed to, but he still does it." Which wow, that's another one of those spit coffee and/or shake computer moments of your reporting. And now that you've done a two part kind of expose on how this behavior was allowed to just be foster and be covered up within the church, what is the reaction from the church ben like? I know that there's sort of a big meeting of church dignitaries happening this summer where presumably they'll talk about Republicans reporting, but what have you heard from how these reports have impacted that institution? I don't think we know yet. I mean, I think one thing, like a few things. have happened a couple of the, I believe three of the alleged victims have now sued the church and that's ongoing. So possibly accountability there. I think that there are, Andy and I were able to identify a couple of big criminal cases against other perpetrators and other parts of the country that are sort of coming down the pike. I think there's going to possibly be some accountability there. But yeah, Andy, talk about this. What might be happening this summer and what we don't quite know is whether it will have any impact or not. And also peace touch on, also peace touch on the general tenor that the church has hit when reacting to any of this. From my reader perspective, it feels like they've been very resistant to any kind of self accountability. Yeah, I think that's true. I mean, we've heard from people who we're talking to in the church that the response to the Massey story and this story from a lot of people is, you know, this is the devil's work. This is, you know, it's a distraction and don't pay attention to it. It's all lies. Let me track it. The devil being who? I guess Jessica and I or our evil workers and isn't surprising. The church, you know, what we haven't talked about is the church is very insular. They would call us world ease where we live in the world. They don't live in the world. They alone are going to have an, so there's this very sort of insider perspective that positions everybody else says antagonists, I guess. One Michael, a cookie. So, you know, that's not that surprising, but I do think that there are people in the church, you know, who still believe in the church, who's it's still very important part of their lives, who have had to confront that there's a problem here. And that and I think it's going to be harder for people, you know, the church elders who are going to be meeting with congregants this summer to say that they are, you know, doing the devil's work. Because again, they're true believers. They're members of the church that they're people on the inside. They're part of that special group. What's happening this summer is every few years elders come over from Sweden where the church started and they travel to all these different churches and they talk about, you know, they I think they probably do a service, but there's also an opportunity to talk about church business and the doctrine. They, you know, they've been described to us as when they come here, it's a big deal. It's like, like someone described it as it's like the closest thing we have to rock stars, where it's like they come, people listen. They don't have any official authority over the church. They're completely separate, but they have a lot of sway. So, I think a lot of people are saying, you know, our reporting, they're there are more criminal cases, including Clint Massey's brother. Chuck Massey out in Wyoming is facing allegations of sexually abusing many young girls hundreds of times in church. There are some other criminal cases that originally come to light. And so, I think people see this as an opportunity for the church elders to address it in a way. You know, to address it in a way of like, you know, we need to update our guidelines for how we respond to allegations of sexual abuse. Not necessarily saying we need to confront that there's a cultural problem here that that, you know, sexually abuse is overrepresented in our community. But just an opportunity to say, let's not do these, let's not do what they did with Clint Massey with these forgiveness sessions. You know, let's get authorities involved. You know, that kind of thing, which could, I think a lot of people hope, really change things going forward and change that culture. So, you know, I don't know that anyone can predict how that's all going to go. But I do think that we are in a moment right now that things could change. And a huge testament to your work and will there be a part three? Yes. Well, we're, yeah, we are working on a, you know, it's, yeah, we're working on another story right now. Me and Jeremy Kohler, my colleague, that I hope will be out in July. But it's an investigative reporter. I should never put a date on it because things always take longer. Then you get a bloat deadline. But anyway, you know, we've done a lot of reporting and a lot of what we think are important. We have a lot of important findings that haven't made it in 10, these, these stories yet. So there's a couple of stories that we're looking at that I think get into some of the nuance and some of the gray area of, you know, we touched a little bit on in this story that there's kind of the cycle of abuse, right? Where people are abused as kids and then they become abusers. And it's like, you know, they're victims, but they're also perpetrators. So things like, some of these gray areas, I think we're going to dive into a little bit more of, you know, what makes the cycle so hard to break. All right, there cannot be an eloquent way to transition. I'm just going to make it broad and clumsy and say we're done talking about that. Thank you both for your reporting. We're going to talk about fun shit now. We're going to talk about where you guys used to work before the prestigious ivory tower of pro-publica. Is that an academic term? Anyway, pro-publica is a steam whatever you used to work at city pages less esteemed, but of course city pages is kind of in the eye of the beholder. Someone who worked there in the 80s and somebody who read it in the 1980s views it entirely different than 90s 2000s whatever. I want both of you to describe the era of CP in which you worked. That is a big question. We were certain class of city pages that I would say started around 2010-ish. When did you come in? I'm old enough now that I have to like pull up my own resume to even know anymore, but I think 2010-ish is right. I, here's also, and Jessica, maybe you have a similar experience, but I, because you grew up in Saipal, but I grew up in the suburbs and I like city pages was this sort of like mythical publication to me where like I worked in a pizza place and someone would go to Minneapolis for a concert or something and they'd like bring back a city pages and we'd all pass it around. So that's how I learned about like a lot of the, you know, at this time we're talking kind of early mid 2000s, early 2000s I guess, you know, like atmosphere and a lot of that rhyme series, hip-hop was getting popular and I feel like that's where I learned about a lot of those people. That's where I ended up learning about like brother Ali and all those guys, but there's also this really good. Everyone from the music scene, me too, Reckonine of 10 years in the future from that. No comment on that. I'm just saying it was like culturally at that time where if you were watching MTV, it was like puff daddy was maybe like the a lot of the rap that you had exposure to. Do you want to do you want to comment on puff daddy's legal trajectory? He isn't bent and I started trouble, he's I just saying like it was like exposed me to this whole new world of music, but also there was this this great investigative journalism being done that was, you know, more like magazine style journalism. It was it was more the type of thing that I was interested in and you know, so so I kind of I guess I was trying to say is like I always wanted to work there and I really looked up to a lot of writers there as being like just so talented and doing the kind of thing I wanted to do. I think I helped like shape what I wanted to do. I started there as an intern in college and I was like the web I was like the first web it in turn I think. There are a lot of video stories for the for the internet and and it was awesome. It was it was great. It was kind of a turbulence time there which of course I was too young to totally understand, but it had been bought by Village Voice Media which was you know really new times media and a lot of the a lot of the kind of long time veteran writers were leaving. They got new editor. It was just like a huge shake up and that really sucked but it also kind of paid room for like entry-level people like Jessica and I who you just get had a job or two before, but that was like by far I mean I went there straight straight from college I worked with Minnesota, Dalia, Dunn, Internships, whatever but but you know they were willing to hire a 21-22 year old kid and and I that I really value that you know getting the opportunity when I when I was that young so but it was sort of entering a different a different phase. Jessica will kick to you in one moment here but for my time outside of perspective and maybe in my just looking back perspective kind kind of an interesting pivot point where you mentioned the old kind of on the way out and the web being a new priority. The new ownership group, voice media group, really put in emphasis and as did a lot of outlets at the time on sort of click farming and just harvesting as many clicks as possible which led to outrageous blog quotas and content requirements that no honest blogger could possibly meet. But at the same time, it was still, as you mentioned, one of the only shops in town where you're getting magazine style of deeply reported long form journalism. So the two kind of coexisted during that era in a seemingly incompatible way, but it worked just to get how correct or did it, who can say, just get how correct or incorrect am I in my sort of wide angle view of that? - No, I think that's right. I think in somebody, I'm an elder millennial and I think like in somebody ways, we're such a cuspere generation and we were also like a cuspere generation in the newsroom. Like we were still getting the chance to do these kinds of like, if we wanted to, these sort of first person, Gonzo magazine style cover packages, but then we're also like going back to the newsroom and being told to make a list of the top 15 french fries in the Twin Cities and like-- - Which honestly would read. (laughing) - Well, that's a thing is like they could get crazy clicks and like that's all that anybody cared about at the same, you know, it was like you were trying to serve two masters at the same time. You're trying to feed the beast of the blog and get as many page reels as possible and that was sort of your excuse to like sneak off and then like do the real work, the actual journalism that you kind of were in the house to do and I think like yes, I mean it was a very, it was a very broy time in the newsroom. It was a very, you know, a pre-me too era newsroom but like at the same time, like it was all I wanted to do early and my career was work for all Sparrant of Newsweekly's. That is all I wanted. I wound up working for a string of them. City pages was the one that I would sneak really kicked off my career and it was this entry level job where you could still be trusted to write a 5,000, 6,000 word story and get it on the cover of this thing that was on the news stands on every street corner for a week and you could hold it in your hand. I have in my other room a jacket, to be clear I didn't miss a gigantic blown up poster of one of my covers and I really, it's so sun bleached and old, it was like an old promotional thing that I got a hold of through some of our former city page friends but it's such a treasured possession of mine because like that, we used to have these beautiful design covers and you got your name on there and it was just like, it was very cool for like a dirt bag, 20, whatever year old to get that experience. And so I, you know, not to sound old as hell but it's like, it's a shame that we talk to journalism classes now and they have no idea what an alternative news weekly is. Even though they still exist, some of them in print form but they're increasing name. This is a positive trend in my mind. Increasingly, the people who still value that kind of journalism are becoming worker-owned collectives like racquet and it's very heartening to see that tradition live on in these online worker-owned publications. - And shout out to your colleague, Nick Pinto, an owner of Hellgate out in New York where Jessica is currently based. - Yeah, yeah. - He was part of our class of 2010-ish or whatever. It was like, I mean, I think even though like the advertising and the business model and the whatever, it didn't, it was quickly not working anymore. The fact that we're all still working in this industry does, I think, on a very, very, very micro scale prove something. And I would also like to credit just the greater twin city's community for being willing to support, you know, independent papers like city pages used to be at what racquet is now. I think that like, there's a reason why this tradition is sort of still alive and kicking in the twin cities. And I'm very proud to have been a small part of it. - Jessica, even like talk more to the alt weekly, I don't know, sort of germ spreading throughout the more traditional news landscape. I mean, all the gocker people or many of them have gone on to great things and start new things. And just, it's hard to snuff out that sort of more swashbuckling less buttoned up type of journalism, which I think there's clearly a demand for even if the market forces don't want it to live. - Oh, for sure. And also, I would say there are fair number of ex alt weekly people knocking around at ProPublica. Like, I think that that is a, and like, I keep meaning to like have some kind of a meetup just for former alt weekly people who work at ProPublica because we do, I think there is something inherently, sort of like, I don't know, like, in order to want to be an investigative journalist, I think you have to kind of like, have a little bit of a problem with authority. And of course, that is what winds you up at an independent place, like, CityPages at an alt weekly. Like, you do want to like, on some level, like, stick it to the man. And like, I think that there are still, like, unfortunately, the numbers, the number of slots are dwindling, but like, that is still a, you know, a culture that is alive and kicking in journalism at a place like ProPublica. And I think it still has like an alt weekly spirit to it at its heart. - Jessica, I'm picturing your hypothetical alt weekly meeting within ProPublica, and I'm picturing a bow tied ex-New York Times ProPublica worker turning up with like a cake ready to come to the get-together, and you guys can take a hike, bozo. (laughing) - I mean, I don't know what it would look like actually. I mean, we're all over the country, so I actually would just like, no idea how that would work, but it would be fun. I just, yeah, I just-- - That would be cake though. - Yeah, well, of course, there would be cake. I was actually picturing what kinds of six facts we'd all show up with, but whatever. Yeah, I think-- - No, only cake. (laughing) - I think that, yeah, I try to keep from like always like, lamenting the good old days, 'cause there sure were a lot of problems back then, and there are just other ways to get to do this work now. You just have to hustle a little harder. - Yeah, well, tread carefully, and I'm gonna cut you off one more time. I tread carefully here, but I feel like you guys, and my city pages experience was different than yours in this regard. You guys kind of had the last gasp of sort of an alcohol fueled shouting newsroom, which those aren't really around anymore. - I can't get it, man. - But yeah, tread carefully, but to talk as much or as little as you'd like about that. - Oh man, I remember without getting into any names, someone carrying a baseball batterer. (laughing) Not one of friendly, but it was also like, what's he doing on that baseball? He was like kind of an argument with someone, and for some reason he just was like, "I'm gonna carry on this baseball." I remember one time being at a meeting at the Resabar in the basement that we would have our meetings at, and just kind of having to kind of step in and mediate between two people, screaming at each other, and one of them calling the other when I covered or something like that. And there was sometimes that got pretty dramatic. But there was also, I don't know, I think that there was also because of the demands on us, a lot of us were just sort of, I don't know, beaten down or just in a state of perpetual insanity or something like that of just like, I mean, you touched on this earlier, but this was like very much in the time of like early internet, like Gawker Buzzfeed came a little bit after, I know, maybe it started when I was in city pages, but you know, a lot of those, often in post, whatever, things that were just like, we're just gonna, one hit is good as another. It could be a hate click, it could be someone who's gonna come back to us tomorrow. We're just gonna write stuff that as much stuff as possible and hope something kinda, you know, we can find lightning in a bottle, whatever that looks like. And that I think really ran up, which by the way was like a terrible business bottle and obviously didn't work because all those places I just described don't exist anymore. And I think we all saw that at the time, but that was very like coming from down on high, the orders. And the two things you described early on, were always at odds with each other where it was like, Jessica and I wanted to work at city pages and Nick and a lot of other people because we love, you know, reading those stories and we wanted to write those stories. Those stories that were maybe investigative, maybe not, but they have like a story arc to them. There's a narrative element. You know, we wanted to be writers and that blog post stuff that ended up becoming more and more and more of what we, like I think we used to see it as, if we have to do this, we have to write some stupid blog posts today so we can do the thing that we're here to do. But increasingly the thing we're here to do, if you were to ask, you know, the people who are a boss's was increasingly like the online stuff. And the bar was basically on the floor of quality of what you needed to surpass. Like you could write something that was good, something that had a lot of reporting and we were always trying to, you know, be reporting 10 stories so you could have a few of those a week, but just to meet the quota, You know, some of that stuff was very much just kind of ripping off like what TV or the start to be in or whoever did and trying to put a little spin on it. So it was, I don't know, yeah, there was this huge moment of turmoil. I think in the time that we were there and some of that resulted in a fair amount of screaming or just people like really hating each other and just having these grudges that you could, they were just like palpable. Being in meetings where someone would be getting chewed out and it would just be sort of like everyone just, silent and on, you know, on pins and needles just waiting for, like white knuckling through waiting for it to be over. It was kind of a weird time and journalism that absolutely cannot exist right now. I don't think this younger generation would stand for. You know, we wanted, it was, you know, this was just right is like that first newspaper apocalypse was happening. So the fact that we were able to get jobs and jobs that we wanted, I think we were willing to put up with quite a lot, including pretty low, pretty low compensation and pretty insane hours. I don't think I ever stopped working in that time. Like every weekend, you know, whenever it was just like non-stop. I've shared on the pod before, but a holdover from your era that I encountered during my era was at one point a boss, a while yelling at me longed for the days where you could have punched me in the face and you told me that. It's like, okay, well, you can't do it anymore. Sorry. Yeah. And you're supposed to be like, yeah, God, it sucks that those days are gone. There was this sort of weird thing and it's kind of been all weekly thing, but I think it also was the culture of new times, which again became Village Voice Media, which owned all of these papers at the time, was this kind of old cowboy, like, feed up on the table thing of like, we should be able to fist fight and whatever. I don't know. There was kind of a weird culture that came from that company that didn't really translate to a place like Minneapolis, but it was always kind of an odds with the Minneapolis, you know, the people who lived here, who read the paper and who worked there, there was like this other thing that was always pressing up against that that I think is what you're talking about as part of that. I would like each of you to share a story you reported that in your mind is quintessentially city pages during your time there. Okay, Andy, you go first because I have a story that I feel like might create some nice symmetry in what we've been talking about for the last time. Like a story I did or a story someone else did. No, you. I, you know, the other thing about talking about stories you did at the beginning of your career, we're also heavily edited are like, there's just a million things you would have done differently. Sure. So I'm trying to think when I did I don't in retrospect hate. You know, there was a story that I did. Okay, here's a good one. It was one of my first stories I ever did for city pages. It was in my first year there as a staff writer, which was probably 2010, I would say. And it was about this guy who ran this pay for essay company and he, like he lived in, or he had a little office in like a strip ball and Apple Valley. And he, you know, you, if you don't want to write your paper for your college class, you know, he advertise it like anything you want. It could be for your PhD. It could be for medical school, but it could also be like freshman comp. Or write a story. Just get my mind went right there. Man, what a, what a, what a great time. What a quaint time where you had to pay this guy and he would have someone write your essay and it would be guaranteed a or whatever. And it was called like pay for essay.com or something. And this kid was like 24 years old. He was Jordan Kavousi and he, he didn't, he, everything about this was kind of a scam. Like he didn't pay the writers. The papers were sometimes unintelligiblely, almost like he literate and people would get really bad grades. And he sort of dealt with this through being like me and my friends are going to get the caddy out and drive to your house at 2 a.m. And I don't know what, you know, what, what, like threatening people, you know, with the people who, who had criticized him online. And so I did this story about him. I kind of saw all these criticisms online and was like, what's the deal with this? And I interviewed a bunch of these, these writers and I just decided to go to his office without calling him in advance and just show up and see if he would talk to me. And he was like, oh, yeah, I'd love to talk to you. Like it was almost like, of course, you're here to talk to me. I'm very important and I'm going to put, you know, feed up on the desk and tell you about how, how glorious this, this business is of mine. And at one point, I remember he tried to bribe me like he was like, if you, if we get some referrals from the story, you know, I'll give you like 15%. And so I put that in the story. And it's just, it was just like kind of a portrait of this guy and this business, you know, kind of the scar face of, of a mountain of, of essay papers and the suburbs. At one point, I remember we sent a photographer out to take a photo and he showed up like shirtless wearing this army man mask. Oh, cool shit. And he's like, oh, I'm in this sit on my truck, which was like, by the way, like a Toyota camera. Or it was like, I don't know. He was like, I was in my truck. I want him. And he sat on it and there's windshield just crap all the way. And so there was these amazing pictures of him and his friends like running around Apple Valley shirtless with his like, I don't know. It was just, it was just kind of one of those stories where you're like, you know, I could probably write a story today that would be like five times as long about this guy. But because you would read it because it's like, you just can't kind of take your eyes off of him. But there's really no place for that in, in maybe like the modern media landscape. You know, the start to be able to have no idea what to do with this. It was just kind of a quintessential alt-weekly story that was, that was, I hope, you know, fun to read. But also it was an investigative story. You know, it had some accountability elements. But it was a story that only really worked as sort of a narrative where you just let him kind of paint himself, right? You didn't need to, you know, he'd like you'd ask him questions and he would just say, he'd just give you this money quote that was so beautiful that all you had to do. For example, he, I'm going to stop talking after this. He had a tattoo and it was like a, it was like a cover-up of a tattoo. And I asked him what it was. It was like a block or something. And he goes, you know, just off the, just now his attention, he goes, you know, I worked, I was, I had this tattoo and I thought it meant whatever, you know, wise or something. It was like a Chinese character tattoo. And I was working at Derrick Wayne and at the drive-through and I was handing my, you know, the blizzard to somebody and they spoke Chinese and they were like, do you know that you have a tattoo that says deceptive in Chinese characters? No. And it was the kind of thing where, you know, he didn't see anything wrong with telling me that story. So it was just sort of like one of those that all you really had to do was just get out of the way and let the story tell itself. And I always loved writing those kind of stories. And but I always loved reading those kinds of stories. And I think that it's harder to find that kind of thing these days. Andy, a wonderful example. And I think you're entirely right that the start-to-bewn would just, I don't know, make it so incredibly stuffy and unfund to read. But the character study you had sure is one dumb asshole. But he speaks to the just vulgar dumb spirit of American grift, which is sort of the bedrock of all of our culture now and deeply into the past as well. A great example. I remember that one vividly. So I was just, Jordan Kaboose is still very Googleable and he, Andy, just so you know, you published that story June 2010, so 16 years ago. Almost exactly. Yeah, I just Google him too and I immediately saw this one of these photos of him and his buddy shirtless in front of his truck. I mean, that's the kind of yarn that like it's hard to imagine where that story fits in like kind of the modern, aside from a place like Racket, or aside from a place like City Pages used to be like, there's just not as many irreverent magazine style publications as these used to be. Obviously, they still exist. You know, and and it's a shame, you know, like there used to be like such a high quality version of that in places like City Pages, but also just like, you know, when we had a more robust magazine world, you know, Rolling Stone magazine, like like you would get really good stories like that that I don't know if there's not an audience for anymore or whatever, but I think it's, they're just really a few and far between compared to what it was like when we started writing. And with the one that Andy just talked about, speaking for myself here, one of the finer things a writer and artist whatever musician can do is very much in the Dave Letterman Conan O'Brien tradition of taking a really goofy thing and then executing it at a really high level, which I think very much speaks to Guy Fallen. There's been she-old we're trying to scam students here, but Jessica, we need to talk about your pick. Yeah, I'll tell a quick story that I think brings us full circle and maybe you guys can help psychoanalyze me or something, you can tell me what it all means. So I was just going to say that one of a memorable story I did at City Pages was that there had been this very strange story in one of the daylies either the starchabiner or the pioneer press about a handful of police officers getting reprimanded for illegally accessing the driving record of someone, hundreds and hundreds of times, and the story was strange because it was reported on the discipline, it reported on what they had done wrong, but it because you know it was kind of one of the first times in history where police at just like the click of a button can access all kinds of information about everybody, all of our driving, but you had to have a law enforcement reason for accessing someone's driving record and looking at their driver's license picture. And for some reason some officers, multiple officers had been caught and reprimanded for accessing one person's driving record, hundreds of times. And I remember reading that story and being like that is such a strange story, I don't understand what this is even about, there's not enough information here. And I wound up getting a tip and eventually talking to who that person was and that person was a fellow officer, a female officer who was hopefully this is not politically incorrect, but she was very attractive, she was very hot. And the just do you call her the PC term is a dime piece or a 10. I think the shorthand we used at the time was hot cup, she was a hot cup and the story wound up being about it was a different time. I don't know, I don't think we called the actual story that, but it was the shorthand just to be clear. But it just wound up being a story about like why are all these fellow officers looking up this woman's driver's license and the best theory anybody could come up with was that she was really hot, they just wanted to look at her picture and that's illegal, you can't just look up someone's driving record because they're hot. And I mean to be a little serious about it at the time, it really freaked her out. She was very scared of the fact that so many of her fellow officers, so many people that she didn't even know were accessing her record, some of them over and over and over and over again, which is creepy and she felt really, she seemed terrified to me when I talked to her. I wrote that story up and this is the part where again you guys tell me what you think this all means and how it all comes full circle. At the time, part of the the shitty part of our business was that they're what we're talking about was like listicles and blog quotas, there was like a lot of aggregation going on. Like you could fulfill your blog quota by just kind of like scanning the rest of the news and being like I don't know, someone over there did a story that's sort of related to Minnesota and I could just grab that and throw it together with a bunch of hyperlinks and that was my blog for the day. #yola at the end of it. And somebody in in the big city in the sort of like the gocker or gocker adjacent family of blogs saw that story that I wrote for city pages, reblogged it and because I'm a good Minnesota girl and I'm very polite, I wrote that person an email thanking them for helping further spread the word about our story and driving a bunch of clicks to city pages. And we struck up one of these sort of online only, like you know just snarky DMs every now and then. That is someone who you know we I had a lot of sort of online only like snarky DM friends in that era of like Twitter. And and then a lot of time has passed. It's been like 15 plus years and out of the blue I got an email from that same person, the same person who had reblogged this quote unquote hot cop story. And they were like hey I want to be care care I don't know J if I should be saying this I think it's okay. You probably should you should yeah. They were like hey my brother is a prosecutor in Duluth now my younger brother recently recently became a prosecutor in Duluth and he told me something about this crazy case with this church and this perpetrator name Clint Massey. And I just thought of you you're the only investigative report I can think of in Minnesota right now. Do you have any interest? And that was what became the story that Andy and I worked on together. So none of the things that we're here talking about today would have been possible had we not worked at city pages in the first place. You tell me what that all means I'm not smart enough to connect all the dots. I think it means I think that's a great reporter story because it's like I think it means that you that you never know where stories are going to come from. And you know there are people who I think it's really easy as a reporter to be like what have you done for me lately. And like you know and and not really think of the long game. I think a lot of reporters think of it like that. But I think that's a really great example of like maybe this person isn't going to be a good source for you today but it behooves you to have a good relationship with them to reach out to them and and and have a lot of communication because maybe it's 10 15 or 20 or 30 years from now they're going to give you something that turns into a great story. We just never know where where these leads that we pull on that end up becoming these long threads are going to start. What a debt we owed of the hot cop my god. Jessica you're a podcasting professional and that anecdote holy shit put a bow on our entire conversation in a way as a as a hack host I could never possibly approach. So we'll leave it right there. Both of you thank you so much for coming on the pod and yeah we'll have ways to connect with all your work in the episode description and we appreciate having you on. Thank you so much. Thanks Jake. Love Rocket. Oh we're keeping that last part.