How this journalist fell in love with journalism and why he has hope for America

||| FROM HEDRICK SMITH for RECLAIM THE AMERICAN DREAM.ORG |||

Even after five decades with the New York Times and making documentaries for PBS, taking on a new media like YouTube is no joke. So I looked for a mentor and found David Hoffman, a personable Pied Piper and savvy filmmaker from Santa Cruz, California who has built an astounding audience of 300,000 subscribers on YouTube, mostly young people under 35.

Pretty soon Hoffman had me talking about how I fell in love with journalism as a high schooler when I was reading about the muckrakers exposing Tammany Hall and corruption in city governments and taking on J.P. Morgan and Standard Oil in the trust-busting era of Teddy Roosevelt.

Fast forward to the 1960s, and David had me talking about covering Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, and the civil rights movement.

Then David took me into the Vietnam War and doing the Pentagon Papers stories for the New York Times with Neil Sheehan, and he asked me whether I was ever scared as a reporter.

And now, David sends me an email saying he’s compiled a short film of our conversation, which is premiering today, Saturday. “I hope you like the interview and I hope you share it with all of your friends and family and colleagues,” he said. “This is a video worth sharing. Thank you once again, Hedrick.”