Look for the Helpers

Grace: 00:00:00

Hi, it's Grace, and this is Frogmore Stew. Today, I am interviewing a really fascinating It's a fascinating lady named Jade Walker. Jade has been writing for a long time. She started at some small papers in Florida, Mississippi and California, and then has gone on to be the overnight editor for the New York Times, the Associated Press, Yahoo News, Night Owl News and HuffPost.

Grace: 00:00:42

She currently is the editor and curator of the local news at Apple News, the Magnet Global. Jade, welcome to Frogmore students. Thank you for having me. So outside of all of your big jobs, you have a side project that is a weekly sub stack called a bit of good news. And I imagine being the overnight editor and curator at Apple news, you're often the first one to hear what is happening around the world while the rest of us are all sleeping, and I can't imagine how heavy that weighs on your heart.

Jade Walker: 00:01:22

It does. I often refer to the overnight shift as the death and destruction time. Because there is so much natural disasters and wars and shootings. And my job is to make sure that when people wake up in the morning, that news is ready for them to read. So if they start the day, know what's going on. But it can be a bit wearing on the soul. And so I started a bit of good news. Not only for myself, but also to share to the world that it's not all going to hell. There is some things that are happening. You just have to look for them.

Grace: 00:02:00

And how do you choose the stories you cover? Cause there, there's not just one bit of good news every day, right? There are multiple pieces of information that come over it that are good.

Jade Walker: 00:02:11

It is hard because I could do it as a daily newspaper if I had the ability to do it full time. Yeah. Unfortunately, it's not to that level yet in the subscriber world. Maybe someday. Yes. But at the moment, it's just the stories that most interest me. Stories that have been suggested to me by subscribers that they love. Stories that you may not have seen in your local paper. But have a more general feeling of positivity and kindness and joy.

Grace: 00:02:41

And it seems that part of the ethos now in product sales or even in politics is fear versus hope. And fear typically sells more products. It sells more politicians, but there's a great quote by Maya Angelou that says hope and fear cannot occupy the same space at the same time, invite one to stay. And I feel like the substack reading this once a week is inviting that hope to be in there and take over the fear.

Jade Walker: 00:03:12

The algorithms of social media are actually designed to get you riled up. A brand-new letter is designed to make you go, oh. This is quite lovely. And my hope is always that people will forward it to others and share the happiness.

Grace: 00:03:26

As a fairly new podcaster, I get a lot of PR groups that send me the people that they represent who want to be on the various media platforms. And the one thing that always stands out to me is they always come with an agenda. And a lot of the things that are coming through all have a fear-based agenda. title across them about what their person will be able to speak about. And I feel like that's where News in general is off kilter is that everyone has to come in with this is my agenda before I even go on the news story and I feel like your bit of good news is much more than that. It's a totally different take on what we absorb in a day.

Jade Walker: 00:04:12

I do my best not to choose any partisan side, religious side. As a journalist. I don't care about any of that. I am anti stupid. When people are wronging you, that's my job to show. And I have the same way with positive views. There may be something going on as an overarching theme, but it doesn't necessarily have to be fear, but it could just be, here's what's happening. A good example of that is we have this big storm that just came in affecting states and millions of people, whether it be power or damage. And my instant take is. This is a terrible situation and the news is going to cover it. My side would be, how can we help push this issue to looking at the people level to make the future better.

Jade Walker: 00:04:53

And for all of us, good news is trying to take care of the souls of readers who have to live in the world. They have the world events going on and then they have their own life going on. Here's a moment to take five minutes out of your week and say, okay, there is something good happening. Here's how I can help. And I love that dilution of being able to share. options for being helpful and kind and good and positive.

Grace: 00:05:16

So as I was reading through a lot of your pieces, there was one that you wrote called history is information, memory is part of our identity. And that particular piece spoke to me so much because I feel like the only way you can understand history is through the social aspects of the time.

Grace: 00:05:35

How do you connect to them there in that time with you in the present? Personalizing It really makes you able to envision what their day was like, what they ate, how they did their laundry. That gives you a better sense of how they interpreted the world and their community around them. That piece was about Krista McCullough, who was the astronaut in 1986, who was on the space shuttle that exploded. The words spoke to me so much about your memory being part of your identity versus what information you absorb. It's like the head and the heart. Absolutely.

Jade Walker: 00:06:12

Journalism is history of the now. Yeah. So we're often very focused on here's what's happening. Here are the facts. Here are the stories of the now. But when you take a step back, maybe a week, a month, year or decades, whatever, you start to realize that it's not just facts and figures. These are people's lives. And with that particular piece, there was an entire generation affected by her journey. I have a newsletter called good news. Why am I writing about a person who died?

Jade Walker: 00:06:40

Good. Decades ago, and it was because her legacy was so positive, her adventure was so positive. That moment in time was terrible. But even that moment, scientists have used that to learn things to make the world better for space travel. I was able to incorporate a local event, which was the erection of a statue at a museum. Feeling of, here's what we've learned, here's her effect on our world, and even to the point of students that she taught, went on to become teachers themselves, but her memory shined through, her ideas continue to this day, and they continue to teach. the public and I wanted to share that feeling.

Grace: 00:07:21

The reason I think that it stuck out to me is because I'm Gen X. I was in like the fifth grade. They rolled the television in. Every kid in the country watched it. And I don't know that there's ever been an event like that since then. Where every kid in the country was watching the same thing. It's a shared history. When you talk to other people that experienced that, it's a way for people to be raw with each other about their emotions around that, and then also focus on the good. And I think that's something we miss out a lot on too, is sharing raw emotions.

Jade Walker: 00:07:54

It's always a balance for me though, because I have to accept that there is going to be some negative things in the world that inspire goodness. Do I also highlight that yeah example that I'm constantly waging with myself is let's say there is a school and there's a lot of kids who are unable to eat lunch because they have a crude school desk.

Jade Walker: 00:08:15

One of their classmates holds a fundraiser to wipe out their school debt so that everybody can have lunch. Do I want to support this kid in his efforts? Absolutely. But I also have to recognize the overarching problem. Why he had to do it in the first place. There's that balance where you don't want to depress people about what's really happening, so you want to inform them. But then you also want to praise people who said, I see this problem. I want to fix it.

Grace: 00:08:39

Getting something that is an inspirational story in your inbox, I think, is a really good way to keep ourselves aware of the good things that happen because every morning there are so many things. I would correlate that to someone that works in the Department of Social Services, dealing with the constant, every day, just seeing like the sadness. And do you do anything outside of writing the good newsletter to keep your brain working? So it's not down the rabbit hole of despair. Absolutely. I work from

Jade Walker: 00:09:12

home, which is great because when you're working an overnight shift, you don't necessarily want to go and commute to an empty building. So I stay home, but my office doesn't have doors. So I can't, at the end of the day, shut my doors and leave this room. What I do is I turn off my computer. I don't hold my phone and I will pet my cat or I will read my book. I will bake something for my husband or I will go into the garden. I make a congenial effort. To give myself a sense of peace and a way to catch my breath, or it will become really wearing on my soul.

Jade Walker: 00:09:47

That said, even when I'm working overnight, I work on putting out stories in 21 cities. So, I have one major story to feature, and of those, I try to choose at least half of them not to be death and destruction. Like it might be something like a new library is opening, or this dog has been found from 800 miles away and is now back with its owners. There is good news. On the local level, and if you have access to that, it will make you look at your community in a new way, and maybe even inspire you to get involved. So

Grace: 00:10:21

one of the things that I think about the news, too, is we need to be reminded that what's happening on Dateline episodes isn't a regular occurrence. All the time, and I feel like your substack reminds us that there's a lot of other good things going on, but because we react to fear so much deeper than we typically react to good things, there's more of that out there. There's a great quote by Mr. Rogers, who said. When I was a boy, I would see scary things in the news and my mother would say to me, look for the helpers. You'll always find people who are helping. And I feel like you've really taken that to heart. Like you are the person that finds the helpers. So it's bravo to you for finding those stories and bringing a bit of light. I have one last thing to ask you. I read that you have five cats.

Jade Walker: 00:11:10

I only have five cats. Four of them actually came to me as a litter. A friend of mine is a veterinarian. Um, I had a friend who called me on my birthday and said, I have four kittens that were brought in and would you like one? And I said, I want all of them. So I took all four and just kept them. And then two years later, in the pandemic, I She came across someone who was an addict and would have this cat and had stopped caring for it, would lock it in a room for a week, wasn't feeding it.

Jade Walker: 00:11:37

So she took it and, Can you take another one? I'm like, yes, send it my way. And my husband, who loves me dearly and is a cat person, just thinks there should be a limit and right now his limit is five. I'm still working on him. We might get another one or two in the future, if I have anything to say about it. I just want to help. I want to give them nice homes and fatten them up.

Grace: 00:11:57

I'm so happy to have you on Frogmore Stew. I really appreciate you coming on. Oh, thank you for inviting me. It's been a pleasure to talk to you. Today. I have a really dear friend of mine who is doing something amazing. She's always been an amazing woman and always been very community minded, but this is something that even is bigger than herself. Hi, Diane Crowley. Welcome to Frogmore Stew. Thank you, Grace. How are you today? I'm so excited to get to talk to you.

Grace: 00:12:29

Diane is a South Carolina staple in that she was the founder of Wild Wing and she had Wild Wings all over the state. And I'm sure if you have lived in the state for a very long time, you remember your favorite band playing at one of her many Wild Wings. You single handedly managed to make a whole slew of bands become state famous because they played what everyone called, what was it? The chicken wing?

Dianne: 00:13:00

The chicken wing circuit.

Grace: 00:13:01

The chicken wing circuit.

Dianne: 00:13:03

Yes. I think that was named by Edwin McCain, I believe.

Grace: 00:13:08

He was one of the first that became huge after playing a bunch of wild wings.

Dianne: 00:13:12

He was a little kid and just killing us at a competitor. And then one day the competitor was just mean to him and he came to us and that was the beginning of a wonderful friendship, which we still have with him.

Grace: 00:13:26

That sort of leads us into what we're going to talk about today, which is you have a very deep connection to Western North Carolina. Do you want to tell us a little bit about how that started? I've always. Loved the mountains,

Dianne: 00:13:40

just different from the beaches I grew up in. And about three years ago, we bought our retirement home up in North Carolina. Have always had restaurants in that area. So very sweet feelings towards the mountains and the people up there. And boy, they got smacked so hard by Helene.

Grace: 00:14:02

Yes, it is hard to fathom. And I feel like. No one was expecting it to be that intense and that much damage to happen. Many people didn't have flood insurance. They were in no way prepared for what was coming. I know your husband was up there when it happened. What was his perception of what was going on?

Dianne: 00:14:23

One, he was very lucky and grateful that our area of Kasher, Sapphire, was not hit that hard. But driving home, the number of trees down, the number of roads just washed out. Suddenly, part of I 40 is gone. Part of I 26 is gone. There's such confusion while you're trying to get out of there. You go to a certain point; you can't go any further. You talk about the good things that people do, Grace. They didn't wait for government. They all came to help one another. And it was this human spirit of, we can do this together, made you feel like there was hope. And has me a little bit, um, Excited to do this.

Grace: 00:15:10

The guest just before you was a woman named Jade Walker, and she has a sub stack that she writes once a week about exactly that. It always reminds me of the, the Mr. Rogers quote, which is when you see something bad happening, look for the helpers and those are the people that are making a bad situation better. And I feel like it's so important for us. When you find the people that are doing good, it reminds you that we know how to help each other.

Dianne: 00:15:43

And I think most people are good and most people do want to help each other. That has been my experience trying to put this together to help the community. Areas in Western North Carolina that are hit so hard. We're doing a promotion this Saturday, doing silent auctions and bands. And they're just to get some money to get for them. I've already raised 2, 000. And for that, we'll get 15 portable heaters and seven chainsaws for a little place called Bat Cave, where the people themselves are on the ground, trying to dig out the trees and dig out each other.

Grace: 00:16:17

So tell us about this. Cool thing you've put together. Tell us what it is and how anyone can get involved with it.

Dianne: 00:16:24

It's just a day we're calling Rocktoberfest because here we are in October. We have some nice weather.

Grace: 00:16:32

You can take the wild wing away from the woman, but you can't take the wing out of the woman.

Dianne: 00:16:37

Unfortunately, you cannot take the promoter out of an old promoter person. I've been doing this my whole life. And so I know that you can reach out to people and say, help me. You can stand there with a group of people and have a cooler full of Modelo beer that they've given you and say, okay, who wants this Modelo beer for 150, who wants this Yeti cooler for 150, somebody will say, yes. That 150 goes in the pot that goes towards a heater or five blankets or something like that. So Diane, where are you going to do this event? All right, we're going to do this at a restaurant that my husband and I own called It's in Mount Pleasant, right on Shem Creek, across the bridge from Charleston.

Dianne: 00:17:24

I'll give you an ironic story. That icehouse used to be the real icehouse that dumped into the shrimp boats when Hugo hit it. So we're very aware of what weather can do to you. So this event, we're starting bands at three o'clock in the afternoon. Some of our favorite bands are going to pop in and sing for us. And when people aren't charging us or charging us just their costs so that we can maximize the amount of money that goes through, we've got silent auction. We've got boat captains that are willing to give fishing trips and a tarpon trip and a private chef who's willing to cook a meal for four people. And a guitar from Edwin McKay. I asked him for something and a guitar and you won't believe what he gave me. Uh, there's no telling. Well,

Dianne: 00:18:23

I called him and said, look, would you be willing to wish somebody a happy birthday or something like that for a price? And he said, how about I just give away a guitar? Concert in somebody's home. What? I was like, Edwin, he goes, yeah. He said, I'll do that for 30 people. He's the only thing is that they have to work within my schedule. I said, that's cool. He said, and you've got to, you can't resell it. This isn't for you to make money. This is he's from Greenville. He's seen this devastation.

Dianne: 00:18:53

That guy loves a chainsaw. He loves to chop stuff down. I'll talk to him sometimes. Where are you? Oh, I'm up on some bush hogging land. I'm like, not singing. No, bush hogging. I'm like, whatever. He is a country boy. We went to his dad's 90th birthday party in Brevard. His dad is just so much fun. But that's the area that got hit hard. His whole family lives out there. It's hard for people to believe that one family in this area lost 11 members in a landslide. It's

Grace: 00:19:25

Yeah. There's so much that can happen even weeks after with the ground being unsettled. I 40 was closed years ago because of the rockslides. And so this is going to last for much, much longer than a hurricane or tornado that just passes through. It's really scary.

Dianne: 00:19:44

And the rivers. They're no longer a creek, they are a raging river, and that pressure, you're talking about little houses that have been there a hundred years on wooden stilts, it may take a whole week for it to fall down, but once it does, it's like dominoes and a poor little chimney rock. And that was just a beautiful little place, and it's basically gone. Those are the things. Edwin's gonna do this concert. We're asking people for 100 for a chance. And I'm trying to limit the number of tickets we sell so that you have a good chance of winning. But if we could sell 200 tickets, that's 20, 000 and every single penny will go directly to charity.

Dianne: 00:20:27

And you know what? People can do things, Grace. And you may not have 100 for this. And you're gonna buy a beer this weekend, I'll betcha. Come buy a beer from us, because of that 7. 50 beer, 5 is going directly to charity. to the charity and all day long for every little thing that we do that we're going to put the dollars in a big bowl and we're going to count it in front of everybody so we're going to know exactly how much is going and what it's going for and You'll know we bought 14 chainsaws, we bought 20 blankets, or whatever it is that the people really need right there. What they do not need right now, or what we're not going to do right now, is provide food. Because there's enough perishable food, and they're having a hard time getting it to people. So instead, we'll support somebody called Mercy Chefs, and they actually are out there cooking for the people who are on the ground.

Grace: 00:21:20

On the website of RedsIceHouse.com, there is a GoFundMe page. And if you make a contribution of a hundred dollars or more, You get raffle tickets in your name put into that raffle.

Dianne: 00:21:34

Yes, there's a yellow square that says enter here. So you can do it that way. You can come to Red's and buy a ticket and we'll put it right there. And that's Saturday, which is supposed to have beautiful weather. We'll have good music. There's football on and we're going to raise some money. You raise the glass, we'll raise the money. That's my slogan for the week.

Grace: 00:21:55

So, Diane, this is awesome. My wedding anniversary is coming up, so I think I might have to pop in and buy a bunch of raffle tickets, because I think Ross, his mind will be blown if Edwin played in our backyard for 30 of our friends for our anniversary.

Dianne: 00:22:11

Luckily, I'm one of those friends, so I'm feeling very excited about that.

Grace: 00:22:15

Diane, I just can't say enough though, having known you for as long as I have, about how much good you always put out. into the world. And I think anyone who ever stepped foot into a wild wing understood that you felt like you belong there all the time. And the bands were amazing. The food was always great. Anyway, I really, I'm, I miss. It's your ownership of those restaurants because they were really like a staple of the state. And I think knowing that you're still putting good out into the world is just par for the course for you and Cecil. So I'm really appreciative to be your friend. Just really excited for this event that you're doing and I, I know it's gonna make an impact.

Dianne: 00:22:57

Thank you so much, grace, and you've made a big help in having that happen.

Grace: 00:23:01

All right. I love you so friends, and thanks for being on Frogmore Stew. I love you bet. That's all the stew for today. Talk to you next week.

Credits: 00:23:10

My home. The Frogmore Stew podcast is written and hosted. By Grace Cowan. Editing and IT support by Eric Johnson. Produced by T. J. Phillips with the Podcast Solutions Network.