What public media must do to survive
With public money drained from public media, can the system that created The News Hour, Sesame Street, Nature, and brought us Ken Burns' America stay alive?
WNET’s CEO Neal Shapiro says “Yes!” His retirement just announced, this former NBC News President, who strengthened and expanded the entire PBS system during his years at WNET, is coming to tell us WHY Public Media WILL Survive! Join us Wednesday Feb. 18 for an intriguing, insightful conversation moderated by past Silurians president Betsy Ashton, a board member of the Friends of Thirteen/WNET for three decades.
E. Jean Carroll vs. Trump: Nerve, Not Bravery
By Mel Laytner
E. Jean Carroll doesn't do brave. “It's just nerve," she insists.
Nerve, an abundance of it, is what Carroll needed to sue Donald Trump for sexual assault and defamation, a decision that would eventually result in two jury verdicts totaling $88 million.
In Carroll’s depiction, her memoir, Not My Type: One Woman versus a President, is more a masterclass in nerve than an epic tale of revenge.
Speaking to an overflowing Silurian luncheon on Jan. 21 with journalist
Molly Jong-Fast, Carroll traced the unlikely path from attack to courtroom victory, crediting an unexpected conversation with George Conway, coincidentally at one of Jong-Fast's parties.
In June 2019, Conway had written an article in the Washington Post supporting Carroll’s charges. At the party, Carroll approached Conway to thank him. "He said, I think you could, you could sue Donald Trump,"
Carroll said Conway took the time to explain to "a nincompoop the difference between a civil trial and a criminal trial. I had no idea. And he said, ‘you could win a civil case. You could win.’ And so that's what did it."
Asked how she endured the barrage that followed—the threats, the police checks, the daily abuse—Carroll was characteristically blunt. “I don’t give a fuck...You pay a price. I understood. I was going to pay a price…I don’t care if they kill me—You have to go into that with that kind of philosophy. You cannot care.”
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About Silurians, by Silurians
The Irrefutable power of Community Reporting
By Adam Stone
On July 12, 2025, The New York Times published a front-page story “UnitedHealth’s Campaign to Quiet Critics,” which included an account of the insurer’s apparent attempt to chill my Westchester County-based investigative reporting....This mega-corporation wanted to silence my local watchdog news outlet—emphasis on local.
Reporter’s Tenacity Unravels – and Helps Chronicle – Her Family’s Wartime Secrets
By Karen A. Frenkel
My training is as a science writer and technology journalist and producer.... I transitioned to narrative nonfiction with the Family Treasures Lost and Found project, which includes my recently published memoir and tie-in documentary. .Both chronicle my investigative quest to fill gaps in the survival stories of my Polish Jewish parents and sole surviving grandfather.
This Optimistic ʻSilurian Newbieʼ Is Grooming The Next Generation of Journalists
By Cathi Steele
I’m a Silurian newcomer, relatively speaking, as I was accepted into this esteemed press club in July 2025. Like you, I’m concerned about—and sometimes downright distraught over—the perilous climate in which journalists and media find themselves.
And yet, I see a future of possibilities.
Your first career was just the lede. Now we want the rest of the story. Whether you’re publishing a book, article, Substack, stepping back into the classroom, or taking on new challenges, share your recent endeavors with your fellow Silurians.
Journalism and AI
Love it or fear it, Artificial Intelligence is rapidly being integrated in newsrooms around the world in a variety of ways, even as the technology upends and challenges online news business models. Here you will find links to articles, clips and videos that will be updated from time to time to help better understand this accelerating trend.
The Silurian Archives
Silurians YouTube channel — 120+ videos of speakers and events.
