Episode 83: Peter Bhatia

Episode notes

Today Dan and Ellen talk to Peter Bhatia . Bhatia is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor who is now chief executive officer of the Houston Landing , a nonprofit, non-partisan, no-paywall local news site that launched in spring of 2023. He has also been editor and vice president at the Detroit Free Press , from 2017-2023, and served as a regional editor for Gannett, supervising newsrooms in Michigan and Ohio. His resume includes helping lead newsrooms that won 10 Pulitzer Prizes. He is the first journalist of South Asian heritage to lead a major daily newspaper in the U.S. He has also been involved in some recent controversies . There's much to talk about. In Quick Takes, Dan talks about an important press-freedom case in Mississippi. The former governor, Phil Bryant, is suing Mississippi Today over its Pulitzer Prize-winning series on a state welfare scandal that got national attention and even managed to touch former NFL quarterback Brett Favre. Bryant says he needs access to Today's internal documents in order to prove his libel case, and a state judge has agreed. Mississippi Today has decided to take the case to the state Supreme Court.