November 10, 2022

HOW AMERICA’S TOWNS ARE WRITING THE FUTURE OF THE COUNTRY – AND MORE

Our Towns is proud to showcase our latest reporting in person in Erie, Pennsylvania at the Jefferson Educational Society’s Global Summit. We will focus on local heroes who are part of change and renewal in communities in a panel discussion featuring Community Heart & Soul members.

Our Towns is working with the JES, a community-based think tank headquartered in Erie, to help grow the Global Summit’s reach. This includes a series of programs in Redlands, California – the inaugural site of the Summit’s in-person expansion, as well as live-streaming options. The Summit launches in Erie in October, and in Redlands in November. We will be sharing more details on our website soon.

October 26, 2022

OUR TOWNS – CEDAR RAPIDS METRO ECONOMIC ALLIANCE

In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Jim and Deb will be the featured guests during an hour and a half panel with Mayor Tiffany O’Donnell and Downtown SSMID (Self-Supported Municipal Improvement District) leadership. The event, held on Wednesday, Oct. 26 in the Downtown Cedar Rapids Public Library, will touch on the lessons the Fallows have learned from their travels and shared through their storytelling.

October 20, 2022

BETSY K. MCCREIGHT LECTURE IN THE HUMANITIES

On Thursday, Oct. 20, Deborah and James Fallows will be in Charleston, West Virginia to deliver the Betsy K. McCreight Lecture in the Humanities. The event honors the late Board of Directors founding member of the West Virginia Humanities Council. Past presenters include Ken Burns, Joyce Carol Oates, Joseph Ellis, Sylvia Nasar, Henry Louis Gates, Elaine Pagels, Gordon Wood, James McPherson, Edmund Morris, and Annette Gordon-Reed.

October 12, 2022

WHAT DO COLLEGES DO FOR THEIR COMMUNITIES – AND THE COUNTRY?

‘What can colleges do for the country?’ is an important question to ask, and a powerful theme explored in The Washington Monthly’s annual college rankings issue. This conversation was hosted by New America featuring James and Deborah Fallows alongside Dr. Pam EddingerIllias GomezPaul Glastris, and Michelle Asha Cooper.

June 29, 2022

Author Series kicks off with documentarians

The Marion County Library System, in collaboration with Tower Community Bank, inaugurated a new speaker series, featuring authors whose writings and ideas would be of interest to the Marion County community.

Deborah and James Fallows were the first authors in the series.

Read the article here.

July 14, 2022

The New Productivism Paradigm?

Deborah and James Fallows are featured in Dani Rodrik’s July 14, 2022 article. Rodrik reports, “There are signs of a major reorientation toward an economic policy framework that is rooted in production, work, and localism instead of finance, consumerism, and globalism. It might just turn into a new policy model that captures imaginations across the political spectrum.”

He references how the Fallows found support for this idea when they traveled across America reporting on how local economic development and pragmatism can override political partisanship when it comes to fostering businesses, job creation, and public-private partnerships.

Read the article here.

April 25, 2022

What Makes a City Great? – BYU Radio

Top of Mind with Julie Rose
Millions of Americans move each year in search of a better house, neighborhood, job, or quality of life. Is leaving the only way to live someplace better? What would it take for an imperfect place to become your perfect match? Jim and Deb Fallows join Julie Rose to discuss what makes a city great.

Listen here.

April 25, 2022

Write America: Deborah and James Fallows

Join Alice-Byrd’s Books for the fifty-seventh episode of “Write America,” featuring Deb and Jim Fallows, as they read and discuss their works intimating how the deep divisions in the country may be healed by the quiet power of art. 

Learn more here.

May 09, 2022

Editorial: Ban the Library Police

In a May 9, 2022 editorial, The Roanoke Times supported the recommendation of the Roanoke Valley Public Libraries to do away with late book fines. They referenced Deborah Fallows’s 2020 article in The Atlantic in which she commented, “When I was a kid, the sin of returning books late to the public library populated a category of dread for me next to weekly confessions to the Catholic priest (what can an 8-year-old really have to confess?) and getting caught by the dentist with a Tootsie Roll wrapper sticking out of my pocket.”

Read the editorial here.

May 04, 2022

“Our Towns” Screening & Discussion

with James and Deborah Fallows and Michael Zakaras

May 11, 2022
3:00 PM-4:30 PM
Fermentation Hall, The Momentary
507 Southeast E Street
Bentonville, AR 72712

Go to this link to register.

May 03, 2022

Books & Writers – The Creative Process Features Deborah & James Fallows

Deb and Jim share their views on writing and life in an episode of the insightful “The Creative Process” podcast series.

Listen to the interview here.

May 07, 2022

Fallowses Give Ball State University Commencement Address

Ball State University’s 2022 Commencement featured Deborah and James Fallows, who gave the Commencement address and received honorary doctorates at the May 7 ceremony in Muncie, Indiana. The Fallowses have written several articles featuring Ball State’s innovative partnership with Muncie Community Schools, among other points of pride in the Muncie community.

President Geoffrey Mearns said during Saturday’s Commencement ceremony, “Through your reporting and through the leadership of your foundation, you are promoting greater civic engagement, community renewal, and genuine dialogue among the citizens of our country.”

Read more here.

April 20, 2022

If Small Towns Want to Survive, They Need a Plan B

Tim Holt, editor of the Northwest Review contrasts the effective “Plan Bs” of towns including Mount Shasta, CA and Ashland, OR with that of his own town, Dunsmuir, CA. He references Deborah and James Fallows’s Our Towns book and its common factors in successfully reinvented towns across the United States, including an openness to newcomers bringing new talents and ideas to their new homes. He states, “In these “open” towns the newcomers often find opportunities to reinvent themselves, to apply whatever skills and talents they may have in new ways in this new, stimulating environment.”

Read the article here.

February 16, 2022

Anarchism is…James Fallows’s Our Towns

In this conversation, James joins host Graham Culbertson for a discussion of the dysfunction of the federal government, its historically reactionary nature, and the way that “Our Towns” offer a grassroots alternative to that reactionary system. Plus he tries to convince James that his efforts against leaf blowers will save the world.

Listen to the podcast here.

March 09, 2022

James Fallows featured on ‘Stand Up with Pete Dominick’

Jim joins host Pete Dominick for his podcast to discuss events of the day.

The podcast features “brilliant guests daily.”

Listen to it here.

March 07, 2022

Looking at America from up high and on the ground, with Jim Fallows

On this episode of the Vital Center, Jim and podcast host Geoff Kabaservice discuss Deb and Jim’s travels across the country and why politics so often works better at the local level, even in some places hard hit by economic decline and political polarization. The veteran journalist describes “the beautiful American continent [which] is full of those moments when you think, ‘Oh, this is how it looks. This is how it works.’”

Listen to the podcast here.