Often something someone says inspires me, and I want to explore it further in an article. That’s what happened when I was talking last week to Natalie Ziegler, who was a researcher and segment producer at CNN from 1986 to 1994 and ran to represent Howard County’s District 9A in the Maryland General Assembly in 2018.

“We’re not going to change the polarization and divisiveness in this country until we change where people get their news, Robert,” she said to me as she took off her gray wool coat and hung it on the back of a chair at Glory Days Grill on Route 40. That’s where the Ellicott City and Western Howard Democratic Club (EC&WHDC) has its monthly meetings. I started to ask, How do we do that? but Natalie was off to say hello to the club’s president, Sue Rosch Geckle, and others. She looked back at me and mouthed, “We’ll talk.” Before the meeting ended, she and I made a date to meet at Syriana Cafe in Old Ellicott City to talk about the challenges of reporting the news in a way that people believe it.

One Isn’t Always the Loneliest Number

There are other times still, that I’m interviewing someone and she says something equally memorable. This time it was when Natalie said the following: “I think we need some trusted news sources.” Bam! Yes! Let’s do it!

But, again, the same question as I had at the EC&WHDC meeting occurred to me. And this time she was sitting right in front of me sipping a tea as I ate my usual felafel, tabouleh, and Syrian fries.

“How do we get that though?” I asked her.

“I’m not sure yet,” she said.

I’ve known Natalie for a little over a year now, so I figured she’d have some bold ideas about how to fashion one. That’s my favorite thing about Natalie. She’s so adventurous. Here’s an equation to explain it, dedicated to Del. Eric Ebersole (D- 12) and the Rich Corkran, the treasurer over at EC&WHDC, both retired math educators and good friends: whimsy + courage = adventurousness.

And here’s an example of how she lives it. After Natalie graduated from Oberlin College with a Bachelor’s degree in psychology, she and a friend decided to go on a road trip. She found an ad for a used car and bought it. When she went to pick it up from the seller, he asked her, “Don’t you want to take it for a test drive?” She said she didn’t know how to drive, save for a few lessons. When she told me this, and a laugh shot forth out of me spontaneously, she was driving, coincidentally, and I was sitting shotgun another day recently. We were headed to Cava in Columbia for a sip and a bite that day too. It was raining hard and Natalie drove ultra-carefully, but she looked over at me briefly and got a read on my reaction. I love too, when she’s telling these zany stories that she gets how charming they are.

“I’ll figure it out,” she told the used-car guy about driving. And she did.

Natalie was born and raised in Manhattan, and such young’uns often don’t know how to drive. Also Oberlin didn’t allow its students to have cars on campus. She came to Howard County to care for her grandmother’s farm later on.

Related: See what local environmental activist Chiara D’Amore told me about her green non-profit.

Fries and Surprises

I first met Natalie the day of the March for Our Lives in March of 2018. I helped local activist Carole Fisher get a busload of HoCo residents down to the gun violence prevention event that day on behalf of a group we work with, Marylanders to Prevent Gun Violence. Soon after we arrived in Washington, D.C., among the protest’s bustle, I got separated from the group. We were all in touch on a messaging app, so we would have been able to reconnect, but I was still grateful when I saw Natalie looking for a place to stop and listen to the speakers.

She’s petite and has a quiet voice, but Natalie’s personality is anything but demure, as I learned that day! She led as we made our way through the crowd to a spot by a lamp post that a couple young marchers clung to. This is the kind of leader we need in HoCo, I’d learn over the next year. She’s not afraid to speak and take the lead. It must have been one of the reasons that a twentysomething Natalie and one of her sisters, Sophie, decided to embark on a trip to China. They didn’t speak any Chinese and it was 1982, and China had yet to open up to the Western World. But that didn’t stop them. And that pluckiness led to something.

“I realized I wanted to study international relations then, so I applied to the School of Advanced International Studies [SAIS] at Johns Hopkins,” she told me back at Syriana said. She got in.

The China trip was just one leg of an eight-month trip circumnavigating the world that they took on Pan Am Airlines. They landed at an airport entirely made of wood. They got to see amazing stuff, like the beginning of the excavation of the the terra cotta soldier site and the Forbidden City.

Just Us and Justice

“It’s almost like I’m not able to see things except in the most objective light,” Natalie said to me back at Syriana. I’d noticed this soon after we each got a crash course in the other in D.C the day of the march. I’d agree that Natalie is on the less anyway eight I think I took it out because I couldn’t really find a good place to put it in I wanted to put it in cause I think it’s a great partisan end of the cognitive spectrum. I’d call it analytical. I thought that day over Syrian treats that she was probably good at math, and Eric and Rich would be pleased!

“I can’t stand injustice of any kind,” she said. Rasha, who’s becoming the official waitress of rocoinhoco.com, brought me some extra napkins and as I looked from her back at Natalie.

And then again, Natalie surprised me. I asked what the primary reward, challenge, and surprise of working at CNN was.

“It was the same for all three: constant learning,” Natalie said. “But my mission was always to inform the public as fully as possible about as many events and stories as possible.”

I’ll Have One Dictator, To Go

Natalie’s confident ways undoubtedly came in handy when she experienced what she called her most terrifying moment during her CNN years. Her training in international relations probably helped too.

She had been at CNN in Atlanta for a week, when her “boss’ boss” told her to get Libyan dictator Muammar Ghaddafi’s spokesperson for the top of the 6:00 p.m. news show. Not only was it Saturday, but the United States had no diplomatic relations with Libya. And this was 1986, way before the Internet.

“Improbably, I found him. And even more improbably, he agreed to come into our Los Angeles studio,” she said, looking amused at how amused I was, as usual. I couldn’t help it, Classic Natalie! “I was able to bring my blood pressure down to something like normal,” she said then, as I continued to laugh.

And: John Byrd of Howard County Recreation and Parks weighed in on what it takes to make sure our downtime is downright dandy.

Chyronpractors

“If I had the money, I’d start a news network that was truly non-partisan and focused on genuine reporting rather than opinion regurgitation,” Natalie said. “Like the old Headline News.” That network featured mini-stories, almost, and it was where I first became acquainted with a non-stop chyron speeding by me while I watched them, too. The brevity of the mini-stories did, after all, lend itself to more plainly spoken ones , I thought.

I got excited about this as-yet-hypothetical news network and leaned in to ask Natalie how else it might take shape.

“It might be a start to getting back to the idea that we can all agree that there was a snowstorm in Chicago, a shooting in a mall in Indianapolis, a brownout in New York City, and the Steelers won. It might have the editorial sensibility of USA Today,” she said.

I thought back to a journalism class I took during a year when I taught accounting as a guest lecturer at the University of Maryland in 1992 Professor Chris Harvey of the Phillip Merrill College of Journalism taught us that that paper had a decidedly “human interest” angle to it as opposed to the harder news one of most other papers. It’s mocked as un-sophisticated by the intellectual elite, but let’s be honest: you can’t help but read it. And it is really…human. It’s the classic “news you can use” approach, and that makes it appealing to a broad swath of readers. Weather, stocks, and simply stuff everyone cares about. It’s colorful, playful, and fun unlike the dark labyrinth of conspiracy and made-up mystery I find on the Internet.

“But honestly I think the nation will have to drift back to civility first,” Natalie said. “And if we could ever look around the world to the way people are solving problems–because they are–I think that could be really great.”

I asked Natalie if she’d run in the next election cycle to represent 9A.

“I hope I’ll be working towards a brighter and more equitable future for the county, our state, and our country,” she said. Oh, fine, Natalie–play it cagey!

Her 9A counterpart, former intelligence officer Steve Bolen agreed with me that another run for delegate’s in her future. Steve ran for the other spot on 9A’s behalf in the general assembly this past year.

“She is a moderate who would bring common sense and bipartisanship to Annapolis,” he said in a text message exchange with me later that day. “She’s well-respected in the community as a small business leader and activist.”

Natalie and her husband, John Zirschky, a former political appointee in the Clinton Administration, own and operate the farm they live on in Western HoCo and also own a wholesale jewelry business.

Stories About Going Steady

I asked John where he and Natalie met.

“Aerobics class. It was the ’80s,” he said in a way that was dry-er than even Natalie’s delivery. “I met her in April. She met me in June. That’s how much of an impression I made.” They got married a year later and have two kids.

“You would particularly enjoy my daughter. Lexie’s like me–but better, but better,” Natalie said. She’s an Assistant Attorney General on American Samoa. It looks like adventurousness runs in the family.

At SAIS, meanwhile, one of Natalie’s professors was a frequent on-air pundit at CNN. He noticed her focus on data, which is always a good foundation for someone reporting the news. They needed a researcher and Natalie was it!

Back on the topic of news, Natalie said to fix what’s wrong with the news, reporters would have to recommit to an allegiance for fact, too.

“I’ve been interviewed about the farm before, and when I read the article later and thought, ‘This person’s just making stuff up,'” she said, nodding “no” slowly.

Natalie worked at the Newseum, then, after almost ten years at CNN.

My fellow booker at CNN, Pat–we shared office space and he was politically very conservative.

“But we never had arguments about what actually happened,” Natalie said motioning toward me to indicate commonality. “Because there were…”

“…facts.”

“Because there were facts, exactly,” Natalie said.

Natalie and I hoped we could put the genie of the fake-news label back in the bottle now that we’ve let it out.

Natalie then said she had to go. It had been more than two hours.

“Before I go, I will say this. Someone said Pakistan has more conspiracy theories than any other place. But they also have more conspiracies,” she said, again looking for my reaction.

I let out a whoop of laughter as I threw out my trash.

As I walked back to my car, I thought to myself, “What will it take to get us back to a place where everyone believes there’s one shared reality?”

Natalie thinks, she had told me, that if a news organization could be “all over” a story as unmistakable and apolitical as, say, an asteroid heading for Earth, then it could become a go-to news source.

I noticed the sky went from sunny to dark for a moment, in that volatile way it can here in Central Maryland. I hoped, as I ducked into my car, that it wouldn’t take anything that dire.

Also: See what two local gun violence prevention leaders told me inspires their work.