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Guest: Julie Makinen (journalist, editor, newsroom leader, and local news advocate)

Julie Makinen has done the rare thing in journalism: she’s worked at the highest levels of national and international newsrooms and chosen to bring that experience home to local journalism in the Coachella Valley. In this episode, Julie walks through her unexpected path from Stanford human biology major (med school was the plan… until it wasn’t) to a career that took her from the Washington Post to the LA Times, the New York Times ecosystem, and reporting/editing roles across Hong Kong and Beijing before leading The Desert Sun newsroom in Palm Springs.

Jason and Julie also dig into the big question: how local journalism survives now and what philanthropy, community support, and organizations like the Coachella Valley Journalism Foundation can realistically do to keep reporting alive. CVJF’s mission includes celebrating journalists, funding more reporting, and connecting the public to the work.

In this episode

• How a Stanford biology major became a lifelong journalist
• The internship moment that changed everything (Washington Post “big league” initiation)
• Why foreign correspondence is exhilarating and clarifying
• What it’s like running a newsroom covering a massive desert region with limited staff
• The uncomfortable truth about philanthropy supporting for-profit newsrooms
• Why “going nonprofit” isn’t a magic fix
• The business mistake that trained audiences to expect “free” news
• Why great journalism takes teams (not just solo newsletters and podcasts)
• The mission and future of the Coachella Valley Journalism Foundation

Mentioned in the conversation

Coachella Valley Journalism Foundation (CVJF)

• CVJF’s mission: promote and support sustainable community journalism in the Coachella Valley.
• CVJF’s Hall of Fame honors media professionals and supports the future of local reporting.

Hall of Fame keynote: Tonya Mosley
Tonya Mosley co-hosts Fresh Air alongside Terry Gross.

Call to action

If you care about local reporting—city halls, schools, public safety, water, development, the stories that shape daily life—support the people doing the work.

• Learn more, donate, and get on the CVJF mailing list: https://cvjf.org/
• Check the Hall of Fame page for the latest event details and tickets https://cvjf.org/cvjf-hall-of-fame/

And wherever you live: find a local journalism support org, subscribe to a local outlet you trust, and show up. Local news doesn’t survive on applause.

Let Life After News inspire your next chapter. Because leaving the news doesn’t mean the story’s over—it means a new one’s just beginning.

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This week’s episode is a little different. Instead of a traditional “journalism pivot” story, Dorothy Lucey and I sit down with Marianne Williamson, presidential candidate, author, spiritual teacher, and longtime activist, to talk about what happens after the title, the role, and the identity fall away.

Her newest book, Midlife Awakening, reframes what we’ve long called a “midlife crisis” as something else entirely:
not a breakdown… but an invitation.
not an ending… but a shift from me to we. 🤝

We talk candidly about:
🔥 Why midlife can be a beginning, not a collapse
💡 Letting go of fear-based and survival-driven identities
🧠 How to interrupt the treadmill of anxiety with purpose and service
❤️ Why “love is active” and showing up matters now more than ever
🕊️ Forgiveness—especially after political disappointment and betrayal
⏳ That moment when you realize: “We were out… and now we’re in.”

One of the most powerful moments comes when Marianne opens up about the aftermath of her presidential campaign—the resentment, grief, and anger she carried, and the deliberate work it took to forgive. Not to excuse what happened. Not to forget it. But to refuse becoming “a bitter, angry old woman” trapped by grievance.

It’s an honest, unsparing conversation about choosing inner freedom over righteous fury—and why that choice is essential if we’re going to stay engaged, awake, and useful in this moment.

If you’ve ever walked away from a career, questioned who you are without the role, or felt the pull to become something deeper—this episode will land. 🎧🌵

👉 WATCH the full interview playlist on YouTube (Life After News)
👉 LISTEN wherever you get your podcasts
✅ SUBSCRIBE so you don’t miss what’s next
📲 SHARE with someone navigating their own “what now?”

#LifeAfterNews #MarianneWilliamson #MidlifeAwakening #DorothyLucey #ChasingFaith #Forgiveness #SecondAct #Reinvention #Purpose #FaithInAction #Identity #MidlifeShift #Activism #Podcast #YouTubePodcast #WatchListenSubscribe

Let Life After News inspire your next chapter. Because leaving the news doesn’t mean the story’s over—it means a new one’s just beginning.

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Happy New Year and welcome to the first episode of the year. Jason Ball sits down with longtime TV journalist and beloved morning-show personality Lisa Breckenridge to talk about what happens when the newsroom chapter ends, but the storyteller isn’t finished. Lisa opens up about her unexpected exit from Fox, the identity shift that comes with leaving television, and the advice Maria Shriver gave her in a makeup room that helped change everything.

Lisa shares how the very thing many journalists once resented—social media—became her new platform, her new community, and a real business. From cold-DM’ing brands like she used to mail out tapes, to building a content mix rooted in her personal “pillars” (inform, educate, entertain, inspire), Lisa breaks down how she turned Instagram and TikTok into a money-making career with more freedom and a better quality of life.

Along the way: a viral on-set scooter crash that landed on TMZ, a candid conversation about reinvention at midlife, and why she created “Happily Lisa” after years of covering difficult, sometimes haunting stories in news.

In This Episode

• The shock of being “restructured” after 18 years at Fox and what it does to your sense of self
• The Maria Shriver advice that reframed social media as something you own, not the station
• How Lisa learned to monetize: media kits, engagement, and outreach (and why brands now come to her)
• What “Happily Lisa” is really about: choosing joy after seeing the darkest parts of humanity
• Building a sustainable creator business: long-term partnerships, UGC, and doing the work yourself
• The unglamorous side of entrepreneurship: invoices, tracking deliverables, and learning the business muscle
• The Good Day LA era and why that time in television felt like “lightning in a bottle”
• The infamous live-TV scooter crash (and what happened after)
• What’s next: long-form writing, newsletters/Substack, and getting paid to travel (Africa + dream-train goals)

Memorable Moments

• “This is your platform. It’s something that’s yours.” — the Maria Shriver turning point
• Lisa’s honest laugh about midlife, reinvention, and building a career on her own terms
• The scooter crash story: live TV chaos, concussion, and an accidental viral moment
• The shift from hard news to “sharing the happy” and why that choice mattered

Connect with Lisa

• Instagram / TikTok: “Happily Lisa” (search @HappilyLisa)

More from Jason / Life After News

• Follow the show for new episodes and behind-the-scenes updates
• Jason’s newsletter (Beehiiv) + Palm Springs-focused writing

Closing Notes
Jason closes the episode with an open invitation: Maria Shriver, if you’re listening, come on the show. And next week, Jason’s taking a short break to visit family in Arkansas—expect “greatest hits” from the last year of Life After News while he’s away.

Subscribe / Review / Share
If you enjoyed this episode, follow Life After News, leave a review, and share it with someone who’s navigating a career pivot of their own.

Let Life After News inspire your next chapter. Because leaving the news doesn’t mean the story’s over—it means a new one’s just beginning.

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In the final episode of the year, Jason Ball takes a moment to look back not just at 2025, but at a life shaped by big transitions, many of them coinciding with presidential election years. From high school to his first job in television to becoming a news director, to finally stepping away and building something new, this episode is about evolution, reinvention, and what comes after the headlines.

Jason reflects on launching Life After News and Desert Dispatch, joining the Coachella Valley Journalism Foundation, becoming managing editor of Oasis magazine, and what it’s like to build momentum in a second (or third) act. He also shares updates on several past guests and their own Life After News journeys from creative breakthroughs to retirement, travel, new babies, and new chapters.

Then, Jason is joined by friend and former TV journalist Dorothy Lucey to talk about their newest project, Chasing Faith with Dorothy Lucey, a podcast born out of conversations about faith, purpose, community, and doing good over chasing ratings. Together, they discuss what faith means now, the guests who’ve inspired them most, and why making change where you are matters.

This episode is a year-end check-in, a celebration of growth, and an honest look at what it takes to keep going even when reinvention is uncomfortable.

In This Episode:

• How major life changes have aligned with election years
• Launching Life After News and Desert Dispatch
• Staying connected to journalism after leaving the newsroom
• Why most podcasts don’t last and how to fight “pod fade”
• Updates on past guests and their Life After News chapters
• The origin and mission of Chasing Faith with Dorothy Lucey
• Faith, purpose, and choosing impact over metrics
• What might be coming next

Links & Mentions:

• Subscribe to Desert Dispatch: https://desertdispatch.beehiiv.com/
• Follow Desert Dispatch: @DesertDispatchPS
• Follow Jason on Instagram: @MrJasonBall
• Follow the podcast: @LifeAfterNewsPod

Listener Note

Jason wants to hear from you. What’s working? What isn’t? Who should be on the show next? The best way to reach him is via Instagram DMs.

Let Life After News inspire your next chapter. Because leaving the news doesn’t mean the story’s over—it means a new one’s just beginning.

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Life After News has some big updates, and this episode is a perfect example of why. You never really know where this road leads until you look up and realize someone took a local TV segment, turned it into a digital brand, and then turned that into a full-blown cookbook.

Lora McLaughlin Peterson is back, and she’s pulling back the curtain on what it really takes to get a cookbook from idea to your kitchen counter. Spoiler: it’s not “throw some recipes together and send it to a printer.” It’s a year-and-a-half grind, recipe testing, precision measurements, outside editors, photo shoots that feel like movie production, and a full marketing rollout leading to publication.

Plus: another former Life After News guest makes a major announcement. Byron Lane is launching a new project inspired by Carrie Fisher’s iconic advice: take your broken heart and make art.

In this episode

🍳 Lora McLaughlin Peterson: LORIFIED: The Cookbook

Lora shares the wild behind-the-scenes reality of cookbook publishing, including:

• How the book deal came together through a network of supportive women in publishing
• Why she had to develop a 100-recipe proposal before anyone could even bid
• The slow, meticulous pace of publishing compared to the newsroom “right now” mindset
• What it’s like having an outside tester recreate your recipes (and ask, “Wait… what is orange fluff supposed to be?”)
• Why “measure with your heart” does not fly in a cookbook
• The full-on production process: food stylist, set stylist, photographer, studio days, and shooting at her house
• Her approach: approachable meals, recognizable ingredients, minimal fuss, and giving people time back

📸 A cookbook where every recipe has a photo

Lora insists on zero guesswork. Every recipe gets a picture, so you know exactly what you’re aiming for.

🎁 Holiday sanity tips from Lora

For anyone spiraling two days before Christmas:

• Use gift bags. Stop trying to make wrapping your personality.
• Don’t cook everything from scratch.
• Make the one or two things your family truly cares about and outsource the rest (Costco/Sam’s/deli trays are not cheating).

🎄 Lora’s traditions

• Red velvet pancakes on Christmas morning
• Prime rib (smoked on the Weber) as a once-a-year holiday flex
• One gift on Christmas Eve
• A full house, chaotic energy, and leaning into the “realness” of it

Major Life After News update: Byron’s announcement

Byron shares a new creative pivot rooted in something Carrie Fisher told him—and everyone—over and over:
“Take your broken heart and go make art.”

He’s launching a project called Byrontology, designed for people who are creative (or existentially exhausted) and want to turn rejection, despair, and career heartbreak into meaning and momentum—with some humor along the way.

Links & where to follow

Pre-order LORIFIED: The Cookbook

• Go to lorafied.com and hit the pre-order button
• Available through major retailers (Walmart, Target, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and more)

Follow Lora

• Instagram + TikTok: @lorafied
• Watch for recipe rollouts starting in the months leading up to the book launch

Byron / Byrontology

• Find Byrontology via Byron’s link in profile (as mentioned in the episode)

If you liked this episode

• Rate + review the show
• Subscribe so you d

Let Life After News inspire your next chapter. Because leaving the news doesn’t mean the story’s over—it means a new one’s just beginning.

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If David Goldstein showed up at your door, you were having a bad day. For decades, the longtime Los Angeles investigative reporter exposed corruption, waste, and abuse from LA city workers drinking and hitting strip clubs on the clock, to pet stores sedating puppies to make them easier to sell, to delivery drivers snacking on your food before it got to your door.

Now two years into retirement from KCBS/KCAL, David joins Jason to talk about the real work behind those headline-making investigations: the stakeouts that lasted weeks, the legal tightrope of hidden cameras and two-party consent, the adrenaline of on-camera confrontations, and the toll the job takes on your brain and your life.

They also get into what happens when the story is your own house, after the Palisades fire, and why the future of investigative journalism may depend on nonprofit newsrooms stepping in where TV budgets are stepping back.

About David Goldstein

David Goldstein is a longtime investigative reporter who spent decades at KCBS and KCAL in Los Angeles. His reporting exposed corruption, taxpayer waste, and consumer abuses across Southern California — leading to firings, early retirements, new policies, and even changes in state law. Known for his hidden-camera work and on-the-street confrontations, David built a career on stories that didn’t just make noise — they made change.

Stay Connected

If you’re listening along with Life After News as we close out the year, Jason wants to hear from you:

• What do you think of the show so far?
• Who would you like to hear as a guest?
• Is there a direction you’d like the show to explore in 2025?

Send your feedback, guest ideas, or big swings you want us to take and if you’re enjoying these conversations, please follow, rate, and review the podcast so more people can find Life After News.

Let Life After News inspire your next chapter. Because leaving the news doesn’t mean the story’s over—it means a new one’s just beginning.

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Meteorologist Liberté Chan joins Jason for a raw, vulnerable, and very real conversation about knowing when to chase the dream and when to walk away from it.

From her early days as an intern at KTLA to anchoring in Palm Springs, to “manifesting” her way back on-air in Los Angeles, Liberté shares how sheer persistence (and a few strategically timed visits to the news director’s office) helped her land her dream job as a meteorologist on the KTLA Weekend Morning News.

She opens up about the work behind the “weather girl” stereotype earning a meteorology degree while working full time, using education as a way to build confidence, and what it really takes to reinvent yourself on and off camera.

Liberté also talks candidly about the devastating loss of her friend and co-anchor Chris Burrous, the cascade of grief that followed in her personal life, and how unprocessed grief finally forced her to stop, feel, and re-evaluate everything including her career in news.

Today, she’s a new mom, a functional medicine health coach, a devoted yogi, and a creator in the “new media” world, blending wellness, motherhood, and honest storytelling while still keeping one toe in the news business as an occasional KTLA fill-in.

This is a conversation about ambition, heartbreak, reinvention, and the courage to choose yourself.

In this episode, we talk about:

• 🎯 Manifesting the dream job
• 🎓 Education as confidence
• 📺 The magic of the KTLA weekend morning show
• 💔 Grief, loss, and what news people don’t process
• 🧭 Knowing when to walk away from news
• 🧘‍♀️ Wellness, functional medicine, and new media
• 👶 Motherhood, travel, and raising a healthy child
• 💪 Movement as practice, not perfection
• 🌱 What’s next for Liberté

NEXT WEEK ON LIFE AFTER NEWS

Veteran KCBS/KCAL investigative reporter David Goldstein returns—two years into retirement—to talk about what he’s doing now and why Harvey Levin says Los Angeles is less safe without him.

We dig into:

• how investigative journalism actually changes the world,
• the grind behind the glamour,
• why the job is harder than people think, and
• how he got his unlikely start in the poultry capital of the world.

Don’t miss it.

If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend. And if you’re enjoying the show, please rate and review—it truly helps more people find these conversations.

Let Life After News inspire your next chapter. Because leaving the news doesn’t mean the story’s over—it means a new one’s just beginning.

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Join host Jason Ball and guest Randy Lovely, former newspaper executive and current President of the Coachella Valley Journalism Foundation (CVJF), for a deep dive into the evolution of the news industry, the decline of newspapers' financial heyday, and the critical importance of supporting local journalism.

Today is Giving Tuesday! Support Local Journalism!

In this episode, Randy Lovely stresses that local journalism is vital to the health and fabric of a community. The best way to show your support is to pay for your news whether through a direct subscription or by donating to a foundation that supports local news outlets.

💖 Support the Coachella Valley Journalism Foundation

• Donate Today: Visit cvjf.org to make a donation and support the various programs that keep local news thriving in the Coachella Valley.
• What Your Donation Supports: Funding for staff positions, journalism training and staff development, reporting project costs, and placing interns in local newsrooms.
• Indio Post Campaign: The CVJF is currently in a campaign to match dollar-for-dollar up to $24,000 to offset the startup and technical costs of the new Indio Post.
• Philanthropy Coverage: The CVJF helps fund the Desert Sun's dedicated coverage of local philanthropy, a crucial public service for the community's hundreds of nonprofits.

🚀 Randy Lovely's Life in Journalism

Randy Lovely shares his incredible 40-year journey in print journalism, beginning with a middle school mix-up that landed him in a journalism class instead of wood shop.

• Early Career: Started as a general assignment reporter at a small seven-person Gannett paper in Sturgis, Michigan, in the mid-80s, learning to be a multi-faceted journalist (taking photos, writing, and even helping with page composition).
• The Golden Years: Worked through the heyday of newspaper publishing, noting that 2006 was the watershed year, the highest point for newspaper revenue. At the Arizona Republic, the paper made over $1 million per day in net profit in 2006.
• Staff Size: At its peak, the Arizona Republic newsroom, including satellite offices, swelled to about 500 people.

📉 The Fall: Technology and Economic Headwinds

Randy discusses the swift and accelerated decline of the newspaper industry after 2006.

• Digital Shift: Consumer behavior rapidly switched to digital consumption between 2006 and 2008.
• Advertising Decimation: The core revenue model, retail advertising, was decimated by new competitors like Google, Craigslist, and Amazon.
  
• Craigslist Disruption: Randy reflects on the industry's regret for not taking a fraction of their enormous profits in the late 90s/early 2000s to "out Craigslist in Craigslist," instead holding onto their classified ad moneymaker.
• Economic Crash: The 2008 housing bubble burst added significant economic pressure, especially in growth markets like Phoenix, which lost huge revenues from developer and builder ads.

📺 Merging Print and Broadcast

Randy shares the "thrilling but difficult" experience of merging the Arizona Republic with the NBC affiliate, KPNX.

• Integration: The newsrooms were physically merged and integrated across all platforms after receiving an FCC waiver, putting reporters together regardless of whether they worked for print, digital, or TV.
• The Tucson Shooting: A month after the full i

Let Life After News inspire your next chapter. Because leaving the news doesn’t mean the story’s over—it means a new one’s just beginning.