The following commentary is a preview of a soon-to-be-published edition of “Phronesis in Pieces” at billschmitt.substack.com.

This is newsworthy if it’s true: The U.S. Mint has ceased producing pennies.

I have reason to believe this might be true, and many Americans have reason to be interested in the possibility. After all, a cessation has implications for everyday business transactions, for our assessment of policies enacted by our government, and for our treatment of pennies we have indifferently hoarded—or carelessly lost under the couch cushions—for many years.

Journalists on the federal government beat could check this story out with a brief phone call. Indeed, in theory, I could, too—assuming a “public information” staff member at the Mint or the Treasury Department would take a call, and respond meaningfully and promptly to an inquiry, from a member of the general public like me.

There is no need for me to take on this assignment because (a) I’m confident there are no facts being “hidden,” so this humble story will emerge from Washington reporters in due time; and (b) I have already found the “news angle” that feeds my own exploration of practical wisdom, or phronesis, in our public affairs.

My admittedly non-aggressive “reporting” on this matter of “common cents” followed this timeline:

• While perusing the economic news online, I captured a fact. I should say the fact captured me. We should let that happen more often—if our perusals are purposeful. Pope Francis has written in his World Communications Day messages about the value of robust curiosity.
• In a search-engine time warp that didn’t equate a story’s relevance with its date of origin, I saw a headline from the Market Realist website teasing me: “Why Do We Still Have Pennies? U.S. Mint Plans to Phase Them Out.” Robin Hill-Gray reported in January 2022, “The U.S. Mint announced that it will start to phase out the production of the penny by the end of 2022. The last batch of pennies will be minted on April 1, 2023.”
• The latter date suggested the presence of a fresh “news hook.” Hill-Gray also revealed reasons why this event could be important: “The national coin shortage and the emergence of digital currency are making economists question the value of real money, specifically pennies.” The government spends more than two cents to produce each one-cent coin. A cessation of this waste could be done in a way that minimally eases the federal budget deficit. Meanwhile, those who favor keeping the penny argue that charity organizations still receive many donations in that form.
• I checked a website that told me Market Realist, a publication I had not known about, was generally reliable. I looked for other sources to confirm the story and to bring it up-to-date, hopefully affirming the Mint had implemented the stoppage foreseen almost 18 months ago. But I could not find any government news releases or major journalism outlets confirming or denying real action. (If I simply have missed such a report, sorry, my bad.)
• I asked the artificial intelligence-powered search engine in my Bing browser: Did the Mint end penny production in April 2023? “Yes,” it said, but the AI chat tool provided only a half-answer that would leave dogged journalists dissatisfied. It repeated the announcement seen in Market Realist, citing the publication and two others which had run similar mentions in 2022. I followed up, asking if there was any proof that the Mint had indeed stopped making pennies. Bing credulously referenced the same, old announcement as its “proof.”

So this is my “story behind the story”—or my incomplete story behind the possible non-story.

I offer a few reflections on this experience of a human brain fishing in the information ocean, guarding against misinformation, and trying to update and verify the facts of an intriguing clue. My conclusions:

• First, there is news here—parts of a puzzle that could spark lots of interest, even though the story hardly ranks as “page one” stuff. We need more of the “truth-love” and big-picture thinking that make people newshounds as they surf each day’s waves of media content. We need to imagine how something might affect those around us, not just ourselves.
• The planned change in U.S. currency (no pun intended)—a change similar to coinage modifications other countries have made—has linkages to overall Treasury practices and the real-world economy: A species of “tax” for consumers who would have to “round up” their purchase totals? An upcoming burden for storekeepers and charity organizations? A possible facet of the evolving story of “central bank digital currency” (CBDC)? Overall, I believe such a policy would be smart, probably inevitable, but replete with subtexts the American public should ponder productively. (For example, there’s talk of a “Pennies for Freedom” initiative that would collect some of the trillions of pennies now stockpiled in our households to benefit good causes.)
• We see here a microcosm of everyone’s hobbled pursuit of truth and new knowledge. Early indications of something meaningful get reported—often by a small, specialized organization—but they go unnoticed, or forgotten, or buried under the flow of easier stories drawn from Twitter or Tik-Tok. By the time the details of the denoument are fleshed out, the chance for widespread discussion—deliberations which could foster democracy and the citizenry’s collective wisdom—has passed. Too much of today’s news creation and consumption is partial and passive because we drift in our space-time distraction, then awaken to an official announcement, and then parrot it without a context of history and implications.
• We must approach the digital world—and the analog public square—more wisely as tools for education and understanding. In principle, we have endless potential to engage with all sorts of people who are following a plethora of “beats.” They need not be journalists on assignment, but merely folks experiencing their unique journeys and concerns. Ideally, they are aware that our insights and interests intertwine. When a problem or policy issue suddenly hits us all as a fait accompli, it is often a failure of our personal communication and media methods. Grass-roots folks have been unduly quiet or uncaring. Or people with power have been unduly secretive and strategic. We can also blame our own passivity and confirmation bias, distracting us from fresh insights and opportunities for inquiry.
• The Catholic Church’s call for subsidiarity, where society maximizes the sorts of issues we manage at more local levels—in communities which know and discuss what’s going on via personal encounters—is a seldom-applied antidote to the problem. Fewer facts would slip like fish through the nets of our modern “mega” and “meta” viewpoints. Our media tend to focus on wide-scale information and emotions, marketing and controlling them for profit and power. Through these screens, news produces impacts, but it doesn’t nurture imagination or problem-solving.
• Here’s a fact that we dare not bury: In many cases, an AI search system will not make a good reporter. Its learning consists of explosive regurgitation (and we hope that it stops there). In my case, a chatbot drew primarily from one article with an authoritative quote from more than a year ago and considered it sufficient present-day proof. The AI mission of providing a definitive-sounding, packaged answer did not allow for imagination on my behalf. It neither hunted down updated answers nor conceived new questions—the inquiry and wonderment we hope would emerge every time we are learning. If the Market Realist article had not been written, or if someone had modified it, or had canceled it as disinformation, my access to reality could have been shortchanged.

As Pope Francis has said, we all must be stewards of truth, good stories, and healthy information flows over time. In a world where so many artificial realities challenge the virtue of wisdom, we can’t afford to farm out our pursuit of things which are definitive—sometimes so definitive that they transcend our understanding. And that’s okay.

We can give AI a penny for its thoughts, but we need to love our own thought processes much more, as individuals and as humanity. That requires our dissatisfaction when purveyors of facts give us only easy answers and partial explanations. Those must be seen as invitations to ask more questions and to seek more news hooks upon which we can mount our curiosity.

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