What I'm doing here

A welcome for new subscribers.

We’ve had a pretty massive influx of subscribers — paid and free — over the past few weeks so I thought I would take the downtime offered by Labor Day weekend to do a bit of housekeeping.

1. Welcome. If you are new, thank you! I am always grateful for people who find my journalism. I hope you enjoy yourselves here.

2. What I am doing. When I started this newsletter nine months ago, I did it because I wanted do something a little different than most news coverage was doing. To my mind, most coverage focuses on the “what” of an event — the basics of what happened — as opposed to the “so what” (why does this matter) and “now what” (what’s next in the story). This then is a primarily an analysis blog — reflecting on and contextualizing what is happening the political world.

3. What (else) I am doing. I am not just writing about politics. I am a dad of two boys (age 14 and 11), a husband and a son. I am going through a major life transition — I wad laid off by CNN last year — and have found that writing about the ups and down in my life these days gives me real solace (and, I hope, makes other people feel not so alone.) So, I will do some personal essays from time to time in this space.

4. How I am doing it. My goal, always, in my writing is to be transparent, fair and honest. I will write (a lot) about the weaknesses inherent in Donald Trump’s candidacy. But I will also write about voter concerns with Joe Biden’s age. I know that writing a more predictably partisan newsletter might help me grow faster. But it’s not who I am. I tend to try to see both sides of things and try to understand how they all fit together in the broader puzzle.

5. Why I am doing it. Post-CNN, I was looking for a way to stay engaged in the political debate. And writing has always been where I found happiness. Building this community has reminded me what I love about journalism — the ability to analyze and synthesize the news for an engaged, smart and thoughtful audience.

So, that’s how we got to today. But I want to know where you want us to go from here. Please let me know — using the comments section — what else you’d like to see in this space. Whether that’s other topics you want to see me take on or any other suggestions you might have.

A final note: I am going to be tailoring more and more content to paid subscribers as the year continues to I would urge you to consider becoming paid if you aren’t already. It’s only $5 a month or $50 a year — one of the cheaper Substacks out there!