What we leave behind

Pondering my future...

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about legacy lately. Joe Biden’s legacy (which I will talk about with

Damon Linker

at 2 pm eastern today! Check it out!) Donald Trump’s legacy. And yes, because I am an egotist, my own legacy.

To be clear: “Legacy” may well be overstating things — by a lot — when it comes to the mark my journalism and writing will leave. I am no president. I am well aware of that.

But, as I get older and deeper into my writing and reporting career, I do find myself thinking of What It All Means and what I want to leave behind.

To that end, this Sports Illustrated profile of Adrian Wojnarowski, the preeminent news-breaking reporter on the NBA who walked away from it all a few months ago, hit me hard (in a good way!). This paragraph in particular (bolding is mine):

Cancer didn’t force him out, Woj insists. But it did bring some clarity. “I didn’t want to spend one more day of my life waiting on someone’s MRI or hitting an agent at 1 a.m. about an ankle sprain,” he says. In May, Woj traveled to Rogers, Ark., for a memorial for Chris Mortensen, the longtime NFL insider who died in March from throat cancer. Mortensen spent more than three decades at ESPN. When Woj arrived in Bristol in 2017, Mortensen was among the first to welcome him. Many ESPNers made the trip to Arkansas. What Woj was struck by was how many did not. “It made me remember that the job isn’t everything,” Woj says. “In the end it’s just going to be your family and close friends. And it’s also, like, nobody gives a s---. Nobody remembers [breaking stories] in the end. It’s just vapor.”

That’s a pretty striking sentiment coming from Woj, who made millions by breaking every little bit of news — A sprained ankle! An ACL tear! A fight at practice! — in and around the NBA for more than a decade.

It’s the last line of that Woj quote that really got to me: “Nobody remembers [breaking stories] in the end. It’s just vapor.”

I am not in the breaking news business. I got out of it a long time ago because, well, I wanted off the same hamster wheel that Woj was on for so long. And, candidly, because I thought — to Woj’s point — that breaking news is a thankless game. No one remembers any one thing you break — especially now in a world of social media in which scoops are immediately, well, scooped up and repurposed within minutes.

Reading the Woj story reminded me of a conversation I had with Garrett Graff, a longtime journalist and now hugely successful book writer, a few months back. (I wrote about Garrett here.)

In that chat, Garrett urged me to find time to write some longer pieces with a longer tail. Pieces that weren’t just about the happenings on the campaign trail that day — or even that week. Pieces that we call, in the journalism business, “evergreens” — meaning you can read it today or a year from now and still get value from it.

That sort of thinking is what led Garrett, he explained to me, into book-writing. The desire to leave something more behind than “I broke that one story about that House member who is retiring.” That hit home.

Garrett didn’t say to abandon the sort of day-to-day analysis I was doing but suggested rather that I supplement it with posts that had the possibility of a longer shelf life.

I’ve been thinking about that conversation ever since — and even more since reading Woj’s quotes. (I do a LOT of thinking post-election.)

And, to be honest, I don’t have a fully-formed answer or plan just yet. But I have a few thoughts. So I thought I would share.

First, I am not going to stop writing the sort of political analysis that (most of) you come here for. I love doing that. It keeps me sharp. It focuses my mind. And it’s fun and interesting.

Second, I DO have a few ideas on how to expand this offering beyond just those sorts of pieces. Here’s my working list — in no particular order:

• A series — and I haven’t decided if it should be video, audio or written (or all three!) on the weirdest elections in history. This post got me thinking about the subject — and I think there is a TON of fun/interesting/hilarious nuggets to be mined from our past elections. (If you have a race in mind that you want to see me do a deep dive on, out it in the comments!)

• I want to dig deep(er) into the world of youth sports — with a special focus on travel sports. My goal is to do a series of reported pieces/interviews etc. on the subject over the coming months. Whether you have a kid in that world (like I do) or not, the professionalization of this stuff is wild — and has lots and lots of real-world consequences. I want to shine a light on that.

• More books coverage. I read. A lot. (I am currently making my way through “11/22/63” by Stephen King.) I’d like to share that passion more here — whether it be an occasional book review or a Q and A with an author. (This very much includes political books — fiction and nonfiction.) Sidebar: If you don’t subscribe to

  Bookpeach
  , you should!

• More Substack live videos with other content creators in and around my space (like the one I am doing with

  Damon Linker
  today!) If you have suggestions on who in the Substack world (or outside of it) you’d like to see me talk to, throw it in the comments section!

• More sports writing. I decided to end

  The Replay
  , my sports nostalgia Substack. (Candidly, it didn’t sense to have two separate Substacks.) But I really love sports — college and pro — and want to do more analysis of that world.

• My faith journey. I’ve written two posts — this is the more recent one — about my search for faith. The response — guidance, thoughts, empathy — has been amazing. Documenting my progress (or lack thereof) on this journey is a way to hold myself accountable and share a bit of my inner life with you. And I want to keep doing it.

Don’t take every idea on that list to the bank. I am still sorting through all of this — and trying to figure out how (and what) to focus on in the coming months. I don’t know, honestly, if I will have time to do everything I want to do.

But I wanted to let you in on how I am thinking these days. I want to make sure that the sum total of my work — here and on YouTube especially — carries on. That it means something beyond just the daily ephemera that cascades through your social media feeds and your email inboxes.

Thanks for joining me on this journey — whether you were among the first 100 subscribers or you just signed up today. Your support of me is hugely meaningful.

If you would like to support me financially as I seek to build and broaden what I am doing here, you can do it below. It’s $6 a month or $60 or the entire year.

Thanks.

— Chris