I’m Starting This Newsletter To Help Bust Out of Our Partisan News Environment

A declaration of independence from our polarized media

Image by Thomas Charters on Unsplash

For the past 15 years, I’ve worked as a journalist at a wide range of outlets.

I’ve served as a staff reporter for ThinkProgress, Alternet, The Intercept, and NewsNation.

I’ve contributed movie reviews to the Washington Examiner, book reviews to The New York Times, and I even made a pair of documentaries for Fox News.

Through my reporting, I’ve had my fair share of impact on the world (just ask Shri Thanedar), but as a journalist I’ve found myself increasingly frustrated at our partisan news environment.

If I have a story that appeals more to left-wing readers, I have to hunt for a progressive outlet to run it. If I have a column that hews closer to conservative beliefs, I have to run to a right-wing publication to publish it.

Not only does this mean a lot of legwork just to get my stories published, it means that readers on both sides rarely see my full spectrum of work.

This intense fracturing of the news landscape runs contrary to who I am as a person and also contrary to what I believe the news media should be doing in this country. I think progressives should be reading stories that humanize people who are anxious about immigration and impacted by violent crime, and I think that conservatives should be reading stories that document the brutality of our country’s prisons and the harsh realities of American-backed militarism abroad.

That’s why I’ve decided to put the bulk of my writing on this website and newsletter. The American Saga will be a place documenting the politics and people of the United States.

The goal is to appeal to a broad swath of Americans — not just people from one political tribe or region of the country. I’d like to do as much reporting as I can, but because it’s more time-intensive, I’ll also be doing a mix of commentary and opinion as well.

I want to cover everything from research showing what works and what doesn’t work in public policy, to trends in politics and culture that I think are worth dissecting and discussing, to the same kinds of solutions pieces I did at NewsNation where I talk to people tackling some of the country’s biggest problems.

My greatest fear in starting a publication like this is falling prey to audience capture. I’ve seen too many smart people, on both left and right, start to distort their writing to boost their readership or their revenue.

But while I encourage you to subscribe and give what you can — the more revenue I take in, the more I can invest into reporting, which is more time and resource-intensive — I can guarantee you that I have no intention of turning this into a partisan newsletter as that would defeat the entire point.

To that effect, I will encourage readers to offer critical feedback. What was something in this story that I missed? What should I have included in this column? Did I use any strawmen? What kinds of stories should I seek out that you aren’t seeing? Was there some development in the news you want me to expound more on?

The American Saga aims to live up to its namesake. You can’t talk about the story of America without including everyone. Later this week I’ll have a story that I think will appeal to readers on all sides of the spectrum, and I hope that the one to two pieces I publish every week will continue to live up to this ethos.

I encourage you to subscribe and, if you’re willing and able, to sign up to be a paid subscriber. I’m going to try my best to keep as much of the content free as possible because I think that news and news discussion should accessible to everyone. But the more people who contribute to the site, the more content I can keep free to everyone.

And when the stories and columns start rolling out, please be generous with your feedback. The American Saga isn’t my diary. We’re all responsible for telling the story of this great nation together. So let’s get to work.