In my ongoing support and promotion of independent and nonprofit media on Bluesky, I decided to experiment with expanding that effort. As an editor for 15 years, I read, skim, and scroll through a lot of news sites daily. But I am a bit of an old head when it comes to online media. Having been chronically online for over 20 years, I fondly remember the days of scrolling through my RSS feeds (miss you, Google Reader), reading dozens of blog posts each day by very smart people on everything from pop culture to politics to personal diaries of interesting lives from folks I would never meet. I miss those days and what our media landscape has become.
Today, some of those same people, their successors, those inspired by them, and freelance and independent journalists are carrying on the torch of those early blog days through newsletters, social media, and independent media outlets. Fueled by my Bluesky feed and my daily media interests, I'm going to share stories from independent and nonprofit media that I think you should read, might have missed, or simply serve as great examples of why independent media matters. We'll see where this goes—maybe somewhere, or maybe just me tossing links into the wind like Gob Bluth on the beach.
OK, enough chatter. Read some stuff!
Alaska Ignored Warning Signs of a Budget Crisis. Now It Doesn’t Have Funding to Fix Crumbling Schools. (ProPublica) – A collaboration between ProPublica, NPR's Investigations team, and member station KYUK, this is a look at how Alaska lawmakers only budgeted $40 million of the nearly $800 million that districts say is needed to fix and maintain schools to keep them safe and operating. Gov. Mike Dunleavy then vetoed more than two-thirds of that.
How a Nazi-Obsessed Amateur Historian Went From Obscurity to the Top of Substack (Mother Jones) – With more than 170,000 subscribers, Darryl Cooper has the most popular history newsletter on Substack. Tucker Carlson hailed him as “the most important popular historian in America.” But dig a little deeper, and Cooper’s past is far more radical than anyone’s let on.
Trump Abandoned Police Reform. Fort Wayne is Paying the Price. (The Trace) – Shootings at the hands of officers have increased in Indiana's second-most populous city, fraying community trust in law enforcement as gun violence continues to rise.
8 Prisons in Virginia Lack AC in 108-Degree Heat. I Am Stuck in One of Them. (Truthout) – An op-ed from writer Tutankhamon Waterman, who is currently incarcerated in Virginia. He writes: "This heat makes everybody aggressive, unable to think about anybody but themselves as they do whatever they can to cool off. I understand, so I place myself in harm’s way for older men who could be my father."
The Sydney Sweeney Jeans Ad "Backlash" Is Mostly Fake (The Present Age) – Parker Molloy writes about that Sydney Sweeney ad and how a handful of TikTok comments became a national controversy about eugenics, Democrats, and denim. Parker is so good at cutting through Internet rage bait and manufactured right-wing controversies. I highly encourage you to read her newsletter regularly and become a paid subscriber if you can.
ABOUT
Oh, and in case you're wondering, "Who the hell are you?" That's fair. I'm Steve. I'm a very online human, reader and news junkie. I'm a journalist and news editor who worked mostly in public media for 15 years, a decade of that at NPR in Washington, D.C. I'm still doing a bit of that, but I'm currently looking for new ways to write and edit and contribute to navigating all of our current chaos without irreparably damaging my psyche. Nice to meet you. Say hi on Bluesky. Be well!