Watching what’s been happening in the news over the last few weeks has shown me that the media mainstream needs to be fought tooth and nail by conscientious journalists. I’m here to do so.

Today, I am embarking on a new chapter of my tech news and policy newsletter. After 150 issues (issues 1 - 54 in 2019, issues 55 - 150 in 2020), which was as close as I could get to publishing it every workday for more than a year, I have decided that I need a change. I want to get away from daily links to interesting stories with only sparse commentary. I feel that this daily grind doesn’t benefit me and it doesn’t benefit you much either. I’m just punishing myself for a rather slim return on investment for either of us.

That is why I am now moving to a more longform style for this newsletter. The goal is to still pick out the most interesting and most badly reported stories. But I will write more about them. You will get less newsletters and less of an overview, but more in-depth – and hopefully more valuable – information on the topic. Information that you won’t get anywhere else. My goal here is to fix the bad, biased reporting I see going on all around me. And to give you reliable information from someone who is truly independent and not beholden to any newsroom politics or advertiser influence. Someone who’s political leanings are well documented in thousands of hours of freely available podcasts (for the latest see The Private Citizen) and also in hundreds of posts on my blog.

For this, I’ve decided to move to Substack. In search of a partner who can reliably deliver my newsletters to readers and who provides a path to possibly try to get paid for my work later on down the road – should that prove necessary for my continued editorial independence – Substack seems to be the right place right now. It’s where Glenn Greenwald went after his remarkable resignation at The Intercept to publish his incredibly important and well-researched opinion piece on the US media burying traces of Joe Biden’s corruption in Ukraine. I believe he followed his friend Matt Taibbi to the platform, who’s picked it to publish great journalistic work that would not be possible in a traditional newsroom setting. Substack is developing into the de facto platform for independent, freelance journalists trying to overcome and expose the deep bias in more traditional outlets. Even John C. Dvorak is publishing here now, one of my most important role models for how critical tech journalism should be conducted. And I believe Substack is where I want to be, too.

Because the format of the newsletter is changing, I’ve changed its name to reflect this: Unfuck the News is, in essence, what I’m trying to do here. You deserve better news and a renegade freelance operative not influenced by newsroom politics or advertising money is your best shot at getting it.

I will still be writing about gadgets, operating systems, video games and more political topics like security and privacy. And I will do it in my usual critical, occasionally probably even scathing, manner. What’s changing is the frequency with which I do it, as I’m trying to provide you quality over quantity. If you’re already subscribed to my newsletter, there’s no need to change anything. You will continue to receive everything I publish as part of this new project directly into your inbox.

If you aren’t subscribed yet, you can do so here.

I hope you enjoy the new direction I’m taking with this. As usual, please let me know what you think. The easiest way to do so is to reply to a newsletter email.

Header image: The WaPo’s historic newsroom (Photo: Tom Allen / The Washington Post)