Welcome Back to Substack!

I’m excited to return to the free speech platform that enabled my independent journalism to thrive, and that has since grown in so many ways.

As many of you know, Substack is where I found a home for my journalism when I left The Intercept, the media outlet I had co-founded, shortly before the 2020 election. (The censorship saga that caused my resignation has been amply reported and need not be rehashed here.) Although Substack at the time was a relatively unknown platform still in its incipient stages — five years fly by! — it turned out to be the ideal place for the kind of independent journalism I have always sought to do.

Combining a steadfast commitment to free speech with innovative technologies that create a direct relationship between journalist and reader, Substack allowed not only my journalism but that of so many others to thrive. I left in 2022 solely because Rumble convinced me of its similarly steadfast resistance to censorship efforts, and because I was enticed by the opportunity (and challenge) of using a nightly live program to bolster the journalism we were doing, allowing us to reach an audience that prefers to consume analysis and reporting through video rather than through writing alone.

My experience at Rumble was superb in all ways, and I have nothing but good things to say about the authenticity of their commitment to the supreme task of preserving free speech on the internet. But producing SYSTEM UPDATE — our live nightly show — was every bit as intense and consuming as friends with experience in live production had warned, and I particularly missed the ability to do the type of work that has always been the bedrock of my journalism: long-form articles, deep investigations, and evidence-based analysis. So, after three full years of producing and hosting SYSTEM UPDATE, more or less every weeknight, we announced that last Friday’s show would be our last, and that we were returning to Substack. And thus, as of today, here we are.

One of the most exciting aspects of returning here is how much Substack has grown in essentially every way. Not only is its credibility far more widely recognized than when I first joined, and not only have the number of people who read and subscribe rapidly expanded, but there are also now far more features that allow entirely new ways of reporting, analyzing, and communicating.

Although my work will heavily feature the kind of long-form articles I have always produced, I intend to use all of Substack’s tools for engaging with our readership. We absolutely will continue to produce and post video-first segments when they are the best means of illustrating vital facts, or when conducting interviews, as we have been doing on our YouTube channel over the past several months.

I am particularly excited about Substack’s Notes feature, which enables me to post short items throughout the day as a means of triggering ongoing conversations with our subscribers. And the ability to have Substack host not only video segments but also podcasts is something we intend to use as well. Review our subscription tiers for access to all of these features.

Two of my most passionate causes over the last decade have been the urgency of supporting and building independent media as an alternative to corporate media, and the related, paramount need to preserve and defend free expression online. Those missions are more vital than ever, especially as both are under sustained and systemic attack from all kinds of state and non-state actors determined to regain control of the flow of information.

Beyond that, the topics I have long most passionately covered — foreign wars, foreign policy, the surveillance state, the U.S. security state, threats to civil liberties and free speech — are, in many ways, more pressing than ever. Although many of those developments are grim, they leave me as motivated and impassioned to pursue this work as ever. Returning to Substack and rebuilding this platform with all of you is gratifying and invigorating in the extreme.