Introducing 'Straight from the Hut'
For fans of Trail Mix, pudding fingers, independent journalism and the like.
Fuck it. We’ll do it live.
Welcome to Straight from the Hut, a limited-run 2024 campaign newsletter straight from the heart with scoops & analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
1. Why launch a newsletter now when we’re well beyond peak-Substack and newsletter saturation?
I resigned from The Daily Beast last month, but I had no plans to stop covering this election. Although I have some freelance stories in the works, I figured a Substack newsletter would accomplish a few things.
A.) Secure a spot for some of the good tips I get, including the dog days of opposition research story dropping for Straight from the Hut’s debut.
B.) Tide me over until my next full-time job. I’m not asking for more than a couple months of real estate in your inbox, tops. Paying the yearly or founding tier also helps get me on the road more often. Not even 10 people paying the yearly rate is enough to make a swing through a battleground state.
C.) A place to experiment. I’ve been quite humbled by the interest I’ve gotten from a number of outlets since leaving the Beast, and you’ll be able to follow the freelance pieces to come right here. But I’ve also been rediscovering what made me love journalism in the first place, and an independent newsletter is a great way to try new approaches to both writing and reporting.
2. My core audience
After a few years at local papers and coming up on five in the national media scene, I’ve been able to meet so many wonderful people both as sources and as readers. This newsletter is going to have inside scoops on the campaigns — not just Trump-Harris, but also from down ballot races which get less and less attention amid the decline of local news — but it is not aimed solely at campaign professionals.
Part of the appeal of doing a Substack is having somewhere to keep people updated on my clips, particularly my readers (aka friends of my parents and other lovely baby boomers I’ve met at the Keene Sentinel and Daily Gazette of Schenectady) who have normally followed me on Facebook. I keep enduring the schism of posting on both X and Threads as well as Instagram stories, but I haven’t been able to find a good distribution fit for those who don’t use those platforms.
3. What to expect
I’m going to publish when I have news to share. That could be closer to once a week or a few times per week, but it will always be original and respectful of your time (as well as your constant battle against push notifications and overcrowded inboxes).
4. Help get me on the road
I’m currently in the northern lower-peninsula of Michigan with some stories in the works, but there are plenty more hotbeds to explore between now and Election Day. Several trips to Ohio in the midterms laid the groundwork for my veepstakes reporting around J.D. Vance. As readers of my previous coverage can attest, I always try to have an eye for telling details.
For all of the post-COVID campaign recalibrations on the value of the campaign trail, there’s still nothing like face-to-face contact with both voters and the staff.
If you have more than $20.24 lying around, becoming a founding member or contributing your own custom subscription can go a long way to covering travel and getting this newsletter on the ground in more states.
