update

a vibe shift is coming

Heyyy everyone,

I just want to tell you that I still exist, and explain why it’s been quiet here. The past several months have been pretty busy. My wife and I had a kid, and we moved across the country. I feel both exhausted and alert, like I’m at war, but in a good way.

Also, the story I’ve spent covering the most over the past 5 years—the corruption of the LA City Attorney’s Office and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power—is wrapping up, at least here. It’s time to move on.

So I’ve been thinking about how this newsletter could evolve. The Debaser has been going on in some form or another, in stops and starts, for over 15 years now. It started as a zine in Central Connecticut that I designed and printed and got ads for right after college because the alternative weekly I briefly worked at and grew up reading, the Hartford Advocate, was not really alt anymore. It was owned by a large media company and indistinguishable from our other daily newspapers. So some friends and I put out the Debaser. One issue had a huge dick on the cover, and we stuffed them in newspaper bins all over. We were big on Worst Of lists and really personal stories no one else would run. Then for a while it was a Tumblr, covering local politics and writing hit pieces on polite local leaders who clearly were just managing a post-industrial city in decline, and nothing else. I’d get real petty, publishing the email chains of editors I harassed because I was bored and didn’t like their coverage. Our heroes were the eXile’s Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi.

That sense of troublemaking and messiness is something that has been lost in a media world that has grown increasingly academic, serious, and banal, while kissing the ring of celebrities, companies and those in power in order to get a piece of their social media following.

Each incarnation of Debaser has been pretty different, even though I’ve never changed the name (I swear I heard the Pixies song after I picked the name). And although its focus on geography has always shifted, the constant has been politics, humor, and culture, through my weird little filter. I’m not The Debaser. It’s the evil dorks and busy professionals in tech and academia who won’t leave us alone that have debased us. Like, I never met anyone who read the New Yorker and actually made the world a better place. I never learned anything from Joe Rogan or The Daily Caller. Nobody listens to Pod Save America.

To be honest, I don’t know where this is going next. But it’s still going to continue, and I really appreciate those of you who subscribe, whether paid or not, or those who even just occasionally open up this email once a year. I hate to be that “I’ve been writing a novel” guy, but I have some fiction stories I might start serializing. It’s a comedy, but the parts that are funny might be depressing, and the depressing parts might be funny, I have no idea. It’s about the last newspaper on the planet, a place where nothing works and the employees are way weirder than the things they cover. If this sounds vaguely interesting to you, shoot me a response to this email. If not, I am genuinely curious as to what you would like to see covered here. It doesn’t have to be LA-focused. Actually I live in Illinois now. So whatever. Should I go full autistic Slav and write only about Poland? Should I write about the suburbs? I was thinking about something like, Your Dying Suburban Weekly Newspaper through the eyes of a cooked Dad who dresses like he doesn’t listen to The Daily. Y/N?

Message me right now please! Also this is my new vibe: