thenation--2020-10-26--‘PEN15’ Is So Good It Hurts

‘PEN15’ Is So Good It Hurts

In 1998 , the doll company American Girl published a cheerful guide to female puberty titled The Care and Keeping of You .
The slim volume included sections on body hair , acne , bras , hygiene , peer pressure , and menstruation , as well as a helpful—if controversial—graphic explaining how to insert a tampon .
“ The more you know about your body , the less confusing and embarrassing growing up will seem—and the easier it will be to talk about , ” read an introductory letter to readers .
But even the most well-intentioned , body-positive training @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the horrors of middle school .
It ’ s a time depicted with unflinching cringe in the Hulu series PEN15 .
Set in the year 2000 , the show follows best friends Anna Kone ( Anna Konkle ) and Maya Ishii-Peters ( Maya Erskine ) as they begin seventh grade .
Throughout the first season , the pair experience many firsts , together and apart : kisses , periods , cigarettes , masturbation , thongs , and AIM accounts .
Everything they experience is shared , to the extent that it can be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gel pen in a sea of blue and black writing utensils , ” Anna tells Maya after the latter is cruelly dubbed the “ UGIS ” ( Ugliest Girl in School ) .
They promise to struggle through middle school together .
After all , as Anna points out , “ It ’ s not like it ’ s gon na last forever.
” But what immediately sets PEN15 apart from other coming-of-age media is that Maya and Anna are not actually middle schoolers .
The two thirtysomething actors play versions of their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the cast are actual tweens ; it ’ s 13 going on 30 taken to the extreme .
There ’ s an inherent absurdity in watching two adult women clad in prominent orthodontia swoon over Justin Bieber clones half their height .
While the show ’ s child actors are remarkable , in their reenactment of early 2000s middle school drama , Erskine and Konkle engage in something like high-budget therapeutic roleplay .
In the process of writing the show , they reflected on their juvenile traumas , but when performing them , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ When I was acting it , and I had the actual kids being mean to me , it opened up a well of emotion I was not prepared for , ” Erskine told Vulture about an episode that finds Maya confronted with microaggressions and outright racism .
“ I just started bawling.
” The catharsis bursts through the screen .
The first half of PEN15 ’ s second season picks up two days after the events of the first season ’ s finale , which includes an unexpected confession and the friends getting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ popular boy Brandt at a school dance .
( The second season has been broken into two parts after production was delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic . )
After Maya and Anna essentially leak their own secret at a pool party , their peers begin to shame them about the “ threesome.
” “ Just thought you should know that everyone is saying that you ’ re desperate sluts , ” one classmate explains to them during P.E .
“ And what makes me really sad is that you ’ ve changed , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Anna have changed since their first day of seventh grade , as is only natural .
But while the girls still play with dolls and predict their future lives through games of MASH , PEN15 ’ s second season moves further away from the innocence of adolescence toward the trauma and heartbreak of teenagedom .
The show ’ s transition into darker territory reflects the cruel reality that growing up is not a smooth transition ; it ’ s something we collide with , a fight to find our footing throughout .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the pair join the school ’ s ( all male ) wrestling team with mixed intentions : Maya wants to follow ( and fight ) Brandt , and though Anna initially joins to keep her friend company , she discovers an outlet for the anger and helplessness she feels about her parents ’ divorce .
But they both end up crushed when the boys , including Maya and Anna ’ s friend Sam , make fun of them for having “ BSBs ” : a “ big smell bush that smells like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the friends on the phone , gazing at their respective vaginas .
As Anna looks at herself through the reflection of a Caboodle makeup box , Maya spritzes her vulva with perfume , with painful results .
“ Be careful with it , ” Anna tells her .
“ Maybe it doesn ’ t like that.
” Maya furrows her brow and sprays again , harder .
In PEN15 ’ s first season , Maya becomes obsessed with , and then ashamed of , masturbation .
Eventually she divulges her habit to Anna @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pleasuring herself .
“ You don ’ t feel gross ?
” Maya asks .
“ How gross can I feel if you do it , too ?
” Anna responds .
But after they are bullied for the closet incident , the pair have no one to reassure them about their burgeoning sexuality .
Going through puberty can make you feel like a human pin cushion , overly sensitive to every prick .
Maya and Anna are affecting avatars for this experience : They are overwhelmed with anxiety about how the world @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and ears are trained on them .
“ You are saying his name so loud , ” Maya hisses at Anna when she merely whispers Brandt ’ s name .
Everything feels like a personal affront , and the stakes of every social interaction seem like life or death .
In Jeffrey Eugenides ’ s 1993 novel The Virgin Suicides , a doctor chides a teenage character after she unsuccessfully tries to kill herself .
She ’ s just a kid , he tells her .
How can she be in so much @ @ @ @ @ @ @ own life ?
“ Obviously , doctor , ” she replies , “ you ’ ve never been a thirteen-year-old-girl.
” For a brief moment , the friends believe themselves to be witches , using fantasy to create the illusion that they have control over their lives .
They use their powers to wish for the things they imagine will improve their conditions : blonde hair and no body hair for Maya , more money and white jeans for Anna .
“ I wish for a group of friends that love us , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Popularity , in the realm of middle school , is seen as invincibility , so they are thrilled to soon after make a new friend .
Maura is a new girl who talks a big game and has a clearly fake best friend who she claims is a modern-day Doogie Howser .
The Tangle of Desire and Class in ‘ Normal People ’ While PEN15 often alludes to status as it relates to the middle school pecking order , issues of class and privilege were largely unspoken until Maura ’ s introduction .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ confidence and awed by her extensive toy chest , stocked snack pantry , and the home intercom system she uses to boss her mom around .
They quickly emulate Maura ’ s habits of obnoxiously throwing around words like “ fool ” and “ loaded , ” being nasty to every adult in sight , and finding value solely in brand names .
Without trying too hard , the show illustrates how young people—especially those struggling with alienation , depression , or bullying—can be convinced by cultural pressures that they are somehow lacking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ head when Maya , Anna , and their mothers go on a shopping trip .
To Maya and Anna , every word that comes out of their parents ’ mouths is overly critical , embarrassing , and out of touch .
To their mothers , who are simply trying to help , their daughters seem to have been suddenly possessed by mall demons .
To say this episode was triggering would be an understatement : After watching it , I had to take a break from the show for several days .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ didn ’ t know still existed , and a series of repressed memories floated to the surface : myself in a dressing room with my own mother , in hysterics because I couldn ’ t bear to look at myself in the mirror ; my mother in tears , heartbroken over her daughter ’ s self-loathing .
I texted a friend about how painful the show felt .
“ It ’ s so good but it hurts , ” she said in response .
After a traumatic slumber party and a falling out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she has strayed from herself .
As she soaks in a yuzu bath with her mother , Yuki ( performed with moving compassion by Erskine ’ s real-life mom , Mutsuko Erskine ) , she is reminded of her own worth .
“ Girls or women are like salad bowls , you know ?
” Yuki tells her daughter .
“ You put everything in one bowl .
You only get to keep what ’ s most important to you because there ’ s not much room in the salad bowl.
” Maya @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ bowl ” before placing a single yuzu on her head , which represents Anna , something she wants to keep and cherish .
“ Ah , that ’ s good , ” Yuki says .
“ You ’ re gon na be OK. ” Though PEN15 ’ s sun still revolves around Maya and Anna ’ s friendship , it also digs into the nuances of its side characters .
There ’ s a subplot about the changing relationship between the girls ’ male counterparts , as Sam falls in with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ endearingly dweeby friends , Gabe and Jafeer .
Gabe , meanwhile , is starting to come to terms with his own sexuality in an early aughts culture in which “ gay ” is an insult casually thrown around in hallways .
As characters like Gabe and Sam are fleshed out , it feels telling that the show ’ s “ villains ” remain rather two-dimensional .
There ’ s no explanation for why Brandt and Maura are so toxic , no visible inciting incident for their behavior .
It ’ s something that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cruelty is rootless , making it that much harder for those left in its wake to comprehend .
This empathy also extends to the show ’ s adult characters , particularly Anna ’ s youthful , reiki-practicing mother .
As her parents ’ separation drags on , Anna starts to villainize her mother , who wants to move forward with the divorce , and revere her father , who tells Anna that her mother is to blame for the split .
In the final episode , Anna realizes that her mother always shows @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s not always appreciated .
Like the scene at the store , it ’ s a finely wrought portrait of mother-daughter relationships .
“ I just also , like , want to say that I ’ m sorry that I ’ m , like , kind of not nice to you sometimes , ” she tearfully tells her mother , before adding that her father owes her an apology as well .
Anna and her mother , like Maya and hers , are deeply connected , and while they have the ability @ @ @ @ @ @ @ else can , they are bound together by the most rich and complex love .
At the start of PEN15 ’ s second season , when Maya and Anna are told they have “ changed , ” the word is associated with something negative and undesirable .
By the season ’ s end , this process has grown a bit less scary thanks , more or less , to trial and error .
There ’ s no real guide for coming of age , and even as adults revisiting this time , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ might be another way of saying that we are always learning from our younger selves .

In 1998, the doll company American Girl published a cheerful guide to female puberty titled The Care and Keeping of You. The slim volume included sections on body hair, acne, bras, hygiene, peer pressure, and menstruation, as well as a helpful—if controversial—graphic explaining how to insert a tampon. “The more you know about your body, the less confusing and embarrassing growing up will seem—and the easier it will be to talk about,” read an introductory letter to readers.
But even the most well-intentioned, body-positive training manual cannot fully prepare anyone for the horrors of middle school. It’s a time depicted with unflinching cringe in the Hulu series PEN15. Set in the year 2000, the show follows best friends Anna Kone (Anna Konkle) and Maya Ishii-Peters (Maya Erskine) as they begin seventh grade. Throughout the first season, the pair experience many firsts, together and apart: kisses, periods, cigarettes, masturbation, thongs, and AIM accounts. Everything they experience is shared, to the extent that it can be. “You are my actual rainbow gel pen in a sea of blue and black writing utensils,” Anna tells Maya after the latter is cruelly dubbed the “UGIS” (Ugliest Girl in School). They promise to struggle through middle school together. After all, as Anna points out, “It’s not like it’s gonna last forever.”
But what immediately sets PEN15 apart from other coming-of-age media is that Maya and Anna are not actually middle schoolers. The two thirtysomething actors play versions of their younger selves, while the rest of the cast are actual tweens; it’s 13 going on 30 taken to the extreme. There’s an inherent absurdity in watching two adult women clad in prominent orthodontia swoon over Justin Bieber clones half their height. While the show’s child actors are remarkable, in their reenactment of early 2000s middle school drama, Erskine and Konkle engage in something like high-budget therapeutic roleplay. In the process of writing the show, they reflected on their juvenile traumas, but when performing them, the pair discovered unresolved pain. “When I was acting it, and I had the actual kids being mean to me, it opened up a well of emotion I was not prepared for,” Erskine told Vulture about an episode that finds Maya confronted with microaggressions and outright racism. “I just started bawling.” The catharsis bursts through the screen.
The first half of PEN15’s second season picks up two days after the events of the first season’s finale, which includes an unexpected confession and the friends getting felt up side-by-side in a closet by popular boy Brandt at a school dance. (The second season has been broken into two parts after production was delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic.) After Maya and Anna essentially leak their own secret at a pool party, their peers begin to shame them about the “threesome.” “Just thought you should know that everyone is saying that you’re desperate sluts,” one classmate explains to them during P.E. “And what makes me really sad is that you’ve changed, like, a lot.” Maya and Anna have changed since their first day of seventh grade, as is only natural. But while the girls still play with dolls and predict their future lives through games of MASH, PEN15’s second season moves further away from the innocence of adolescence toward the trauma and heartbreak of teenagedom. The show’s transition into darker territory reflects the cruel reality that growing up is not a smooth transition; it’s something we collide with, a fight to find our footing throughout. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
In one early episode of the second season, the pair join the school’s (all male) wrestling team with mixed intentions: Maya wants to follow (and fight) Brandt, and though Anna initially joins to keep her friend company, she discovers an outlet for the anger and helplessness she feels about her parents’ divorce. But they both end up crushed when the boys, including Maya and Anna’s friend Sam, make fun of them for having “BSBs”: a “big smell bush that smells like fish.” Cut to a scene of the friends on the phone, gazing at their respective vaginas. As Anna looks at herself through the reflection of a Caboodle makeup box, Maya spritzes her vulva with perfume, with painful results. “Be careful with it,” Anna tells her. “Maybe it doesn’t like that.” Maya furrows her brow and sprays again, harder.
In PEN15’s first season, Maya becomes obsessed with, and then ashamed of, masturbation. Eventually she divulges her habit to Anna, who reveals that she also enjoys pleasuring herself. “You don’t feel gross?” Maya asks. “How gross can I feel if you do it, too?” Anna responds. But after they are bullied for the closet incident, the pair have no one to reassure them about their burgeoning sexuality. Going through puberty can make you feel like a human pin cushion, overly sensitive to every prick. Maya and Anna are affecting avatars for this experience: They are overwhelmed with anxiety about how the world perceives them, as if all eyes and ears are trained on them. “You are saying his name so loud,” Maya hisses at Anna when she merely whispers Brandt’s name. Everything feels like a personal affront, and the stakes of every social interaction seem like life or death. In Jeffrey Eugenides’s 1993 novel The Virgin Suicides, a doctor chides a teenage character after she unsuccessfully tries to kill herself. She’s just a kid, he tells her. How can she be in so much pain that she wants to end her own life? “Obviously, doctor,” she replies, “you’ve never been a thirteen-year-old-girl.”
For a brief moment, the friends believe themselves to be witches, using fantasy to create the illusion that they have control over their lives. They use their powers to wish for the things they imagine will improve their conditions: blonde hair and no body hair for Maya, more money and white jeans for Anna. “I wish for a group of friends that love us,” Maya screams into the woods. Popularity, in the realm of middle school, is seen as invincibility, so they are thrilled to soon after make a new friend. Maura is a new girl who talks a big game and has a clearly fake best friend who she claims is a modern-day Doogie Howser. Related Article The Tangle of Desire and Class in ‘Normal People’ Erin Schwartz
While PEN15 often alludes to status as it relates to the middle school pecking order, issues of class and privilege were largely unspoken until Maura’s introduction. Maya and Anna are impressed by her confidence and awed by her extensive toy chest, stocked snack pantry, and the home intercom system she uses to boss her mom around. They quickly emulate Maura’s habits of obnoxiously throwing around words like “fool” and “loaded,” being nasty to every adult in sight, and finding value solely in brand names. Without trying too hard, the show illustrates how young people—especially those struggling with alienation, depression, or bullying—can be convinced by cultural pressures that they are somehow lacking.
Their newfound insecurities come to a head when Maya, Anna, and their mothers go on a shopping trip. To Maya and Anna, every word that comes out of their parents’ mouths is overly critical, embarrassing, and out of touch. To their mothers, who are simply trying to help, their daughters seem to have been suddenly possessed by mall demons. To say this episode was triggering would be an understatement: After watching it, I had to take a break from the show for several days. The scab had fallen off a wound I didn’t know still existed, and a series of repressed memories floated to the surface: myself in a dressing room with my own mother, in hysterics because I couldn’t bear to look at myself in the mirror; my mother in tears, heartbroken over her daughter’s self-loathing. I texted a friend about how painful the show felt. “It’s so good but it hurts,” she said in response.
After a traumatic slumber party and a falling out with Anna, Maya realizes how far she has strayed from herself. As she soaks in a yuzu bath with her mother, Yuki (performed with moving compassion by Erskine’s real-life mom, Mutsuko Erskine), she is reminded of her own worth. “Girls or women are like salad bowls, you know?” Yuki tells her daughter. “You put everything in one bowl. You only get to keep what’s most important to you because there’s not much room in the salad bowl.” Maya pantomimes unloading some invisible junk from her “bowl” before placing a single yuzu on her head, which represents Anna, something she wants to keep and cherish. “Ah, that’s good,” Yuki says. “You’re gonna be OK.”
Though PEN15’s sun still revolves around Maya and Anna’s friendship, it also digs into the nuances of its side characters. There’s a subplot about the changing relationship between the girls’ male counterparts, as Sam falls in with the popular crowd, temporarily leaving behind his endearingly dweeby friends, Gabe and Jafeer. Gabe, meanwhile, is starting to come to terms with his own sexuality in an early aughts culture in which “gay” is an insult casually thrown around in hallways. As characters like Gabe and Sam are fleshed out, it feels telling that the show’s “villains” remain rather two-dimensional. There’s no explanation for why Brandt and Maura are so toxic, no visible inciting incident for their behavior. It’s something that makes their behavior all the more horrifying—their cruelty is rootless, making it that much harder for those left in its wake to comprehend.
This empathy also extends to the show’s adult characters, particularly Anna’s youthful, reiki-practicing mother. As her parents’ separation drags on, Anna starts to villainize her mother, who wants to move forward with the divorce, and revere her father, who tells Anna that her mother is to blame for the split. In the final episode, Anna realizes that her mother always shows up for her, even if it’s not always appreciated. Like the scene at the store, it’s a finely wrought portrait of mother-daughter relationships. “I just also, like, want to say that I’m sorry that I’m, like, kind of not nice to you sometimes,” she tearfully tells her mother, before adding that her father owes her an apology as well. Anna and her mother, like Maya and hers, are deeply connected, and while they have the ability to hurt each other like no one else can, they are bound together by the most rich and complex love. At the start of PEN15’s second season, when Maya and Anna are told they have “changed,” the word is associated with something negative and undesirable. By the season’s end, this process has grown a bit less scary thanks, more or less, to trial and error. There’s no real guide for coming of age, and even as adults revisiting this time, the pain can still feel fresh. Which might be another way of saying that we are always learning from our younger selves.


thenation--2020-10-26--Progressive Democrats Sweep Rhode Island

On September 8 , the edifice of power that Rhode Island ’ s Democratic Party machine held over the statehouse was revealed to be a mostly empty facade .
Rhode Island progressives ousted eight incumbents in the state ’ s Democratic primaries , and five more won open seats , forming one of the latest , and most sweeping , waves of primary challenges from the left to a state Democratic Party .
After over a decade of attempting to win legislative victories by pressuring elected officials from outside the statehouse , progressive organizations in the state had tried something @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lawmakers with the hopes of winning a few seats .
Across the state , candidates without conventional political experience , backed primarily by new organizations diving into local electoral politics , went up against conservative Democrats .
Unlike similar movements to primary local conservative Democrats , like Reclaim Philadelphia and No IDC NY , the Rhode Island effort was not coordinated by a single organization and did not zero in on top leadership .
Instead , it was a come-one-come-all effort , organized and supported by a half-dozen groups recruiting , running , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Working Families Party , local Sunrise chapters , a new organization called the Rhode Island Political Cooperative ( RIPC ) , a group of former volunteers for Bernie Sanders ’ s 2020 primary campaign called Reclaim RI , and the Providence Democratic Socialists of America .
Rather than exercising careful discretion in who they were primarying , they went after any incumbent who was working with party leadership .
And it worked .
Dianne Feinstein Demonstrates Why Democratic Challenges to Democratic Incumbents Are Necessary In Providence , David Morales , a 22-year-old @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ousted incumbent representative Daniel McKiernan .
In a campaign mailer , McKiernan had accused Morales of being “ part of a national trend by the far left to gain influence in states such as ours.
” But if there was a trend , it was coming from communities within Rhode Island .
In Cranston , Brandon Potter , a former car salesman who lost his job during the pandemic , ousted a one-term Democrat by 19 points .
In Central Falls , city councilor and Brown PhD student Jonathon Acosta beat the incumbent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Providence , Cynthia Mendes , a single working mother running with the RIPC , won perhaps the most stunning upset of the primary , ousting the Senate finance committee chairman by over 20 percentage points .
As Mendes told The Nation : “ If you ’ re not working for people , you will be replaced.
” Rhode Island ’ s Democratic Party machine stands out , even among New England ’ s notorious array , for its conservatism and corruption .
The Democratic Party controls state politics , and one person effectively @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nicholas Mattiello .
The legislature ’ s rules are written to require the speaker ’ s ( or Senate president ’ s ) approval for bills to leave committee , and the speaker controls millions of dollars of funds to allocate to legislative districts .
The party ’ s stronghold has long extended to primary elections .
Party-endorsed candidates appear on the primary ballot with a star next to their name—Rhode Island is one of two states to allow this practice—and leadership PACs donate tens of thousands of dollars to their allies ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Party endorsed Michael Earnheart , a Trump-supporting challenger , against the incumbent representative , Moira Walsh , who frequently opposed the speaker .
Over the past decade , this faction has used its power to block legislation to raise the minimum wage to $ 15 , prevent action on climate change , and forestall gun safety laws , all while passing budgets that cut Medicaid and grant corporate tax breaks .
In response , the state ’ s progressive organizations have coalesced around running Democrats with platforms aligned with the growing left-wing coalition @ @ @ @ @ @ @ All , a Green New Deal , a $ 15 minimum wage , and public investments in affordable housing .
“ Over and over , we kept advocating for the same types of issues , and nothing was happening , ” said Leonela Felix , who challenged Raymond Johnston Jr. , an incumbent ally of the speaker of the house .
When Johnston voted against a bill to codify abortion rights into state law , Felix decided to take action .
She linked up with the Working Families Party and went on to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ points .
Many of these candidates , like progressive challengers around the country , were galvanized by Bernie Sanders ’ s 2016 run .
That year , Sanders ’ s 12 percentage point victory over Hillary Clinton in Rhode Island revealed a statewide appetite for progressive , anti-establishment candidates .
“ We sent a message tonight that Rhode Islanders want their elected officials to support working families , ” said former state representative Aaron Regunberg at a primary watch party in April 2016 .
Regunberg was the only state legislator in Rhode Island @ @ @ @ @ @ @ run .
Some progressive organizations picked up on this momentum , like the Working Families Party , which ran winning campaigns for four candidates in state Democratic primary elections later that summer .
Regunberg himself added further proof of this statewide progressive base in 2018 with a run for lieutenant governor , losing to the incumbent by just two percentage points .
Despite winning a few seats , Rhode Island ’ s left could not convert this nascent wing of the state Democratic Party into any real political force at the statehouse .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Working Families Party passed the first tipped minimum wage increase in decades , and a law granting workers up to 40 hours of paid sick leave per year , they were blocked from passing any sweeping progressive reform by Speaker Mattiello and Senate President Dominick Ruggerio , both of whom maintained power over the legislature .
After the 2018 elections , however , three progressive Democrats who had lost their primaries launched the Rhode Island Political Cooperative .
It advanced a new strategy : recruit as many candidates for the statehouse , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to challenge incumbent Democrats .
They didn ’ t zero in on the seats of party leaders , nor even the candidates with the most egregious voting records , but sent a different message : They would replace any Democrat not willing to vote out the statehouse leadership .
In one case , that even meant targeting one of the more progressive voices in the statehouse : Senate Finance Committee Chair William Conley Jr. , whom Mendes ousted in her primary upset .
Conley had led the push in the statehouse to raise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to expand the state ’ s earned income tax credit .
But in spite of concessions to progressive policy , his loyalties ultimately seemed to belong to the statehouse leadership .
“ He has created his reputation of not listening to his community , ” Mendes said , referring to Conley ’ s support for a controversial development project , “ and not actually fighting .
And people are ready for fighters.
” Potter , the former car salesperson running with the RIPC , said that taking on Democratic leadership allowed him to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conservative suburban district .
He said that there is a sense of dissatisfaction with the state ’ s government that isn ’ t attached to a single event or policy .
“ Even if they can ’ t see it , ” he said of the voters he spoke with , “ they feel it , they smell it.
” Two traumatic events prompted Potter ’ s run : His employer , the Herb Chambers car dealership run by the titular billionaire , closed the location where Potter worked during the pandemic , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kidney-transplant waiting list .
Potter attempted to contact his district ’ s representative , Christopher Millea , but couldn ’ t even get in touch .
He made the decision to challenge a member of his own party and joined the slate of RIPC candidates .
“ People don ’ t know their representatives , they don ’ t know what they are working on , ” Potter said , “ We literally and figuratively do not have a government working for us.
” Another factor helped push some of these progressives to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chapter of the SEIU , which represents many of Rhode Island ’ s nursing home workers .
Nursing home workers had been advocating for safe staffing levels in nursing homes for years and saw some of the nation ’ s highest nursing home death rates at the outset of the pandemic .
Throughout the pandemic , however , the state legislature halted its session early in March as the pandemic was breaking out , and has reconvened only once since then , for a couple of days , to pass a supplemental budget @ @ @ @ @ @ @ legislation this spring , for the second year in a row , it was dead on arrival at the state House of Representatives .
“ We can ’ t let politicians do that without there being repercussions , ” SEIU spokesperson Adanjesus Marin told The Nation .
“ For far too long , Democratic politicians in the state have taken for granted that unions , including the SEIU , will automatically support them when they are in office.
” The last straw was when Representative Raymond Johnston Jr. , who had denied efforts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his attention to another matter .
“ Instead of addressing staffing and the impacts of Covid on his community , ” Marin said , Johnston “ was campaigning to ensure that out-of-state golfers could play golf during the shutdown.
” The SEIU 1199 endorsed both Felix and Potter , knocking almost 3,500 and over 9,500 doors in each district , respectively , according to the union .
While the state ’ s labor unions have historically been hesitant to endorse challengers to state house leadership , the stakes have been raised .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of seasoned politicians , who for years and years led in being moderates , and have lots of seniority but not much to show in terms of them taking a stand against the many threats we are facing today , we are going to be hamstrung , ” Marin said .
Despite leadership ’ s stronghold on the statehouse , the most recent slate of progressive challenges showed that a focus on the pillars of a good ground game—constant door knocking and voter outreach , even during the pandemic—can make inroads on a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ David Morales , the 22-year-old DSA candidate , said his campaign knocked on every door in his district at least twice , and many voters he spoke with didn ’ t even know who their current incumbent was .
Based on this model , little-known candidates like Lenny Cioe , a nurse who came within 341 votes of unseating the senate president , have laid the groundwork for the next election cycle .
And others are setting their sights on statewide offices , both in the statehouse , where Governor Gina Raimondo is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a second run at lieutenant governor ; and in Congress , where hawkish corporate-Democrat Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse are frequent targets of progressive criticism , yet have never faced a serious primary challenge .
Beyond this electoral approach , Rhode Island ’ s progressive network is focused on how to organize this newly elected bloc of progressive politicians into legislative power .
With Rhode Island staring down hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue due to Covid-19 and the economic crisis , Reclaim RI ’ s first focus is stopping @ @ @ @ @ @ @ promised are inevitable .
“ This budget ’ s going to be brutal , ” Raimondo said in May .
“ Everyone ’ s going to be unhappy .
Everything is on the table .
Everything.
” Now , with a large enough progressive coalition in the state senate to block a budget , Reclaim RI ’ s anti-austerity campaign seems possible .
Already , the newly elected state representatives are spreading the message that cuts aren ’ t inevitable , and there are progressive ways to balance a budget .
As Morales @ @ @ @ @ @ @ post-victory press conference , “ Our people know that they deserve better.… last week ’ s primary election demonstrated this because across the state we elected advocates who will stand against austerity budgets and fight for investments .
”

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On September 8, the edifice of power that Rhode Island’s Democratic Party machine held over the statehouse was revealed to be a mostly empty facade. Rhode Island progressives ousted eight incumbents in the state’s Democratic primaries, and five more won open seats, forming one of the latest, and most sweeping, waves of primary challenges from the left to a state Democratic Party.
After over a decade of attempting to win legislative victories by pressuring elected officials from outside the statehouse, progressive organizations in the state had tried something new: primarying over two dozen incumbent lawmakers with the hopes of winning a few seats. Across the state, candidates without conventional political experience, backed primarily by new organizations diving into local electoral politics, went up against conservative Democrats.
Unlike similar movements to primary local conservative Democrats, like Reclaim Philadelphia and No IDC NY, the Rhode Island effort was not coordinated by a single organization and did not zero in on top leadership. Instead, it was a come-one-come-all effort, organized and supported by a half-dozen groups recruiting, running, and supporting progressive challengers. They included the Working Families Party, local Sunrise chapters, a new organization called the Rhode Island Political Cooperative (RIPC), a group of former volunteers for Bernie Sanders’s 2020 primary campaign called Reclaim RI, and the Providence Democratic Socialists of America.
Rather than exercising careful discretion in who they were primarying, they went after any incumbent who was working with party leadership. And it worked. primarily Dianne Feinstein Demonstrates Why Democratic Challenges to Democratic Incumbents Are Necessary John Nichols
In Providence, David Morales, a 22-year-old activist backed by the local DSA, ousted incumbent representative Daniel McKiernan. In a campaign mailer, McKiernan had accused Morales of being “part of a national trend by the far left to gain influence in states such as ours.” But if there was a trend, it was coming from communities within Rhode Island.
In Cranston, Brandon Potter, a former car salesman who lost his job during the pandemic, ousted a one-term Democrat by 19 points. In Central Falls, city councilor and Brown PhD student Jonathon Acosta beat the incumbent candidate by 11 points. In East Providence, Cynthia Mendes, a single working mother running with the RIPC, won perhaps the most stunning upset of the primary, ousting the Senate finance committee chairman by over 20 percentage points. As Mendes told The Nation: “If you’re not working for people, you will be replaced.”
Rhode Island’s Democratic Party machine stands out, even among New England’s notorious array, for its conservatism and corruption. The Democratic Party controls state politics, and one person effectively controls the Democratic Party: House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello. The legislature’s rules are written to require the speaker’s (or Senate president’s) approval for bills to leave committee, and the speaker controls millions of dollars of funds to allocate to legislative districts. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Current Issue View our current issue
The party’s stronghold has long extended to primary elections. Party-endorsed candidates appear on the primary ballot with a star next to their name—Rhode Island is one of two states to allow this practice—and leadership PACs donate tens of thousands of dollars to their allies’ campaigns. In 2018, the Democratic Party endorsed Michael Earnheart, a Trump-supporting challenger, against the incumbent representative, Moira Walsh, who frequently opposed the speaker.
Over the past decade, this faction has used its power to block legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15, prevent action on climate change, and forestall gun safety laws, all while passing budgets that cut Medicaid and grant corporate tax breaks.
In response, the state’s progressive organizations have coalesced around running Democrats with platforms aligned with the growing left-wing coalition within the national party: Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, a $15 minimum wage, and public investments in affordable housing. “Over and over, we kept advocating for the same types of issues, and nothing was happening,” said Leonela Felix, who challenged Raymond Johnston Jr., an incumbent ally of the speaker of the house.
When Johnston voted against a bill to codify abortion rights into state law, Felix decided to take action. She linked up with the Working Families Party and went on to win her primary by almost 20 percentage points.
Many of these candidates, like progressive challengers around the country, were galvanized by Bernie Sanders’s 2016 run. That year, Sanders’s 12 percentage point victory over Hillary Clinton in Rhode Island revealed a statewide appetite for progressive, anti-establishment candidates.
“We sent a message tonight that Rhode Islanders want their elected officials to support working families,” said former state representative Aaron Regunberg at a primary watch party in April 2016. Regunberg was one of only a handful of state legislators in Rhode Island who had endorsed Sanders during his first run.
Some progressive organizations picked up on this momentum, like the Working Families Party, which ran winning campaigns for four candidates in state Democratic primary elections later that summer. Regunberg himself added further proof of this statewide progressive base in 2018 with a run for lieutenant governor, losing to the incumbent by just two percentage points.
Despite winning a few seats, Rhode Island’s left could not convert this nascent wing of the state Democratic Party into any real political force at the statehouse. While Regunberg and other elected allies from the Working Families Party passed the first tipped minimum wage increase in decades, and a law granting workers up to 40 hours of paid sick leave per year, they were blocked from passing any sweeping progressive reform by Speaker Mattiello and Senate President Dominick Ruggerio, both of whom maintained power over the legislature.
After the 2018 elections, however, three progressive Democrats who had lost their primaries launched the Rhode Island Political Cooperative. It advanced a new strategy: recruit as many candidates for the statehouse, and even town and city councils, to challenge incumbent Democrats. They didn’t zero in on the seats of party leaders, nor even the candidates with the most egregious voting records, but sent a different message: They would replace any Democrat not willing to vote out the statehouse leadership.
In one case, that even meant targeting one of the more progressive voices in the statehouse: Senate Finance Committee Chair William Conley Jr., whom Mendes ousted in her primary upset. Conley had led the push in the statehouse to raise taxes on the wealthy and sponsored legislation to expand the state’s earned income tax credit. But in spite of concessions to progressive policy, his loyalties ultimately seemed to belong to the statehouse leadership. “He has created his reputation of not listening to his community,” Mendes said, referring to Conley’s support for a controversial development project, “and not actually fighting. And people are ready for fighters.”
Potter, the former car salesperson running with the RIPC, said that taking on Democratic leadership allowed him to run a progressive campaign in a more conservative suburban district. He said that there is a sense of dissatisfaction with the state’s government that isn’t attached to a single event or policy. “Even if they can’t see it,” he said of the voters he spoke with, “they feel it, they smell it.”
Two traumatic events prompted Potter’s run: His employer, the Herb Chambers car dealership run by the titular billionaire, closed the location where Potter worked during the pandemic, and his girlfriend was removed from a kidney-transplant waiting list. Potter attempted to contact his district’s representative, Christopher Millea, but couldn’t even get in touch. He made the decision to challenge a member of his own party and joined the slate of RIPC candidates. “People don’t know their representatives, they don’t know what they are working on,” Potter said, “We literally and figuratively do not have a government working for us.”
Another factor helped push some of these progressives to victory: the support of the local chapter of the SEIU, which represents many of Rhode Island’s nursing home workers. Nursing home workers had been advocating for safe staffing levels in nursing homes for years and saw some of the nation’s highest nursing home death rates at the outset of the pandemic. However, the state legislature halted its session early in March as the pandemic was breaking out, and has reconvened only once since then, for a couple of days, to pass a supplemental budget.
After the state Senate passed safe-staffing legislation this spring, for the second year in a row, it was dead on arrival at the state House of Representatives. “We can’t let politicians do that without there being repercussions,” SEIU spokesperson Adanjesus Marin told The Nation. “For far too long, Democratic politicians in the state have taken for granted that unions, including the SEIU, will automatically support them when they are in office.”
The last straw was when Representative Raymond Johnston Jr., who had denied efforts at contact by the SEIU, turned his attention to another matter. “Instead of addressing staffing and the impacts of Covid on his community,” Marin said, Johnston “was campaigning to ensure that out-of-state golfers could play golf during the shutdown.” The SEIU 1199 endorsed both Felix and Potter, knocking almost 3,500 and over 9,500 doors in each district, respectively, according to the union.
While the state’s labor unions have historically been hesitant to endorse challengers to state house leadership, the stakes have been raised. “If we only stick to the pool of seasoned politicians, who for years and years led in being moderates, and have lots of seniority but not much to show in terms of them taking a stand against the many threats we are facing today, we are going to be hamstrung,” Marin said.
Despite leadership’s stronghold on the statehouse, the most recent slate of progressive challenges showed that a focus on the pillars of a good ground game—constant door knocking and voter outreach, even during the pandemic—can make inroads on a state party complacent against rare challengers. David Morales, the 22-year-old DSA candidate, said his campaign knocked on every door in his district at least twice, and many voters he spoke with didn’t even know who their current incumbent was.
Based on this model, little-known candidates like Lenny Cioe, a nurse who came within 341 votes of unseating the senate president, have laid the groundwork for the next election cycle. And others are setting their sights on statewide offices, both in the statehouse, where Governor Gina Raimondo is term-limited, and where Regunberg is eyeing a second run at lieutenant governor; and in Congress, where hawkish corporate-Democrat Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse are frequent targets of progressive criticism, yet have never faced a serious primary challenge.
Beyond this electoral approach, Rhode Island’s progressive network is focused on how to organize this newly elected bloc of progressive politicians into legislative power. With Rhode Island staring down hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue due to Covid-19 and the economic crisis, Reclaim RI’s first focus is stopping the budget cuts that Governor Raimondo has promised are inevitable. “This budget’s going to be brutal,” Raimondo said in May. “Everyone’s going to be unhappy. Everything is on the table. Everything.”
Now, with a large enough progressive coalition in the state senate to block a budget, Reclaim RI’s anti-austerity campaign seems possible. Already, the newly elected state representatives are spreading the message that cuts aren’t inevitable, and there are progressive ways to balance a budget. As Morales said from the statehouse steps in a post-victory press conference, “Our people know that they deserve better.… last week’s primary election demonstrated this because across the state we elected advocates who will stand against austerity budgets and fight for investments.”
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Aaron Regunberg was the only state legislator in Rhode Island who had endorsed Bernie Sanders during his first presidential campaign in 2016. At least three other state legislators had endorsed Sanders at the time.


thenation--2020-10-26--The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers

On November 3 , what is likely the most consequential election of my lifetime , I won ’ t be in a newsroom .
It ’ s just starting to sink in that I ’ ve joined—voluntarily , though not under circumstances I ’ d have chosen—the great mass of unemployed journalists in this country .
I ’ m luckier than most .
I managed four decades in a business that seemed determined to kick me to the curb from my first job at a daily newspaper , The Philadelphia Bulletin , in 1980 .
Before I could even start @ @ @ @ @ @ @ called to ask if I still had a job .
Things worked out .
I delayed my start date by a few weeks , but two years later , the Bulletin folded .
Maybe I should have paid attention to that early omen .
I ’ ve worked for The News-American in Baltimore , which closed within two years .
The Rocky Mountain News in Denver , which folded a couple of years after I left .
The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Denver Post , once Pulitzer-rich powerhouses , now shells .
Two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ editorial pleading for its hedge-fund owners to sell and deliver its journalists from the hell of unending cuts .
Overall , half the country ’ s newspaper jobs disappeared between 2008 and 2019 , according to a Pew Research Center analysis .
Amid the 2020 news trifecta of election , pandemic , and massive protests over racial disparities , more than 1,800 communities now qualify as news deserts—defined by the University of North Carolina as communities “ where residents have very limited access to the sort of credible and comprehensive news and information @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” ( emphasis mine ) .
Translation : No longer do reporters who live in those communities cover the institutions whose decisions most directly affect their neighbors ’ day-to-day lives .
Those are oft-cited realities .
Here ’ s what it was like to live them .
When I arrived in 2007 in Missoula , a western Montana university town of about 75,000 , the Missoulian ’ s was one of the smallest newsrooms I ’ d ever worked in , not much larger than some of the Inquirer ’ s suburban bureaus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a low-slung orange-brick building on the banks of the Clark Fork River feels impossibly rich in resources .
We covered seven western Montana counties , an area larger than Massachusetts and Vermont combined , with bureaus in three outlying counties .
When my parents visited , we traveled to the state ’ s far northwestern corner , almost 200 miles from Missoula , and I proudly pointed out the yellow Missoulian receptacles at the end of dirt tracks leading to homes hidden in forests of Ponderosa and lodgepole pine .
Missoulian trucks crossed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the state capitol , Helena , and trundled north to the Canadian border and south and west to the Idaho border .
A Missoulian sports reporter drove 600 miles—each way—to Wibaux in eastern Montana to cover a high school football championship game between two eight-man teams .
We didn ’ t just cover our beats ; we owned them .
The University of Montana , at the time the city ’ s largest employer and home to a football team whose home games turned Missoula into the largest town in four contiguous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Montana is public land , including Glacier National Park and part of Yellowstone , and it also has the country ’ s largest Superfund site ; City Council ; County Commission ; Board of Regents ; school boards ; cops ; and courts—Missoulian reporters were there , holding elected officials and institutions to account .
In 2012 , my own reporting spurred a federal Justice Department investigation into alleged sexual assaults by University of Montana football players and others , in cases later detailed in Jon Krakauer ’ s bestselling Missoula : Rape @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Town .
This did not go over well with a significant segment of the community , especially after the star quarterback was charged with rape ( he was later acquitted , after a trial whose jury pool was larger than that of Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh ) , and the coach and athletic director fired .
Upon seeing a Missoulian job opening listed , a Grizzlies fan wrote on a message board : “ “ Could there be ANY chance that someone with a brainstem put a bullet in Florio ?
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s book came out .
Well-meaning friends suggesting carrying a gun .
Instead , I kept bear spray close .
But there was also an undercurrent of support : A tiny cross-stitch sampler arrived in the mail : “ Don ’ t read the comments.
” Notes and telephone calls , some tearful , from women saying , “ Thank you , ” and then , “ Me , too , ” years before it became a catchphrase .
The paper kept publishing those stories even as it lost advertising , and despite @ @ @ @ @ @ @ point , “ We aren ’ t going to break any more stories , are we ?
” ( We did . )
Because of the support for that sort of reporting , along with our location in an outdoor recreation paradise ( insert A River Runs Through It cliché of your choice ) , the Missoulian attracted talented journalists who could have worked at far larger news organizations—and kept them , something reflected in the awards that crowded a newsroom wall and cluttered a shelf .
Then Lee Enterprises took it away @ @ @ @ @ @ @ treated me well .
Exponentially more important , Lee ’ s 1959 purchase of several Montana dailies rescued them from a far worse corporate existence .
For seven decades , Montana newspapers suffered under the “ copper collar ” ownership of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company .
In his 2006 book about that era , Copper Chorus : Mining , Politics , and the Montana Press , 1889-1959 , University of Montana School of Journalism professor Dennis Swibold titles the chapter about Lee ’ s acquisition “ Emancipation.
” “ At last we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” a reporter said at the time .
Lee doesn ’ t have the national name recognition of other large newspaper chains—Gannett , Hearst , McClatchy—nor does it evoke the mustachio-twirling Snidely Whiplash villainy of Alden Global Capital , the hedge fund inflicting misery upon The Denver Post , The Chicago Tribune , and others .
For decades Lee flew under the radar with its stable of newspapers in small towns and midsize cities .
That changed when Lee acquired big-city muscle—and crushing debt—with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the other Pulitzer-winning papers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arrived at the Missoulian with the 2008 recession looming .
Given my history , I should have known what was coming .
In 2011 , Lee filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy .
Two years later , I took one of Lee ’ s early buyout offers , and spent three years writing novels and teaching at the University of Montana Journalism School , rejoining the staff as city editor at the behest of newly hired editor Kathy Best , under whose stewardship The Seattle Times had won two Pulitzers .
I barely recognized @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Empty desks abounded .
Gone were several editors , reporters , and a photographer .
Lee had fired two longtime , highly respected capitol correspondents , replacing them with decades-younger reporters .
Who Will Save the News ?
Positions went dark and bureaus shuttered as staffers retired , took buyouts , or opted for the financial security of public relations .
Our pay was abysmal ; one reporter told me the Missoulian ’ s initial offer was what he earned as a dishwasher at Outback Steakhouse ; others worked second jobs to cover @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Missoulian , damn it .
We had a tradition to uphold .
David Erickson ’ s reporting on foreclosures of mobile homes whose owners sometimes owed less than $ 100 in back taxes changed laws and lives ; as did a Missoulian team ’ s yearlong investigation into abuses at unregulated for-profit programs for troubled teens .
Reporter Rob Chaney was awarded a Nieman fellowship at Harvard , hanging out with journalists from The New York Times , The Boston Globe , The Wall Street Journal , and the like .
With the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ change , we went after grant money to fund our work .
Success allowed Missoulian journalists to report from Zambia and Botswana , China , Nepal , Brazil , and New York City on stories with relevance to Montana .
Within Montana , grants funded trips to the state ’ s far-flung Indian reservations for necessary reporting on the effects of the pandemic and challenges to voting .
We held our heads high , collected regional and national awards , and tried to avoid the quicksand sucking at our feet .
I moved @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spring 2019 when Best departed to become the first director of the new Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland .
In the months that followed , layoffs and attrition cost us 20 percent of our remaining staff .
Interns filled in on some of our biggest beats .
We reduced weekend coverage , meeting coverage , out-of-town coverage .
We ran stories from other Lee Montana papers and from credible nonprofit news operations like Kaiser Health News .
A recent day ’ s paper contained not a single Missoulian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I gave silent thanks to the pandemic for keeping me from being out and about in a community where people stopped me on the street with complaints about soaring subscription rates for a shrinking paper with a plethora of typos ( without copy editors , we did our best , but exhausted mulitaksnig freqeltly won out ) and nagging delivery problems .
Then came the endorsement .
Here ’ s the only good thing about the Missoulian ’ s October 11 endorsement of a state public service commission candidate who ’ d @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bundy family and groups favoring the transfer of federal lands to states and undercutting tribal sovereignty .
Missoula is a liberal bastion ( “ Montana ’ s communist capital , ” someone in Billings described it to me during an early reporting trip to the state ) , but has its share of elected conservatives .
However , this was a candidate several steps too far to the right ; one who saw the armed takeover of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon as an exercise in civil disobedience , who served in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Montana founder John Trochmann , and whose Facebook post about vans of antifa activists headed to Missoula spurred people armed with semi-automatic rifles to show up to “ protect ” the community from peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstrations .
People canceled subscriptions .
Businesses yanked ads .
The only worse reaction would have been a collective shrug .
Because I ’ d stepped back into reporting when our political reporter took a medical leave , I ’ d recused myself from the endorsement process , but as top editor , the buck landed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ obscuring my desk .
I resigned , hastening an already-planned retirement after the election .
After my departure , the paper retracted the endorsement and printed a full page of outraged letters to the editor .
One writer wondered what sort of mushrooms we ’ d ingested .
“ Irresponsibly dangerous , ” wrote another .
Yet another : “ The most misguided endorsement I have seen in 47 years of reading the Missoulian.
” My Life in the Media Machine Many people blame the fiasco on some sinister corporate mandate : Endorse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ knowledge of what happened , I suspect it had more to do with everyone being so overworked that proper vetting—beyond candidate interviews—went by the wayside .
I doubt corporate gives a good goddamn about what we write unless , as with the endorsement , it affects advertising and circulation—although now I wonder , given the Billings Gazette ’ s Friday endorsement of gubernatorial candidate US Representative Greg Gianforte , who gained infamy in 2017 for body-slamming a Guardian journalist on the eve of a special election .
I still think that at Lee @ @ @ @ @ @ @ else , even if that means cutting resources into an increasing inability to serve as the community ’ s watchdog .
It ’ s cold comfort that the Missoulian is hardly unique in its dilemma .
Lee became the country ’ s fourth-largest news organization in January—just weeks before the pandemic hit—when it acquired nearly 80 daily and weekly Berkshire Hathaway newspapers , touting “ synergies , ” corporate-speak for cutting people and newsprint .
Due to Lee decisions , North Dakota and Wyoming no longer have a seven-day-a-week print newspaper .
When @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Floyd Press , Ashley Spinks , recently described her one-woman reporter/editor/photographer/page designer role to public radio station WVTF , Lee executives fired her in a phone call three days before her wedding .
Last week , Lee posted Spinks ’ s job at the same $ 36,000 salary she ’ d earned .
Papers across the country , Lee-owned and others , imposed mandatory furloughs in response to the financial realities of the pandemic , some of which continue .
The Cheyenne ( Wyoming ) News Guild tweeted October 13 that the Tennessee-based @ @ @ @ @ @ @ papers they won ’ t be working 40-hour weeks through the end of the year .
Cheyenne ’ s Guild formed in February , part of a recent wave of unionizations at news organizations large and small across the country .
At Lee papers , the response to unions has been swift and merciless .
When Lee bought the alternative ( and perennially money-losing ) Missoula Independent in 2018 , reporters there organized—and Lee shut it down with no notice .
After the Casper Star-Tribune ’ s successful union vote that same year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and suspended a fourth who wrote about it .
Reporters at the Billings Gazette organized earlier this year after Lee laid off the editor and editorial page editor , leaving the Missoulian the only paper in Montana with a full-time opinion editor .
Billings reporters are in contract negotiations now .
I fear for their jobs , but cheer their willingness to go down swinging .
What about those news deserts , where the fight is already lost ?
In August , a chilling report from Columbia University ’ s Tow Center for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ slime journalism ” websites that appear to cover local news but instead are written from afar , typically pushing conservative agendas .
A Montana Free Press report examined nine such sites in the state .
The University of Montana School of Journalism , with a 50 percent enrollment drop over the last several years , reports a 70 percent rise in freshman enrollment this year .
Student Addie Slanger , who interned at the Missoulian and saw firsthand our disheartening reality , spoke passionately about why she ’ s sticking with it .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ thankless , so thankless , all the time .
But I ’ ve never been more fulfilled than when I turn in something on time and when I put the best work I can into a story and highlight something really important in the community.… I fall in love with [ journalism ] over and over again.
” I won ’ t be in a newsroom on election night .
But Slanger will .
There ’ s still hope .

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Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine?
On November 3, what is likely the most consequential election of my lifetime, I won’t be in a newsroom.
It’s just starting to sink in that I’ve joined—voluntarily, though not under circumstances I’d have chosen—the great mass of unemployed journalists in this country. I’m luckier than most. I managed four decades in a business that seemed determined to kick me to the curb from my first job at a daily newspaper, The Philadelphia Bulletin, in 1980.
Before I could even start, the Bulletin was sold. I called to ask if I still had a job.
The response: an ominous silence.
Things worked out. I delayed my start date by a few weeks, but two years later, the Bulletin folded. Maybe I should have paid attention to that early omen.
I’ve worked for The News-American in Baltimore, which closed within two years. The Rocky Mountain News in Denver, which folded a couple of years after I left. The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Denver Post, once Pulitzer-rich powerhouses, now shells. Two years ago, the Post printed an editorial pleading for its hedge-fund owners to sell and deliver its journalists from the hell of unending cuts.
Overall, half the country’s newspaper jobs disappeared between 2008 and 2019, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. Amid the 2020 news trifecta of election, pandemic, and massive protests over racial disparities, more than 1,800 communities now qualify as news deserts—defined by the University of North Carolina as communities “where residents have very limited access to the sort of credible and comprehensive news and information that feed democracy at the grassroots level” (emphasis mine). Current Issue View our current issue
Translation: No longer do reporters who live in those communities cover the institutions whose decisions most directly affect their neighbors’ day-to-day lives.
Those are oft-cited realities. Here’s what it was like to live them. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
When I arrived in 2007 in Missoula, a western Montana university town of about 75,000, the Missoulian’s was one of the smallest newsrooms I’d ever worked in, not much larger than some of the Inquirer’s suburban bureaus. In retrospect, that newsroom in a low-slung orange-brick building on the banks of the Clark Fork River feels impossibly rich in resources.
We covered seven western Montana counties, an area larger than Massachusetts and Vermont combined, with bureaus in three outlying counties. When my parents visited, we traveled to the state’s far northwestern corner, almost 200 miles from Missoula, and I proudly pointed out the yellow Missoulian receptacles at the end of dirt tracks leading to homes hidden in forests of Ponderosa and lodgepole pine.
Missoulian trucks crossed the Continental Divide daily to deliver papers to the state capitol, Helena, and trundled north to the Canadian border and south and west to the Idaho border. A Missoulian sports reporter drove 600 miles—each way—to Wibaux in eastern Montana to cover a high school football championship game between two eight-man teams.
We didn’t just cover our beats; we owned them. The University of Montana, at the time the city’s largest employer and home to a football team whose home games turned Missoula into the largest town in four contiguous states; the environment—nearly a third of Montana is public land, including Glacier National Park and part of Yellowstone, and it also has the country’s largest Superfund site; City Council; County Commission; Board of Regents; school boards; cops; and courts—Missoulian reporters were there, holding elected officials and institutions to account.
In 2012, my own reporting spurred a federal Justice Department investigation into alleged sexual assaults by University of Montana football players and others, in cases later detailed in Jon Krakauer’s bestselling Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town. This did not go over well with a significant segment of the community, especially after the star quarterback was charged with rape (he was later acquitted, after a trial whose jury pool was larger than that of Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh), and the coach and athletic director fired. Upon seeing a Missoulian job opening listed, a Grizzlies fan wrote on a message board: “ “Could there be ANY chance that someone with a brainstem put a bullet in Florio?”—fury that flared anew when Krakauer’s book came out. Well-meaning friends suggesting carrying a gun. Instead, I kept bear spray close.
But there was also an undercurrent of support: A tiny cross-stitch sampler arrived in the mail: “Don’t read the comments.” Notes and telephone calls, some tearful, from women saying, “Thank you,” and then, “Me, too,” years before it became a catchphrase.
The paper kept publishing those stories even as it lost advertising, and despite a jittery publisher who asked at one point, “We aren’t going to break any more stories, are we?” (We did.) Because of the support for that sort of reporting, along with our location in an outdoor recreation paradise (insert A River Runs Through It cliché of your choice), the Missoulian attracted talented journalists who could have worked at far larger news organizations—and kept them, something reflected in the awards that crowded a newsroom wall and cluttered a shelf.
Then Lee Enterprises took it away.
In fairness, Lee has always treated me well. Exponentially more important, Lee’s 1959 purchase of several Montana dailies rescued them from a far worse corporate existence.
For seven decades, Montana newspapers suffered under the “copper collar” ownership of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. In his 2006 book about that era, Copper Chorus: Mining, Politics, and the Montana Press, 1889-1959, University of Montana School of Journalism professor Dennis Swibold titles the chapter about Lee’s acquisition “Emancipation.”
“At last we are newspapermen, not company whores,” a reporter said at the time.
Lee doesn’t have the national name recognition of other large newspaper chains—Gannett, Hearst, McClatchy—nor does it evoke the mustachio-twirling Snidely Whiplash villainy of Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund inflicting misery upon The Denver Post, The Chicago Tribune, and others.
For decades Lee flew under the radar with its stable of newspapers in small towns and midsize cities. That changed when Lee acquired big-city muscle—and crushing debt—with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the other Pulitzer-winning papers in 2005, two years before I arrived at the Missoulian with the 2008 recession looming.
Given my history, I should have known what was coming. In 2011, Lee filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Two years later, I took one of Lee’s early buyout offers, and spent three years writing novels and teaching at the University of Montana Journalism School, rejoining the staff as city editor at the behest of newly hired editor Kathy Best, under whose stewardship The Seattle Times had won two Pulitzers.
I barely recognized the newsroom to which I returned. Empty desks abounded. Gone were several editors, reporters, and a photographer. Lee had fired two longtime, highly respected capitol correspondents, replacing them with decades-younger reporters. Related Article Who Will Save the News? Anya Schiffrin
Positions went dark and bureaus shuttered as staffers retired, took buyouts, or opted for the financial security of public relations. Our pay was abysmal; one reporter told me the Missoulian’s initial offer was what he earned as a dishwasher at Outback Steakhouse; others worked second jobs to cover living expenses.
But we were the Missoulian, damn it. We had a tradition to uphold.
David Erickson’s reporting on foreclosures of mobile homes whose owners sometimes owed less than $100 in back taxes changed laws and lives; as did a Missoulian team’s yearlong investigation into abuses at unregulated for-profit programs for troubled teens. Reporter Rob Chaney was awarded a Nieman fellowship at Harvard, hanging out with journalists from The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, and the like.
With the zeal of upending sofa cushions for loose change, we went after grant money to fund our work. Success allowed Missoulian journalists to report from Zambia and Botswana, China, Nepal, Brazil, and New York City on stories with relevance to Montana. Within Montana, grants funded trips to the state’s far-flung Indian reservations for necessary reporting on the effects of the pandemic and challenges to voting.
We held our heads high, collected regional and national awards, and tried to avoid the quicksand sucking at our feet.
I moved into the editor’s job in spring 2019 when Best departed to become the first director of the new Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland. In the months that followed, layoffs and attrition cost us 20 percent of our remaining staff. Interns filled in on some of our biggest beats. We reduced weekend coverage, meeting coverage, out-of-town coverage. We ran stories from other Lee Montana papers and from credible nonprofit news operations like Kaiser Health News. A recent day’s paper contained not a single Missoulian byline. Readers notice things like that.
I gave silent thanks to the pandemic for keeping me from being out and about in a community where people stopped me on the street with complaints about soaring subscription rates for a shrinking paper with a plethora of typos (without copy editors, we did our best, but exhausted mulitaksnig freqeltly won out) and nagging delivery problems.
Then came the endorsement.
Here’s the only good thing about the Missoulian’s October 11 endorsement of a state public service commission candidate who’d spoken at a forum featuring the anti-government Bundy family and groups favoring the transfer of federal lands to states and undercutting tribal sovereignty.
The community cared.
Missoula is a liberal bastion (“Montana’s communist capital,” someone in Billings described it to me during an early reporting trip to the state), but has its share of elected conservatives.
However, this was a candidate several steps too far to the right; one who saw the armed takeover of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon as an exercise in civil disobedience, who served in a local land-use organization with Militia of Montana founder John Trochmann, and whose Facebook post about vans of antifa activists headed to Missoula spurred people armed with semi-automatic rifles to show up to “protect” the community from peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstrations.
People canceled subscriptions. Businesses yanked ads. The only worse reaction would have been a collective shrug.
Because I’d stepped back into reporting when our political reporter took a medical leave, I’d recused myself from the endorsement process, but as top editor, the buck landed atop the litter of notebooks and papers obscuring my desk. I resigned, hastening an already-planned retirement after the election.
After my departure, the paper retracted the endorsement and printed a full page of outraged letters to the editor.
One writer wondered what sort of mushrooms we’d ingested. “Irresponsibly dangerous,” wrote another. Yet another: “The most misguided endorsement I have seen in 47 years of reading the Missoulian.” Related Article My Life in the Media Machine Tom Scocca
Many people blame the fiasco on some sinister corporate mandate: Endorse some Republicans or else. Without full knowledge of what happened, I suspect it had more to do with everyone being so overworked that proper vetting—beyond candidate interviews—went by the wayside. I doubt corporate gives a good goddamn about what we write unless, as with the endorsement, it affects advertising and circulation—although now I wonder, given the Billings Gazette’s Friday endorsement of gubernatorial candidate US Representative Greg Gianforte, who gained infamy in 2017 for body-slamming a Guardian journalist on the eve of a special election.
I still think that at Lee the bottom line takes priority over all else, even if that means cutting resources into an increasing inability to serve as the community’s watchdog.
It’s cold comfort that the Missoulian is hardly unique in its dilemma.
Lee became the country’s fourth-largest news organization in January—just weeks before the pandemic hit—when it acquired nearly 80 daily and weekly Berkshire Hathaway newspapers, touting “synergies,” corporate-speak for cutting people and newsprint.
Due to Lee decisions, North Dakota and Wyoming no longer have a seven-day-a-week print newspaper.
When the managing editor of Virginia’s Floyd Press, Ashley Spinks, recently described her one-woman reporter/editor/photographer/page designer role to public radio station WVTF, Lee executives fired her in a phone call three days before her wedding. Last week, Lee posted Spinks’s job at the same $36,000 salary she’d earned.
Papers across the country, Lee-owned and others, imposed mandatory furloughs in response to the financial realities of the pandemic, some of which continue. The Cheyenne (Wyoming) News Guild tweeted October 13 that the Tennessee-based Adams Publishing Group told reporters at its papers they won’t be working 40-hour weeks through the end of the year.
Cheyenne’s Guild formed in February, part of a recent wave of unionizations at news organizations large and small across the country.
At Lee papers, the response to unions has been swift and merciless. When Lee bought the alternative (and perennially money-losing) Missoula Independent in 2018, reporters there organized—and Lee shut it down with no notice. After the Casper Star-Tribune’s successful union vote that same year in Wyoming, Lee fired three staffers and suspended a fourth who wrote about it.
Reporters at the Billings Gazette organized earlier this year after Lee laid off the editor and editorial page editor, leaving the Missoulian the only paper in Montana with a full-time opinion editor. Billings reporters are in contract negotiations now.
I fear for their jobs, but cheer their willingness to go down swinging.
What about those news deserts, where the fight is already lost? In August, a chilling report from Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism detailed 1,200 so-called “pink slime journalism” websites that appear to cover local news but instead are written from afar, typically pushing conservative agendas. A Montana Free Press report examined nine such sites in the state.
And yet.
The University of Montana School of Journalism, with a 50 percent enrollment drop over the last several years, reports a 70 percent rise in freshman enrollment this year. Student Addie Slanger, who interned at the Missoulian and saw firsthand our disheartening reality, spoke passionately about why she’s sticking with it.
“Man, it’s so thankless, so thankless, all the time. But I’ve never been more fulfilled than when I turn in something on time and when I put the best work I can into a story and highlight something really important in the community.… I fall in love with [journalism] over and over again.”
I won’t be in a newsroom on election night.
But Slanger will. There’s still hope.