Going Underground Part II
Following last week's post, a round-up of sites and newsletters with an eye toward an eventual unofficial news network. Oh, also a movie recommendation.
Note to readers: Yes, this is a movie-recommendation newsletter but I do need to follow up a previous post on news and news links. Those wishing to skip the real-world stuff can feel free to scroll all the way to the bottom, where they will, in fact, find a movie recommendation.
Judging by the comments and emails, my cry of exasperation last week at the state of state-cowed media and concomitant wish for an underground neural news network to replace it was received a lot of heads nodding vigorously in agreement, as well as the occasional splutter of rage. And, okay, Kimmel’s back on TV, but we’re not remotely out of the woods, and so the question posed by many Watch List readers is: What’s next?
Or, as subscriber Catt Berlin George posted beneath last week’s column;
So everyone in the comments is on board with Ty's idea of Going Underground, which is a great name for the new information network. Are we going to help build it or just talk about it? How can we do it? I would love suggestions on that. I don't want to be sidelined because I was lucky enough to have 40 years without any digital in my life and know how to drive to another state by looking at a paper map. Sometimes I think how vital the knowledge is that people who lived a few decades without a PC, smartphone, smart house, smart appliances, smart car have. ... There is no replacement, video game, or hologram that can show younger generations what that freedom was like. Those of us who lived it have unparalleled knowledge, and we should utilize it to help build what Ty is talking about here. Where is the sign-up list?
Aside from mourning a pre-Internet/ante-cellphone era that now seems very far away, Catt raises a salient point: Who builds a people's news network, and how does it get built? Is it even an “it”? Or is it more of a “they”? I made a reference last week to a hive mind of information gatherers and disseminators, and, references to the Borg aside, I think it’s useful to start thinking in that direction, of different writers and reporters and sources and opinionators and citizen camerafolk and digital-distribution wonks and even influencers – TikTok kiddies working to encourage political and civic engagement, imagine that – coming together in a loosely-structured, non-hierarchical framework whose energies run from the bottom up rather than the top down and from the inside outward rather than from the inside toward the insular. Some obvious questions: How does it get built to scale? Who pays for it and how? Who owns it? (That’s easy: We do.) And can it be done without involving an HR department? All very pie in the sky and terribly naive, but a fella can dream and so can a populace weary of information bent by the commercial imperative, clickbait fever, editorial spinelessness, and the feckless egos of owner-moguls, toxic techbros and nepo-presslords.
To kick the conversation further down the road, I've rounded up a number of sources that I follow and think are pertinent. Many of them come in newsletter form, others are primarily web-based, and all are voices or groups of voices that one might imagine being part of the hive mind mentioned above. In a very real sense, they already are. But because there are so many points of dissemination, so many newsletter subscriptions, so little time and not enough money to subscribe to everything, there needs to be some sort of consolidationary mechanism that would allow news consumers a handful of entry points instead of a bazillion. That's what newspapers and the network news used to be – and at their best still are – instead of witting or unwitting handmaids to an oligarchy.
You are, of course, invited to beat the drum for your own favorite sites and sources below; comments are open to all today.
Source aggregators
If you feel like you're completely at a loss, these sites can help. The Institute for Nonprofit News is in fact exactly what we've been talking about: Per its website, it's "a member organization of 500 newsrooms that are building a new kind of media network: nonprofit, nonpartisan, and dedicated to public service." The INN maintains the indispensible Find Your News directory, "a place for you to discover and connect with nonprofit newsrooms that are producing fact-based, public service journalism." For instance, here are the independent outlets cited in Massachusetts. Regardless of where you live, you simply could not do better than starting at this website.
Personally, I've found the social media app/site Bluesky a worthy replacement for Twitter/X and an absolute firehose of independent journalists and news outlets. But how do you find them? Easy-peasy: Bluesky has these things called Starter Packs, which anyone can make. Click on the button at the top and you've subscribed to everybody in the pack. There's a general directory of starter packs, but it's an overwhelming sinkhole of topics and subtopics, and you'd be better served by using INN's three starter packs of independent newsrooms and journalists on Bluesky, nearly 500 in total. The first is here:
– or similar starter packs –
– and directories.
Investigative reporting
ProPublica (free) stands at the top of this list: An independent non-profit newsroom with 150 reporters working to expose corruption and malfeasance on the local, state and national levels. The organization's list of partners is also a good place to build some bookmarks toward your own underground news network.
Joshua Kaplan
Marisa Kabas's The Handbasket (free/paid subscription) showcases an indefatigable journo out there on her own breaking national stories like Trump's federal funding freeze in January. A super-useful site, and Kabas is going to win a Pulitzer someday.
Democracy Docket (free/paid subscription) reports primarily on the election battles in the courts, calling itself "the leading digital news and information platform covering voting rights, elections, and the courts — from an unapologetically pro-democracy standpoint. Tracking election and democracy litigation is central to our mission."
Jim Saksa
Founded in 2020 by journalists Emily Ramshaw and Amanda Zamora, The 19th (free) has as its goal "to empower all women and LGBTQ+ people — particularly those excluded from the promise of the 19th Amendment by their gender, race, ethnicity, class or disability — with the information they need to be equal participants in our democracy."
The 19th Staff
Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo (paid subscription) is "an independent news organization that publishes reporting and analysis about American politics, public policy and political culture. We are particularly focused on reporting on abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust." I don't subscribe, but my friend Shady does and in his words "Marshall has been walking the walk for a long time in the 'new media landscape.' It's subscription supported, and that seems to be working. He's a little squirrelly on Gaza, but on everything else, it's good, reliable journalism. And he doesn't veer off into the 1800s for 300 words as our beloved HCR likes to do."
Josh Marshall
There's also The Bulwark (free/paid subscription), which touts itself as "the largest pro-democracy bundle on Substack for news and analysis on politics and culture—supported by a community built on good-faith." It's more to the center-right than the above sources and has neoconservative Weekly Standard co-founder Bill Kristol as one of its five founding partners, but it's defiantly opposed to the current administration, the reporting is solid and it's hard to argue with a mission statement like "We’ve got a country to save. And the only way to do it is together."
The Bulwark
The Contrarian (free/paid subscription) was started last January by Jennifer Rubin, late of the WaPo, and attorney/diplomat/CNN talking head Norm Eisen, and they're kind of the stars of the site, but the staff delivers well-reported news and opinion, and they carry Ruben Bolling's "Tom the Dancing Bug," so they're jake with me. Lotsa podcasts, live chats and video here.
The Contrarian
And if you simply need to know what the fuck just happened today, I heartily recommend Matt Kiser's What the Fuck Just Happened Today (free/paid subscription), "a sane, once-a-day newsletter helping normal people make sense of the news." Seriously, this may be the best one-stop-shop for understanding each daily step downward into American autocracy.
Matt Kiser
Solo Reportage and Opinion
Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American (free/paid subscription) is the 900-lb gorilla here, the first and most successful in the newsletter space with over 1.5 million subscribers, many of whom are your aunts. She sometimes goes deeper into historical arcana than one might wish – she is a history professor, after all – and her conviction that Donald Trump's downfall is just around the corner is starting to sound like the academic who cried wolf. But she's Heather Cox Richardson, and you're not.
Heather Cox Richardson
For holding the feet of institutional media to the flame, there is none better than Margaret Sullivan, the former New York Times public editor and Washington Post media columnist, whose weekly American Crisis newsletter (free/paid subscription) is the best dissection of what traditional newspapers and network news operations are getting repeatedly and disastrously wrong. Sullivan's clarity and moral compass are refreshing and necessary for when your hair catches on fire from seeing the latest bananas Times headline.
Margaret Sullivan
Carole Cadwalladr, an investigative journalist formerly with the Guardian & Observer, broke the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook scandal in 2018, and her How to Survive the Broligarchy (free, but you can pay to support) is very good at cutting through the latest awful tech developments and profiling our dark overlords.
Carole Cadwalladr
Democratic political strategist and think-tank dude Simon Rosenberg has a lot of news, analysis, live events, video chats and more at Hopium Chronicles (free/paid subscription), one of many, many Substack newsletters started by legacy-media opinion writers and Beltway insiders, most of whom you can find on Hopium's recommendations page, which does double duty as a guide to who to follow or, if you prefer, who to avoid.
Simon Rosenberg
Similar sites include Unpopular Front (free/paid subscription) from The Nation columnist John Ganz –
John Ganz
The Message Box (free/paid subscription) from Pod Save America co-host/Obama advisor Dan Pfeiffer –
Dan Pfeiffer
Lucid (free/paid subscription) from professor/MSNBC columnist Ruth Ben-Ghiat –
Ruth Ben-Ghiat
– and countless other knowledgable and articulate pundits with a brand and a Substack newsletter to promote it. If I'm sounding cynical, it's because this kind of Professional Op-Ed Commentator mosh pit is ultimately counter to the centralized-yet-decentralized news gathering that I think needs to happen. Maybe these guys should do a Hunger Games and see who's left standing.
Two exceptions to the above: The Reframe (free/paid subscription), angry and beautifully cogent essays on the state of things from writer A.R. Moxon, who doesn't have any insider cred at all but just seems like a smart and nice guy –
A.R. Moxon
– and Everyone is Entitled to My Own Opinion (free/paid subscription), a daily sinus-clearing blast of pure, profane outrage at the criminal absurdities of the Trump administration. Useful as news, I guess, but just really funny and exactly as pissed off as you are. (Sample title, from a column on Stephen Miller: "We Need to Talk About This Vampiric Shitweasel.")
Jeff Tiedrich
Action and Activism
When you've read enough pundits and are ready to do something, Jess Craven's Chop Wood, Carry Water (free, but a paid subscription supports the site and gets you photos of Craven's pets) offers telephone scripts for calling your elected officials, news on national and state-level protests and other actions, and the kind of glow you get when mom gives you a needed pep talk.
Jess Craven
Don't Mourn, Organize Eastern Massachusetts (free) does the same but on a local level; it's run by "10 experienced progressive activists in the Boston area," two of whom I'm friendly with. If you're not in the Boston area, find an action website for where you are – or, better yet, start one.
Dont Mourn Organize Eastern MA
Random Stuff
Susie Bright
... and this, from an old high school chum of mine: Deep and fascinating dives into weird New England history. Nothing to do with politics; I just like it.
Elisha Lee
Oh, you want a movie recommendation? Here's one: "Splitsville" (⭐ ⭐ 1/2, renting for $9.99 at Amazon, Apple TV and other streamers), which is what we used to call a sex comedy in the 1970s but that in 2025 just looks like a smart, hyperverbal, slapstick-y marriage farce, indie division. It's written by its two stars, Kyle Marvin and Michael Angelo Covino, and directed by Covino, and if you saw the last movie these two made together, 2019's guys-on-bicycles comedy "The Climb" (reviewed by me in the Boston Globe), you know they're very good about the needling intricacies of male friendship – the trust, the rivalry, the alphas (Covino, always) and the zetas (Marvin, likewise).
Here they're both married to beautiful, long-suffering mates, Marvin's sad-sack Carey to the free-spirited Ashley (Adria Arjona) and Covino's type-A Paul to the maternal Julie (Dakota Johnson). The opening scenes of "Splitsville" involve car sex interrupted by a fatal car crash, at which point you'll know if you're on the movie's cheerfully dark wavelength. All I will say about the plot is that there are break-ups, infidelity, a very funny running gag about Carey befriending Ashley's many new boyfriends, Johnson doing her I'm-not-acting-but-actually-I-am thing (and quite well, too) and one of the most spectacular sissy-fights between two grown men the movies have given us. When this movie is funny, it's very, very funny.
I will say, however, that at 104 minutes, "Splitsville" is 15 minutes too long, with a late midsection where the clever banter and twisted developments feel like two screenwriters working up a sweat to keep us amused instead of simply trusting their characters and their audience. The movie picks up again in the final stretch, but it has a limp by then – too bad, because when Marvin and Covino are on their game, "Splitsville" is a nasty little pleasure.
One caveat, though: The movie digs deep into the tired old trope of schlubby guys married to hot wives that goes back through silent movies to vaudeville (and beyond) and forward through "The Honeymooners" and "The King of Queens." Enough already. As much as I would personally pay cash money to watch Adria Arjona eat a box of Saltines, I would also someday like to see a movie where two guys who look like Antonio Banderas and George Clooney are married to two women who look like Melissa McCarthy and Amy Schumer. Because you know those couples are out there, too.
I normally talk about movies, but, as you can see, not always. Feel free to leave a comment, make suggestions, or add to someone else's.
Please forward this to friends. And if you’re not a paying subscriber and would like to sign up for additional postings and to join the discussions — or just help underwrite this enterprise, for which the author would be very grateful — here’s how.
