Over the last few months, I’ve been feeling dissatisfied with this blog, so I’ve begun making some changes. Last week I branched out and started reposting on Substack. This week I’m changing the format of the weekly summaries.
Here’s why: Ever since Trump took office for his second term, there has really only been one political story worth telling: How Trump is trying to pervert American democracy into an autocracy, what resistance (if any) he’s been running into, and what the American people can do about it.
So, in essence, I’ve been writing the same story every week, but making it current by dressing it up in the details of that week’s particular news developments. This has been boring in some ways and frustrating in others. What I’m trying to communicate hasn’t seemed to match the format I’ve been writing in.
Thinking that through led me into a long meditation on the nature of news, which is the featured post this week.
In our culture, news has a particular timescale. News is what has changed since the last time we talked. When you meet an old buddy at a high school reunion, “I had a kid two years ago” is news. But when you take a coffee break with your officemate at work, it isn’t. If you want to talk about that in the office, you have to dress it up with a more current event, like “Bobby had his second birthday Tuesday.”
For the last seven months, then, I’ve been dressing up the Trump-wants-to-be-Putin story in the form of what happens each week. It’s a strange dance, in that you probably see what I’m doing, but I don’t actually tell you in so many words.
The point of the reformat is to make all that clear, so that the Sift will be more direct and honest. Each weekly summary will start with a “Significant Ongoing Stories” section, which will list the forest-level things I’m paying attention to, and how they connect to the trees in this week’s news. Then I’ll have a “This Week’s Developments” section, which will basically be what the old weekly summary was.
The featured post “The Timescale of News” should be out between 10 and 11 EDT. The revamped weekly summary I’ll try to get out by noon.
Consider this all a work in progress, so comment freely.
The Weekly Sift 
Comments
Have you ever thought that it never is new but only spin if one imposes one’s own biased viewpoint on the events like supporting or opposing anything Trump does or did.
why did one side report Hunters laptop and other side not and why was one side advocating January 6 or not / since Obama removed the requirement that news needed to provide both sides and before social media walked away with all advertising money revenue that’s what has happened / the young born after 1995 don’t bother watching or reading this banter at all / I’m a naturalized legal immigrant whom it took from dream at 12 to 32 to come here and another 8 to become citizen / I had no money made every penny myself and created 1000 new jobs helped 40 kids and moved to Kenya as the woke period with corruption and open borders was not what our best constitution was a about/ Trump is a SOB but he’s my SOB who wants on Rushmore but in doing so gives power back to us citizens and taxpayers / you probably will not answer because I sing from a different book but if you do let’s debate the truth
My name is Tom if you answer I’m born in Finland and I’m white and my wife is Kenyan and beautifully black as will our soon to be born twins be as well
I’m confused by the assertion that “Obama removed the requirement that news needed to provide both sides.” I think you might be referring to the Fairness Doctrine, promulgated by the FCC – but which was overturned by the Reagan Administration and has not been in effect since the 1980s. Here is one source on that, from the Reagan Library.
https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/topic-guide/fairness-doctrine
This is nonsense that was recently circulating on MAGA social media as yet another fact-free attempt to distract the base from the widespread federal government cover-up of Trump’s involvement with the Jeffrey Epstein / Ghislaine Maxwell pedophile / sex-trafficking ring.
What MAGAts seem to be referring to is this, from an AI summary of the legislation cited in posts I’ve seen attempting to support the assertion that Obama made it ok to lie to The People.
“The Smith-Mundt Act, originally focused on regulating foreign broadcasting, was amended in 2012 under President Obama’s administration. This amendment, known as the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act, lifted the ban on domestic dissemination of materials produced by the State Department and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), including Voice of America content. Essentially, it allowed the U.S. government to share its international broadcasting content with a domestic audience….”
This weekly newsletter isn’t the place for this grossly misinformed regurgitation of Faux Noise propaganda drivel. Take it over to one of your fact-free MAGA echo-chamber hangouts.
This is as good a place as any to note that lately the comments have been overrun by people with what is clearly a tenuous hold on reality. As along as adjustments are being made, an editorial policy that removes the nonsense would improve the experience for those of us interested in discussing the content of the week’s topics.
Thank you for your past columns and for your continued efforts to sift through all the news for us. I appreciate your decision to revamp your column. Extraordinary times have caused us all to reevaluate many areas.
I can appreciate the extraordinary difficulty any contemplative person faces in reporting “news” in the Trump-takes-over-our-country times. In many ways, it is repetitive and weekly developments vary only in detail. As a consumer of news, I am likewise numbed by the repetiveness, and I often find myself only “skimming” because nothing seems new. Without discounting the horrific nature of ongoing events, I have to admit that helplessly watching it happen via “news reports” leaves me dulled, disconsolate, and disheartened. Simply put, reading the news has become very difficult and I often find myself ignoring the details when no major events are involved. Sadly, I suspect that’s a big part of their plan and I am falling in line. I am numb as they succeed in the catastrophic destruction of democracy.
To a great extent, my failing to engage more fully is my fault but I argue that that failing should be shared with those reporting the news. I used to read the NYT and WaPo daily and in great detail but now I’ve dropped my NYT subscription and only skim WaPo, as I find it lacking significance. Or, maybe it just lacks the outrage that I think events—even daily minutia—deserves. Simply “reporting the news” feels so grossly inadequate that even reading news as WaPo offers it seems to further normalize it all. Normalizing atrocities is a fascist tenet and I refuse to passively participate.
I wake each Monday morning looking forward to my Weekly Sift because you do so much more than “report the news.” In my opinion, you do what you do better than anyone. I only wish you had a larger audience and bigger platform. But I must admit that I’ve found even my hit of Weekly Sift lacking of late. Mind you, I offer no criticism, but merely wonder what a reporter can or should do to combat the sense that each day’s news is “old news,” in that it varies from the previous day’s news only in detail or location. It’s boring on purpose and no one gets outraged when bored.
So, I applaud the fact that you recognize the difficulty in reporting events and are seeking a way to do this work in a manner that combats efforts to bore us into submissiveness. Frankly, I have no idea how you’ll do that or if you’ll succeed. I certainly hope you will and I hope your voice will inspire others with big platforms to do the same. We need big voices and big outrage to make people pay attention. That is, if we’re not too numbed and complacent to even notice anymore.
Thanks for all you do. And remember that there are quite a few of us out here who appreciate your work and admire you.
I congratulate you on your decision. I’m a minor league but prolific blogger since 2009, and I made a conscious decision after the 2024 election to not ever use the word “tr*mp” in a post, nor make him the star of the show. I just did a word search, and apparently have been successful these last eight months. But its not been easy. As his buddy Steve Bannon famously asserted, “flooding the zone with s*it” is the name of the game. There’s the old song lyric “if you don’t know me by now, you will never, never know me….” It’s time to retire the bully, one action at a time. Try to refocus on the grassroots, where we live, which I’ve come to see as a very good place, full of good neighbors…. Keep on keeping on.
It’s not the time to speak in tangents, or to drop hints. The more forthcoming, the better.
as a retired journalist, both from newspapers and academia, I am grateful for your efforts in this direction. Thank you.
Thank you!
I liked the new format! I really appreciate the format, cadence, and the angle of the Sift as a whole. When I encounter a news story during the week, I am always asking myself whether I really need to disrupt my day, to find out what’s going on with this story, exactly today? Or can I wait until Monday, and find out from the Sift whether it was actually important? Usually I am able to wait. Knowing that the Sift is coming on Monday makes it easier for me to avoid getting too caught up in the news and doomscrolling, which is very helpful for my ability to expend quality effort and focus on long-term projects (including activism around improving things!). Thank you for the work you do here!
“How Trump is trying to pervert American democracy into an autocracy, what resistance (if any) he’s been running into, and what the American people can do about it.”
I’d like to see more about “what the American people can do about it.”
I started subscribing to The Sift after my wife’s longtime friend, a Reuters journalist (now retired), recommended a post you had written about Slavery in the USA and how it had continued being practiced into the modern era.
It was a real eye-opener for an ex-pat Brit (now 72), who had been taught in school that all slavery had been abolished in the US in the distant past.
If that is being “woke” then I’m glad I am. It used to be called having your consciousness or awareness raised – discovering that reality can sometimes be different for some groups – and that used to be a good thing. I think it still is, no matter how much the Right may try to suppress the truth or rewrite history or gaslight anyone who doesn’t agree with their damaging thought processes.
So I am a diehard reader of your take on things, and I look forward to reading more, no matter the direction in which you take me.
Peter
Why would you switch to Substack? WordPress seems to be working fine, at least from a subscriber’s viewpoint. Also Substack is becoming very controversial. https://leavesubstack.com/