On this World Press Freedom Day, become a member of GroundTruth
Support our work by upgrading your subscription to a paid membership
On this World Press Freedom Day, I want to thank you for being part of my reporting journey and following my work through this newsletter. Whether you’ve known me since my days as Middle East Bureau Chief at The Boston Globe, or through GlobalPost, or through The GroundTruth Project, where we launched Report for America, or more recently, my newsletter on Substack—I’m deeply grateful. Your support fuels GroundTruth’s mission to inspire civic dialogue through independent, community-based journalism.
Today, I’m sharing a new way you can take that support further—by becoming a paid subscriber to the GroundTruth weekly newsletter.
To be clear, our reporting will remain free and accessible to all. We will not put our journalism behind paywalls. But electing to offer your support allows me to do what I do best: to be out there in the field at a time when on-the-ground reporting has never been more important.
As always, my focus is both global and local. I want to hear the stories of workers in the industrial town of Youngstown, Ohio, and revisit how the impacts of underemployment have changed since we last covered it in 2014. I want to host public forums that bring together thought leaders and local reporters in a space where we can listen, learn, and reflect on how to rebuild trust in journalism. And I want to stand alongside Ukrainian journalists in cities like Kyiv and Bucha as they continue to report under relentless Russian aggression while also losing vital resources as USAID gets gutted.
But this kind of reporting takes time, resources, and a deep commitment to the truth. If you believe in this mission, I hope you’ll consider becoming a paid subscriber. In the future, we are planning to launch more incentives for our paid users, such as subscriber chats, podcasts, and guest columns. But for now, I wanted to personally share with you this unique opportunity to support on-the-ground journalism. Again, please, do not feel obligated to contribute, as all of my columns will still be available for free. But if you truly care about this work and want to see more of it, I encourage you to upgrade your subscription.
Thank you so much for being a part of this journey and following our work through the newsletter. Together, we can create a safer and brighter future for a free and independent press. Your support would mean the world to me.