Hello from California’s high desert, where I come bearing some (hopefully welcome) news. Starting this week, The Dispatch will expanding to include a weekly essay from yours truly.
If you’ve been around since the beginning of The Dispatch, you may remember that I used to start each news round-up with a longer introduction on a range of topics, things I felt worth reflecting on more than the bullet format could provide. For the sake of readability and brevity, I stopped including my musings, which easily devolved into theorizing or macro-level arguments. I often still write them, only to edit them out before sending each Dispatch. It’s hard enough to ask folks to read my local news project, and I felt greedy asking for even more of your time simply so I could ramble through whatever has been on my mind that week. So, in the name of doing more rather than compromising, I am adding a second weekly edition for those thoughts alone.
The Dispatch: Essays will be available for free to begin with, but my plan is to move them into a subscription-based model over time. The Dispatch: News will always remain free — I believe very strongly that local news is a community service that has been hollowed out by those in search of profits, to the detriment of the communities they are supposed to serve. I have no intention of changing my model and hope that my small contributions are valuable enough to our community to remain an integral part of our information ecosystem here in the Basin. The Dispatch: Essays will never cover hard news, and if it becomes necessary to do so for the sake of the week’s essay, the news will also be included in The Dispatch: News the following week. Nothing about The Dispatch: News is changing, and you are able to opt out of receiving The Dispatch: Essays while still receiving News every Wednesday. Though I hope you’ll join me on this experiment, I completely understand that it’s a divergence from what I’ve built over the last three years and maybe you’d like me to stick to news, as it were. That’s entirely your call, and I am very grateful for the privilege of landing in your inbox however you will have me.
If anything, the continued support you’ve all shown for The Dispatch: News is creating this opportunity to expand into more creative writing. I have always enjoyed feature and essay writing (more than news writing, I must admit), and am so excited to reengage that muscle. I have been endlessly inspired by Anne Helen Peterson’s newsletter Culture Study and Kelton Wright’s Shangrilogs, both of which rely heavily on personal essays and first-person reporting, in addition to other types of writing I’m eager to explore. Consider those inspiration for The Dispatch: Essays, both in form and topic from time to time.
It’s a little nerve-wracking to think about writing from a more personal place, especially in a small town where folks recognize me at pottery classes and volunteer events. I’ve been writing on the internet for over a decade — some endeavors have been more anonymous than others — but I don’t think I will ever get used to the idea that my writing is making its way into the real world, with actual readers on the other end of the screen. This is probably why I liked Twitter (may it rest in peace) so much — as much as I griped about shouting into the void, the void was a safe space to shout, with few ramifications in the real world as long as my editor turned a blind eye. News writing felt similar. Remaining neutral and focusing on topics that didn’t relate to me was, in effect, a screen to hide behind while still writing as much as I could, even though human interest features were the assignments I most looked forward to. I went through a similar progression when I first started writing — I started my so-called “career” writing a neighborhood newsletter on my parents’ computer, printing it out with ample clip art, and popping it into everyone’s mailbox when I was 10 years old. But the more I read, the more I wanted to explore creative writing. I wanted to create something I loved and was proud of, to create among other people the feelings I got when I finished a book. To break out of the formulas for news writing and experiment more. I’ve never been good at accepting explanations along the lines of “because I said so” or “that’s just how it’s done,” or what some people may label as stubborn. But it worked. The first handful of short stories and poems I wrote were something of an elementary school success: I claimed a few statewide awards and was published in a few children’s creative writing journals.
And so, here we are. Consider this the digital evolution from a simple neighborhood newsletter to something a little more interesting, vulnerable, and (hopefully) entertaining for your Sunday morning reading.
That’s it for this week. I look forward to arriving in your inbox with a new piece next week, but in the meantime, I hope you are able to get outside.
- Megan