Saving the Liberal Order. Together.

Sarah and I did a giant-sized Secret show that’s mostly about our feelings. If you like that sort of thing, this one’s for you. It’ll be out in a bit.

Before we start I want to give you a quick sense of where my head is at.

1. All Hands

This week was The Bulwark’s annual all-hands meeting. Years ago when we started, I touched every word The Bulwark published. Today I’m pretty far removed from day-to-day operations. When we started, our team was so small and tight-knit that we knew what the person next to us had for dinner the night before. Today the company is so big I just met several colleagues for the first time.

So, lots of change.

But the change is structural, not foundational. At the heart of every single discussion we had—every one—were two things:

• How can we help save democracy?

• How can we serve and add value for our community?

That’s it. Those are the questions behind all our considerations. Every structural change we make—bringing in new voices, starting new products, even how we manage the company internally—is about those twin objectives.

What I’m trying to convey to you is that everyone at The Bulwark has a reverence for this thing we’ve built together. This community. Being part of it is, for us, an honor, a privilege, and a responsibility.

The responsibility is that we’re not here to stroke or flatter you. Being in community with you does not mean looking to tell you what you want to hear, or infantilizing you.

It means treating you with the respect and candor of a friend.

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Let me tell give you a look behind the curtain of how most media companies view their audiences.

At the largest scale of general-interest publications, publishers think about their audience as a commodity. They segment it into tranches and then treat each of these groups as a blob to be grown and managed. A newspaper wants to grow, say, women aged 22 to 50, so they start a cooking newsletter. They see erosion in men aged 50 to 65, so they publish more pieces on military history.

At the next level down are mass-scale partisan operations that view their audience as a mob of rats. They want to be pied pipers so they try to play whatever tune they think will attract the most rats. If they play a note that drives some of the rats away, they quickly correct course.

And then there are niche outfits where the audience is honored but infantilized. The company understands where the lines are and tries to stay inside them. They can name all of the sacred cows. They treat audience members like delicate flowers who must be flattered and cajoled into staying with them.

Here is what I told the team yesterday:

What we owe our audience is compassion, good faith, and candor. When we engage with our community, we don’t walk on eggshells or soothe. We call people to be their best selves. Sometimes that means redirecting a conversation. Sometimes it means telling the community to do better.¹

Sometimes it means telling a member who doesn’t understand our ethos, and is looking for something different, that they’d be happier someplace else—we’ll refund their membership, no hard feelings.

But most of the time it means telling people who understands the ethos and want to be part of the community, but can’t afford it, that we have room for them, too.

If there’s another media company that runs like this, I’m not aware of it.

Back in the late ’90s or early ’00s Google had an internal company motto: “Don’t be evil.” People used to clown on them for it. Not me. I like institutional guideposts.

When I worry about our growth changing us, the guidepost I use for myself is: Be real.

My biggest fear is someday turning into this:

“The Liberal Order Can’t Heal Itself,” complains the man who has spent most of his career trying to strangle the liberal order.

What a fucking joke.²

If you want to be part of this community and build a better media with us, come join up. Right now. Today.