Off the cycle, again

Putting a #30# on my USA TODAY chapter

Republican National Convention, Milwaukee, July 2024.

For the past two years, my life was a blur of breaking news alerts and the relentless machinery of national power. Leading the teams at USA TODAY was a sprint through an era being rewritten in real-time. It was essential, exhausting, and—to be honest—deafening.

But after 30+ years in this business—from analog football scrimmages to the digital trenches of Politico and Insider—I’ve realized something: The faster the news moves, the more we need a place to slow down.

I’m coming home to love, journalism.

I left the newsroom this month with a notebook full of the kind of questions the daily cycle doesn’t give you time to answer:

• How do we protect the craft when the noise is at a deafening pitch?

• How do we lead through chaos without losing our humanity?

• What does it actually mean to love this industry when it feels most broken?

I’m done reacting. It’s time to start reflecting.

Eyemouth, Scotland, April 2026.

Over the coming weeks, I’m turning this space into a laboratory for the future of storytelling. My goal is to pull back the curtain on why we do this work, exploring stories of adversity, the projects journalists are most proud of, and how we navigate these turbulent times.

We’ll meet newsmakers, news chasers and news lovers. We’ll dig into lessons from the trail, the quiet crises of the newsroom, and the future of the craft that has been my life’s work since before the internet was a household name.

I may be off the news cycle (again! and again!), but the conversation is just getting started.

Thanks for being here.