Thread by @SethAbramson

(INTERVIEW) In these last days of my 25-year career in political journalism, I'm grateful I get to close out this time in my life with a lengthy chat with @rustyrockets on the past, present, and—most importantly—the future. The interview drops on Saturday. luminarypodcasts.com/listen/russell…

(PS) For those who aren't Luminary (@hearluminary) subscribers, the site offers a three-month free trial subscription that you can use to hear my chat with Russell and much else. I'll also post YouTube clips of our 70-minute conversation as or when I'm able to do so next week.

(PS2) I began my work in political journalism writing op-eds for The Daily Dartmouth, the nation's oldest college newspaper, in 1995. In the aughts I ran The Nashua Advocate, a political website nominated for a Koufax Award. It got very big (and very quickly) during "Gannongate."

(PS3) In this decade my work came as a columnist for The Huffington Post and then Newsweek (with freelance articles elsewhere); on this Twitter feed—which is now 5+ years old and has had 100+ million retweets; and in the Proof trilogy of Trump foreign policy books (2018 to 2020).

(PS4) My first love for many years has been cultural theory, particularly post-internet cultural theory (with side-interests in the sociology of the internet, journalism about journalism, and reviews of emerging tech and digital art of the sort I did as a columnist at Indiewire).

(PS5) I'm so excited that I got to close out this time in my life by speaking to Russell Brand because it gave me a chance to simultaneously look backward (to how I got here), to the present (Trump and the collapse of conventional journalism), and into the future (metamodernism).

(PS6) To be clear, I'm not going anywhere. I'll be right here post-election—just not covering politics. I have a book coming out on the future of journalism (Citizen Journalist, 2022), plans to continue my columns (focusing on journalism about journalism) and some more surprises.

(PS7) There's a significant (even encompassing) political dimension to my future work—it's just not focused on the 24/7 political news cycle or domestic policy debates. And journalistic prose-writing aside, I hope to have the chance to share my art more widely with everyone, too.

(PS8) One thing I did in the 2010s was try to reconceptualize what poetry is in the digital age, publishing a trilogy—the Metamodern Trilogy—that looks nothing like what we think of as poetry, but I suspect many would find more interesting than conventional lyric-narrative verse.

(PS9) Essentially, my work in theory has been focused on how the internet has transformed how we think, feel, and interact—and can be said to have done so in generative ways if we're mindful of the opportunities (rather than pitfalls) we face in art, journalism, and social media.

(PS10) So I hope you'll listen in on Saturday if you can! I think you'll see in my conversation with Russell—and in this feed, going forward—how my political journalism is of a piece with the work I've been doing for years and will keep doing here and elsewhere for years to come.

(NOTE) I can't say too much on this yet, but I'll say that I believe the Proof trilogy—and this time in my life—will live on in new projects/formats that haven't been announced yet. In other words, I believe you'll be hearing much more about the Proof project in the years ahead.

(NOTE2) I wrote "three-month" free trial subscription but was thinking of something else, sorry (too many subscriptions and subscription offers in my life right now)! Luminary (@hearluminary) offers a one-week trial subscription that allows you to hear Saturday's podcast episode.