Thread by @AndrewDFish

After 7 years at @TheIntercept (4 at @TheInterceptBr), I decided a month ago that it's time to shake things up! Nov 13 is my last day. I'll still write for TI US & am also considering exciting new projects (DMs open). Let's stop to appreciate some of our amazing accomplishments👇

I moved back to Brazil in 2013 for a job w/ a journalism startup so young that it went by the temp name "NewCo News." All I knew was that it was being funded by @Pierre Omidyar & the co-founders were neck deep in the Snowden revelations, which were in full swing at the time.

I landed in the middle of a global firestorm. We were long on ambitions, short on staff, and moving fast as hell. On literally my 1st day I was negotiating partnerships w/ major int'l news outlets. And was soon diving into the archive for research & doing a million other things.

There was a quick crash course in encrypted comms & plenty of well-founded concern that we were being watched by spies. For the first 6 months or so, two of the founders wouldn't even travel to the US due to the real chance that they could be arrested. It was…tense!

I had been in DC, working as a contract news producer at @NPR & video producer at @pplstv. The deal was to come on to work with Glenn &, when things settled down, to transition to a full-time reporter role.

My focus was on the journalism, but in my mind it was the best possible offer since it gave me a chance to observe and participate in the inner workings of so many fascinating processes that were all going on at the same time. (Thanks to @tkbarnes for recommending me.)

Beyond the reporting, I was able to hone my skills at contract negotiation, partnership management, media relations, crisis management, publishing, strategic planning, internal politics, hiring, social media, product dev, brand building & more. It was all being built from scratch

Everything related to @Snowden was under attack by the US & allied govts & media allies. It was revelatory to see how often reporters at major outlets got the basic facts wrong (be it intentional distortion or the rush to publish). So many useful lessons for later.

In the early days, colleagues flew down to Rio to work on the archive. Intense debates about the ins & outs of particular stories & what this new news org should look like happened daily. It was fascinating & every detail felt extremely important.

Being in Rio, I had privileged access to the Snowden files that colleagues in NY & DC only dreamed of & I worked long extra hours to read every piece of reporting & immerse myself in the complex inner workings the US govt's top secret global espionage machine.

I needed to catch up to brilliant colleagues like @ryangallagher, @jeremyscahill, @coracurrier, @rdevro, @margotwilliams, @ryantate, @LilianaSegura, @micahflee & others who had spent many years covering tech, national security, digital espionage, and politics.

I contributed research and/or reporting to stories about:
The NSA's hunt for Osama Bin Laden (@coracurrier & @margotwilliams) theintercept.com/2015/05/21/nsa…

The CIA's top secret attempts to break Apple encryption (@jeremyscahill & @joshbegley) theintercept.com/2015/03/10/isp…

Innovations in speech recognition and searchable text that would turbocharge mass surveillance (@froomkin) theintercept.com/2015/05/05/nsa…

The inner workings of the US-Israel uneasy spying alliance theintercept.com/2014/08/04/cas…

We exposed the failures of the NSA's Skynet program that used algorithms to identify "terrorists," but ended up targeting Al Jazeera journalist Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan, whom they falsely labeled as a member of Al Qaeda. (w/ @coracurrier) theintercept.com/2015/05/08/u-s…

And I led our coverage on stories ranging from: UK spy agency GCHQ's campaign of "dirty tricks" and covert cyber ops against Argentina and swing Latin American popular opinion in favor of their claim to the Malvinas Islands theintercept.com/2015/04/02/gch…

To the controversial work of psychologists within GCHQ's psyops division, which aims to “discredit,” promote “distrust,” “dissuade,” “deceive,” “disrupt,” “delay,” “deny,” “denigrate/degrade,” and “deter” their enemies. theintercept.com/2015/08/07/psy…

Efforts to hack popular antivirus software like Kaspersky theintercept.com/2015/06/22/nsa…

And the NSA's "goldmine" of surveillance on Venezuela and the state oil company PdVSA theintercept.com/2015/11/18/ove…

This work was more useful than any master's degree. It honed my skills as a journalist & sharpened my political views, reaffirming my inclination to distrust power. I'd spent years in DC, where insiders look down their noses at rabble rousers; here it was the opposite.

If a powerful govt official said you were wrong or lying, rather than have to say "yes, sir" so as to not offend the gods of "journalistic objectivity" & "neutrality," you got to argue your case & explain why they were the ones who were full of it. It's way more fun that way!

Outside of the Snowden work, I also co-authored The Intercept's first article about Brazil. In late 2014, we sounded the alarm about Jair Bolsonaro, calling him "the most misogynistic, hateful elected official in the democratic world." theintercept.com/2014/12/11/mis…

And, in 2016, I wrote the first Intercept story to be published in Portuguese, one of many, many more to come (and definitely not the last one to royally piss off a Brazilian politician): theintercept.com/2016/01/09/jea…

In March 2016, I was thinking about requesting a transfer to NY when something unbelievable happened. I co-wrote & sometimes edited a series of analysis pieces on the imminent impeachment of @dilmabr & they just…blew up. In a month, 15% of TI's Facebook audience was from Brazil.

We were flooded with 100s of emails & messages clamoring for The Intercept to open an office in Brazil and counterbalance the hegemonic local mainstream press that was actively supporting the soft coup that would open the gates to hell & eventually lead to President Bolsonaro.

Opening a Brazilian bureau would be an unusual move, but TI's editor-in-chief @betsyreed2 immediately recognized the opportunity & supported the idea.

We hired @cecillia on contract in April to help map out the landscape, scout talent, and help put together a pitch. We submitted a plan in the beginning of June.

The pitch & budget was greenlit in late June. We launched Aug 2, 2016. This timeframe was absolutely INSANE, but we wanted to be up for the Rio Olympics & catch the tail end of impeachment. We essentially had 1 month to hire a team, build a site & start producing regular content.

Betsy & Glenn asked me to be managing editor. We all agreed from the start that we needed a Brazilian exec ed, but didn't want to rush into hiring someone that wasn't the right fit. In the meantime, I was running things w/ their oversight. politico.com/media/story/20…

The early days were really hard!!! But we were able to put out some solid work, despite being a scrappy team of just nine on a shoestring budget. In the beginning, we were literally working out of a moldy garage at the @TVZero HQ that Roberto Berliner graciously let us use.

We published this Dec 2016 scoop by @LucasFigueiredo about the Brazilian Intelligence Agency's (ABIN) massive database used to track social movements, which led to a congressional inquiry theintercept.com/2016/12/05/abi…

And this series by @mauriciotorres & Sue Branford chronicling Amazonian destruction that led the Public Ministry to demand R$10M in govt compensation for the Munduruku after a deadly Federal Police raid. (With @mongabay & editing help from @RebzLerer.) theintercept.com/series/tapajos…

And we revealed smoking gun evidence that lobbyists were ghost writing key parts of a constitution amendment designed to reduce labor rights. (by @_brenocosta_ & team)
theintercept.com/2017/04/26/lob…

In 2017, @cecillia & I followed Bolsonaro to a pre-campaign event in Florida & shot this now-iconic image of him saluting the American flag as a raucous crowd cheered him on. Haddad even used it in 2018 campaign ads. theintercept.com/2017/10/10/jai…

With these successes & huge social media growth, we were able to wrangle the budget for more staff, more ambitious projects & a bigger office in 2018. We hired @demori @tatikmd @rafaelmmartins @paulabianchi @joaobrizzi @delarabru @aassissouza @AraujoZev @caxorrosurfista & more

TIB's success has always been driven by our audience. They identified w/ our mission & tone & shared our work widely when mainstream outlets would "forget" to credit us. We leaned into voice & attitude, w/o compromising standards, in ways that others weren't comfortable doing.

In 2018, when @prolegomenos came in to help us raise R$90k for our election coverage, everyone we spoke to said it was impossible, but I had faith. We ended up 35% above target: the largest campaign in Brazilian journalism history.

A few months later, we launched a recurring campaign w/ the goal of R$20k/month within 2 months. Again, knowledgeable people in the field said we would never get there. In 6 weeks, we had R$46k.

And last month we were just shy of R$300k — the largest membership campaign in Brazil. It's been a lot of fun overseeing this project. I learned a ton from @thekatemyers, @prolegomenos, Michael Sherrard, @michaelwhitney, @miccohen. catarse.me/intercept

In 2019, we were presented with the opportunity that we had been positioning ourselves for since day 1: a massive leak that would shake the foundations of power. The series was called #VazaJato — the most important scoop in years in Brazilian journalism. theintercept.com/series/secret-…

Here's a few of my favorite English-language pieces from the series (edited by @ali_gharib):
1) Reveals prosecutors making their own independent foreign policy by leaking information to opposition politicians in Venezuela timed to influence their elections theintercept.com/2019/07/09/bra…

2) Shows that Judge Moro & prosecutors clearly colluded to convict ex-president (and leading presidential candidate) @LulaOficial theintercept.com/2019/06/09/bra…

3) Demonstrates how Brazilian prosecutors were subservient to US interests and even hid their collaboration from the Brazilian govt. Our series on US collaboration with @nataliaviana & @agenciapublica just won the prestigious @premioherzog prize! 🎉 theintercept.com/2020/03/12/uni…

#VazaJato was a huge success in terms of int'l audience response & impact on national politics. We were able to rewrite the public narrative on Operation Car Wash's scandalous behavior using their own words. We also shared the archive w/ other outlets—a very rare practice here!

As a result, new members flocked to the site and we were again able to move to an even bigger office and go on a hiring clip. Now @sukitabr, @Samantadocarmo, @amandajungles & @peterkino are part of the team.

Two weeks ago, we independently launched a #VazaJato book, which has so far been a sales hit and will help TIB pay for more and more original reporting. livrovazajato.com.br

Early on, I told colleagues that my goal for TIB was to bring it to a point where it could survive me. Today, I am confident that it will. We built a distinctive brand, a large team of skilled journalists, solid financials & operations, & 2.7 million social media followers.

Throughout this thread I've used "we" because every success & failure was a team effort. Without competent lawyers, admins, designers, editors, devs, producers, fundraisers, etc, not a single story gets published. Without reporters, we don't have any stories to tell!

My role over the last 4 years has been, at times, doing elements of all of those jobs, making sure we're working towards a common goal, and always being on the lookout for something we can be doing better. Whenever I could make time, I'd write my own stories in Eng & Prtg.

I edited & wrote stories & contracts (don't tell our lawyers), assembled furniture, gave keynote presentations at int'l conferences, built budgets, argued w/ everyone who needed to have their mind changed, shot video, ran Fb ads, scouted new staff — whatever needed to be done.

I'm not going to go on a thank you spree b/c I'll inevitably forget way too many people, but you know who you are. Everyone who ever dedicated themselves to this project, thank you so much for your contributions.

Ok, one exception: an ENORMOUS thank you to @betsyreed2 for believing in TIB and in me and for all of the support, guidance, and PATIENCE along the way. You've taught me so much. Your maturity and wisdom have saved us so many times.

That's it for now! If you want to get in touch, I'm at [e-mail]. I'm probably going to log off for a few months and recharge, but I'll be back to announce new projects and ideas soon. Bye!

LAST COMMENT: thank you to the @TheInterceptBr team for sending me these goodbye cheeses yesterday. Delicious! 🥰