Thread by @AdamBKushner

The Post’s Outlook section, our home for ideas journalism, closed last week after 68 years. I was its final editor (I departed last fall), and I’ve been struggling to gather my thoughts. I’m sad — and also so grateful for my eight years there and the staff I worked with. 1/x

I want to say a few words about what made @PostOutlook great and highlight some of my favorite pieces. First, here’s a wonderful eulogy by two of my predecessors (@RobertGKaiser and @SLuxenberg) that recounts some very cool history. washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/0…

Many people over the decades, including those submitting stories and plenty in our newsroom, struggled to tell the difference between Outlook and Opinion. The line was sometimes blurry.

But where Opinion is the best home for normative arguments (ought / should / must), Outlook wanted analytical arguments (is / how / why). Opinion was prescriptive. Outlook was descriptive. It wanted to understand and interpret the world.

To do that, it demanded a format more expansive than the op-ed. Sometimes an author might need to write long, as Richard Morgan’s did in this jaw-dropping study of Woody Allen’s archives, which documented lechery stretching back decades.
washingtonpost.com/outlook/i-read…

To vindicate a perspective, an author might need to address complex counterarguments or explain the experiment design of the relevant research, as @A_agadjanian’s brilliant piece on voting behavior did. (@cshea4 edited.)
washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/0…

It might need to develop a notion by walking carefully through maps and data, as @DrTedJ did in this detailed proposal to award African Americans 5/3 of the vote in lieu of financial reparations. (@Swerdlick edited.) washingtonpost.com/posteverything…

And an Outlook story’s perspective might draw primarily from first-person experience and reportage, as it did in this @weyoung8 memoir about the culture of fear at Liberty University.
washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/0…

Often, pieces started conversations, as with an essay by @fraidyreiss, who’d been quietly studying the teenage marriage and local lawmakers’ refusal to ban it. (@jennyrogersDC edited.)
washingtonpost.com/posteverything…

The goal was, almost always, to surprise people — not with something gratuitously counterintuitive, but with a new way of seeing an issue or striking an emotional chord.

I *love* my new position, but Outlook may be the best job in American journalism, thanks to the freedom to experiment, the quality of writers we could recruit, the reach we often had, and the team. I left only because, after 8 years, I felt I’d done all the ideas I wanted to do.

I had zero indication, before I raised my hand to oversee education coverage, that the Outlook section might be shuttered.
Here are a few highlights that I’ll never forget, in no order:

(1) Editing @CarlosNYT and his Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage. Aside from all his virtuosic work on Trump, he authored the greatest piece ever written on 9/11:
washingtonpost.com/outlook/intera…

This was such an ingenious way to take stock of a former president:
washingtonpost.com/news/book-part…

(2) Getting to build the best team. Deputy editor @MarisaBellack, an astonishingly careful and thorough editor, always spotted the problems nobody else saw. Deputy editor @MikeMadden had far better news judgment than I had, and he made our coverage of Trump and covid essential.

I’ll never forget @SteveLevingston’s rock-solid instincts in leading our nonfiction books coverage, @lisabonos’s wit and humor, Amanda Erickson’s creativity, @SimonesNews’s ear for voice, @jennyrogersDC’s decency, @Swerdlick’s bedside manner with writers, ...

@TomLeGro’s willingness to try anything, @ebruenig for respecting no sacred cows, @Jacob_Brogan’s appreciation for the eccentric, @cshea4’s ability to spot new ideas, @MJoMurph’s sense of culture and justice, @EricMGarcia’s instinct for politics, ...

@sophiah_n’s piercing critiques of drafts, @sandhyawp’s steady hand under pressure, @willenglund sense of a story, @dandrezner’s skill at making a gag work, @belatimer and @ccolemanmedia’s ability to make anything look good, @ChrisRukan’s design ingenuity, …

@lizziehrt’s sense of style, @abraford’s pivots off the news, and Jennifer Morehead and @CarrieCamillo for saving us from ourselves a zillion times. Thanks to @timcurran_dc for leading with decency as the section’s caretaker until the bitter end.

(3) The work. Newspapering is an ephemeral trade, but here are some stories I’m proud of that, I think, stand the test of time:
@michelleinbklyn’s reported piece about the emotional toll of being a feminist online:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/onlin…

An argument from the environmental lawyer Steven Gerrard that we can atone for our pollution by taking in the climate refugees we displaced (@MikeMadden edited):
washingtonpost.com/opinions/ameri…

.@DarshanKarwat’s narration of his efforts to live trash- and recycling-free (with a great @TomLeGro video):
washingtonpost.com/posteverything…

The memoir of Linda J., a Syrian refugee whose family endured tragedy on their harrowing path from Damascus to Baltimore:
washingtonpost.com/posteverything…

An appreciation by physician @jonreismanMD about how he’d come to love pee — as an incredibly powerful diagnostic tool:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/learn…

Former federal judge Shira Scheindlin’s rueful essay about the MILLENNIUM of extra time that mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines forced her to impose on defendants:
washingtonpost.com/posteverything…

.@ArmsControlWonk’s terrifying counterfactual (edited by @MikeMadden) about how a war with North Korea might actually unfold:
washingtonpost.com/outlook/this-i…

An incredible archival find by @JournalistJG, who reported how Trump created the myth of his own wealth (listen to the tapes):
washingtonpost.com/outlook/trump-…

This introspective piece by @GregJaffe about how his all-male prep school experience sheds light on the culture Brett Kavanaugh grew up in:
washingtonpost.com/outlook/in-the…

Many pieces by @EveFairbanks, but most of all this thoughtful/controversial one (edited by @Jacob_Brogan) comparing the rhetoric of today's conservative exhortations for civility with antebellum defenses of the Confederacy:
washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/0…

This @parentwin essay, which was for a long while the most-trafficked piece ever in The Washington Post (edited by Amanda Erickson):
washingtonpost.com/posteverything…

Many pieces by @republicofspin, but most of all this prescient essay, looking back at the Nixon era, on how history might judge Trump’s bitter-enders:
washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/1…

A lament by @MartysaurusRex (edited by @MikeMadden) about how our culture teaches black boys that sports are their only hope to climb from poverty:
washingtonpost.com/news/postevery…

Editor @sophiah_n arrived at the Post to focus on as-told-to stories, and she scored *many* memorable ones, such as these:
washingtonpost.com/outlook/nursin…

washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/1…

washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/0…

This piece by @jenwgersten that really landed for me personally, lamenting how we rob classical music of its power by treating it like background listening (@cshea4 edited):

washingtonpost.com/news/postevery…

And I will never cease to be amazed by this @CarlosNYT review in which EVERY LINE is a Seinfeld reference:
washingtonpost.com/news/book-part…

I’m already forgetting many of my favorites. @vermontgmg and @mffisher were frequent contributors, too, with terrific stories. Also, so many books were born from Outlook pieces.

I got to edit (or top-edit) Woodward and Bernstein, @SenSanders, @BillieJeanKing, James Franco (on working at McDonald's!), @RalphNader, @JohnKerry, @kaj33, @jimtankersley, Bob Dole, and @TimGunn, whose piece I still go back to:
washingtonpost.com/posteverything…

I’ll always be thankful @PostBaron gave me a shot by hiring me from National Journal to edit @PostEverything and, the next year, entrusting me with @PostOutlook.

@PostBaron @PostEverything @PostOutlook I hosted a farewell party for all Outlook’s alumni over the generations, and every soul in attendance said it was the highlight of their careers. Here’s a pic of all the former editors, minus @sbg1 and @RobertGKaiser, who couldn’t make it. What company to keep. An honor. ❤ 38/38