What This Newsletter Is All About
Stories and Strategies of Nailing Stuff Down
This newsletter is born of a need I believe I share with most people: Better ways of getting at the truth, of separating fact from fiction, of isolating signal from noise. In other words: The stories and strategies of nailing stuff down.
What have you signed up for?
Many issues of the newsletter will focus on one or more stories recounting a path to the facts. For starters, I’ll post every Thursday. I’ll welcome paid subscriptions at some point but everything is free for now.
Why now?
We live in a time when manipulation of the truth is so widespread as to be comical, were it not for its cruel and devastating consequences. Thanks to artificial intelligence and social media, distorting the truth has never been easier. We need all the help and all the tools — including AI and social media — we can muster to resist these trends and sharpen our capacity as fact-finders and truth-tellers. HOW TRUE aims to build a community of people committed to doing exactly that in their personal and professional lives.
Examples of what you will (and won’t) get
Former Miami Herald Executive Editor Tom Fiedler explains why he regards humility as essential to successful pursuit of the facts, a lesson he learned in breaking the story that ended the presidential campaign of former Senator Gary Hart. Ann Curry, long before she became a network TV correspondent and anchor, learned a crucial lesson about trust at KTVL in Medford, Oregon. Jim O’Connell, MD, president of Boston Healthcare for the Homeless, explains how footwashing became a valuable first step in getting to the heart of his patients’ medical issues. (HOW TRUE won’t be limited to the stories of journalists.) Kim Kleman, executive director of Report for America and former editor-in-chief of Consumer Reports, tells reporters: If your story is all black or all white, you haven't finished your reporting. Dig for the gray. In my case, the first big story I wrote for the Detroit Free Press in 1972 involved a mistake that — lesson learned — helped me navigate prostate cancer half a century later.
Along the way, I’ll mention apps and tools that I find useful, but for in depth reviews I’ll link to newsletters more expert in that. And I’ll leave the ranking of the truthiness of particular assertions to Poynter’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Politifact.
What’s the backstory of HOW TRUE?
I launched the newsletter after getting some crucial advice at a seminar last month at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, where I worked from 2000 to 2012. I was working on a book proposal with the cumbersome title of “If Your Mother Says She Loves You, Check It Out” when I learned that Poynter was offering a seminar called “Breaking Into Books.” Book writing is a new entry in Poynter’s curriculum. Kristen Hare and colleagues made an inspired move by enlisting Sam Freedman to help teach the seminar. A former New York Times reporter and columnist, Sam taught a course in book writing at Columbia Journalism school that helped birth 95 books over 35 years.
His advice to me: “Do it as a Substack.”
He was right. Framing things up for a newsletter sharpened my focus and enabled me to murder one of my little darlings, as Poynter’s Roy Peter Clark would put it. As attached as I remain to “If Your Mother Says She Loves You…” a title of “How True” better captures what I’m up to. This may or may not lead to a book at some point. For now, I’m all in on the newsletter.
Back when I was still focused on a book, I invited dozens of friends and colleagues to send me stories of lessons they learned on the job and that perhaps also became useful in everyday life. Common to nearly all the stories I received was a core pursuit: Getting at the facts, discovering the heart of the matter. Many of the stories recount mistakes that yielded their own set of lessons.
Some of the stories mirrored my own experience of nearly half a dozen decades as a reporter, editor, teacher and coach. It also became clear that I needed to expand the pool of storytellers to include doctors, lawyers and more — really any line of work where sorting out the truth is important.
A few words about punctuation
The absence of a punctuation mark after the tile of this newsletter is intentional. It’s because I’d need three:
How true? Exploring how true a particular assertion might be.
How true: Tracking down the how of it.
How true! Celebrating an idea or observation that’s, well, especially true.
Thanks!
Thank you again for subscribing. I welcome your suggestions (and stories) at bmitch [at] gmail [dot] com or via the messaging app on Substack.This newsletter is born of a need I believe I share with most people: Better ways of getting at the truth, of separating fact from fiction, of isolating signal from noise. In other words: The stories and strategies of nailing stuff down.
Many issues of the newsletter will focus on one or more stories recounting a path to the facts. For starters, I’ll post every Thursday. I’ll welcome paid subscriptions at some point but everything is free for now.