Hi friends,

A life update from me: I am founding a new initiative focusing on the independent media landscape at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center.

As you have probably noticed, we are in the midst of a seismic shift in how we learn and engage with the information that we used to call “news.” The journalism world that I grew up in—a world of corporate broadcasters and family-owned newspapers—is on its deathbed. Americans are increasingly getting their information from independent sources, many of whom do not identify as journalists.

We are watching citizens filming the police on TikTok and absorbing political commentary on YouTube. We are reading experts directly in their Substack newsletters and hearing straight from government officials through their social media posts. Armed with a smart phone that amplifies their voice around the world, citizens are battling state narratives – a conflict I dubbed in a recent New York Times Opinion piece, a phone war (gift link).

This new fragmented media landscape is creating opportunities for vast distortions of facts and contributing to a sense of alienation. But it also presents a space for new voices to emerge, for underserved audiences to finally have their needs met, for citizens to be empowered and connect with each other in powerful new ways.

This landscape is also largely uncharted terrain. There is very little independent information available about who is watching what. Most of what is known about audience behavior is locked up by the platforms that distribute these new channels.

That’s where this new initiative comes in. At Harvard, we will be working to make sense of the new sea of information we are all swimming in. We’re seeking not just to understand the contours of this new landscape, but to elevate the best work being done by fearless independent voices. This new initiative builds on the research I did as a fellow on what journalists can learn from content creators about building trust with their audiences.

This opportunity also advances the mission of Proof News, the journalism studio I founded in 2024. At Proof, we are focused on providing better accountability to our readers by using rigorous methods and including ingredient labels on our news, showing exactly how we obtain and vet the information we share. Annie Gilbertson, investigative journalist extraordinaire, is stepping up to become Proof’s managing editor and is launching an ambitious body of work this year covering the impacts of AI on workers. Rina Palta, Proof’s former managing director, is joining me at Harvard as senior data scientist working to quantify and classify the independent media landscape.

I will also continue writing my regular New York Times Opinion pieces and am putting the final touches on a book about how to combat authoritarianism, On Courage: How to be a Dissident in the New Age of Fear, scheduled to be published by Harper Collins in June. Studying authoritarianism has underscored for me the crucial role that journalists have long played in holding power to account. But this moment also offers an exciting opportunity to rethink and expand our understanding of who does this work, how they do it, and who’s consuming it. 

Thank you, as always, for reading.

Best

Julia

P.S. Apologies for long gaps in newsletter sending! Finishing a book and launching a new research initiative has been exhausting. In case you missed it, I wrote a fun piece that ran on Christmas Day about the unexpected pleasure of turning off color on my phone (gift link). 

P.P.S. I was interviewed by Brooke Gladstone at the On The Media podcast this week about my grayscale experiment and why I’m worried about laws that limit young people’s online access. I know some of you have written asking me to explain my thinking on this, and I think I did a decent job of laying it out on the podcast. But let me know if you want me to devote a newsletter to it!