The 24 Seven: Principles

A quick update on the next few weeks at 24sight News

Your author and correspondent, grinding out the final weeks/months of this historic race for the White House from 24sight News HQ .

Hey friends, you may have noticed the 24 Seven newsletter hasn’t been popping up as much in your inboxes lately, that’s because I’ve got a few reporting projects which have to be completed before Election Day. (Reporters respond best to deadlines, it’s been a constant motivator in my adult life.)

I just wanted to drop in and say thanks.

I began building this after getting laid off at my last legacy media job in January, although I’d been cooking this idea for a few years. I scribbled down the name, 24sight, on a notepad back in 2021 with this note, “Hindsight is 2020, this is 24sight.” It’s a nod at looking forward at the key dynamics shaping the race for the most important job in the world and acknowledging that we learn from the past. The closer we get to Election Day, and what seems to be a possibly extended election battle in the courts, 2020 really does seem like predicate — though how much is impossible to say just yet.

So while I work behind the scenes, I thought I’d pen some thoughts and gratitude.

Reporting is the life of kings. There is no other.

When I got into this way back in high school, it was because the cool kids, the smart slackers, the rebels, the raconteurs, were doing it. I kept with it because the reporters notebook, an inquisitive mind and the reasonable ability to string together sentences in a cohesive manner open a lot of doors and enriches your heart, mind and soul.

And I can think of no other career I’d rather do, because reporting continues to enthrall.

What I go for here is the opposite of outrage, whatever is antithetical to meaningless bluster, the anathema of the ephemeral. News should inform. Reporting should reveal. I probably don’t get as many clicks and as much money as I could if I posted allcaps absolute declarations of this-is-the-craziest-thing-you’ve-ever-seen because, in reality, it isn’t. (And for most of the allcaps types, the stories don’t deliver on the headline.)

I’ve got a few reporting projects in the pipeline, which you’ll be seeing here in the coming days and week, and a plan for where coverage goes after this race is decided. But this essay is an affirmation of journalism.

I was up in Harrisburg, PA a few days ago on a reporting trip covering a panel of elections officials convened by Keep Our Republic. The stories were astounding. (Former PA Gov. Tom Corbett asked the audience how many electoral votes you need to win the election — in most of our lifetimes that number has been a steady 270. Then he asked what happens if a state doesn’t certify its electors by the December 11, the new deadline under the updated Electoral Count Act. How many votes do you need then? I heard quite a few “ohhhs” in the audience, I felt the same way. We’re on new terrain here, uncertain terrain.)

But what captured me, the politics nerd, was listening to the administration of the elections in Pennsylvania, where the 67 counties have the power and the state sets the guardrails. In my head I laughed like Click and Clack, the Tappet brothers, because of course it’s the local administration — and yes, it’s quite secure. I don’t know if we’ll do call-ins on the 24sight pod anytime soon, but if you called in and emulated the sound of your ballot being fed through the scanner, I’m sure myself or one of these good and normal election clerks could tell you exactly what’s happening: your vote is being counted.

When I was reporting my biography of former vice president Mike Pence back in 2018, I found the fulcrum of his story in a cornfield behind one of his boyhood homes in Columbus, Indiana. He used to reference the cornfield regularly in his stump speeches, though it was not quite the way he presented it.

So I plucked a sprig from atop a stalk and dropped it in my bag, carrying it with me as I reported the book — a tassel of truth. (It dried up and crumbled over the months back then before I took it to a Fedex Kinkos and laminated it for safekeeping.)

You don’t know what the story is until you’ve done the reporting, and that’s what I’m doing here. So, I’ll say the same thing I thought standing at the edge of that cornfield in Columbus, Indiana, thanks for lending me your ear.

Cheers,

Tom