Chris Walker

Ocean of Influence: Inside the Celebrity Boat Trip That Was All Over Your Feeds The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection threw the mother of all influencer trips, featuring Tom Brady, Leo DiCaprio, Martha Stewart and a hundred or so other A-Listers. Vanity Fair climbed aboard…

I once heard Vanity Fair described as "rich people behaving badly" and this story not only fits that mold, but is pretty much a modern classic by @joehagantv.bsky.social www.vanityfair.com/style/story/...

Coming from an alt-weekly background, I LOVE this for the Bay Area. Hope this thrives.

the quoted section from the Declaration of Independence actually gave me chills

Who Killed the Narrative Podcast? Podcasts like 'Serial,' 'The Shrink Next Door,' and 'Over My Dead Body' were once a booming industry. But times — and budgets — have changed.

Great piece that tracks with my experience www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult...

The problem is how to reach younger generations where they're at (50 percent of Gen Z tiktok users rely on it for news) when short-form video is completely taking over and it's algorithmically squeezed in between choreographed dances and memes

Just got galleys for our upcoming book MASTER PLAN — exposing the secret plot to legalize corruption in America.

The book builds off the award-winning podcast with never-before-reported revelations & documents.

Pre-order: levernews.com/masterplanbook

Fun fact I recently learned: 47 percent of Americans read ZERO books each year

wish we could resurrect Hunter S. Thompson just so he could cover this.

😂

I rode my bike past this right after it happened, riding by a firetruck and shocked to see a body behind it on the street. I didn't realize the victim was a cyclist because first responders had already moved the bike. Now I'm even more shaken since I ride through this intersection all the time

Substack Raises $100 Million, Betting on Subscriptions but Coming Around to Ads

"The company today is more interested in taking on YouTube than MailChimp."

Subtack taking on VC...cue the enshittification

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/b...

@longreads.com

Mark’s House Is Gone. Heather’s House Is Gone. Eddie’s House Is Gone. When a hometown burns down, how do we account for so much loss?

damn, this piece by Josh Bearman is so beautifully written. Do yourself a favor and soak this in:

nymag.com/intelligence...

this looks like some SEO bullshit intended for maximizing exposure on Google searches...it's trying to capitalize on searches for Brian Wilson and ICE at the same time. The SEO trend always pissed me off when I worked in newsrooms

In 2020, we launched The Lever from scratch.

This week, The Lever won the National Press Club Award & our reporting dominated Capitol Hill in two high profile events.

It's been an amazing 5 years. Thanks to our subscribers who make our work possible. We're just getting started.

3 Teens Almost Got Away With Murder. Then Police Found Their Google Searches An arson attack in Colorado had detectives stumped. The way they solved the case could put everyone at risk.

wow what a story. I remember this fire well and had considered looking into it more as a feature (I wish I had). But @wired.com's Raksha Vasudevan writes a strong narrative feature here not just about the crime but, importantly, its privacy implications. www.wired.com/story/find-m...

Podcast examines major wine fraud case and sheds new light on 30-year-old murder - The Fund for Investigative Journalism Blood Vines, an eight-episode narrative podcast series produced with support from the Fund, chronicles Chris Walker’s three-year-long investigation of one of the largest wine frauds in U.S. history an...

I was thankful to have had the FIJ's financial support on this 4-year reporting project. The podcast has its wide release on May 6

Here's another side to federal workforce downsizing: inability to get interview clearance. My press contacts at two federal agencies have quit and been fired. This is frustrating b/c officials usually can't talk without a green light from the comms department, but now there's no comms...

the brewmuda triangle

Schumer’s Retreat From a Government Shutdown Has Young Democrats Fuming A generational divide, seen in newer lawmakers’ impatience with bipartisanship and for colleagues who don’t understand new media, has emerged as one of the deepest rifts within the party.

A lot to digest here, but I did like this line:

“30- and 40-something lawmakers commiserate about having to decipher the mysteries of the internet for their older colleagues; one said she recently had to explain to another House member what a podcast was.”

www.nytimes.com/2025/03/14/u...

this

dang :(

NYT v. Sullivan: Will the Landmark Defamation Ruling Survive? New York Times v. Sullivan and other landmark Supreme Court decisions protect the press’s ability to investigate public figures. But a growing right-wing movement seeks to overturn them.

Good piece on the history of NYT v. Sullivan, the protections it awards journalists, and the interests looking to dismantle or weaken it www.nytimes.com/2025/03/03/m...

Colorado Today Daily News Podcast · 2 Episodes · Updated Daily

Today's the day for Colorado Today!

Listen and subscribe to CPR's new daily podcast, out this morning. It's short (less than 15 minutes) and gets you up to date with the top stories around Colorado.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c...

Special Vermont Resistance edition Lucy Welch, a hero for the moment.

Move over Ethan Allen, here comes Lucy Welch

billmckibben.substack.com/p/special-ve...

I applied!

this story is insane (in multiple senses of the word) and a truly wild ride

ChatGPT is Exposing Everything Wrong with How High Schools Teach Writing Or: What I wish I'd learned in my high school English classes instead of the 5-paragraph essay

A recent episode of the podcast Search Engine, about how students are using ChatGPT on school work (many of them to cheat or write essays) got me thinking about how the ways high schools teach writing is broken. Here's what I wish I'd learned instead of the 5 paragraph essay

nice one. Jason Heller is always fun and a pleasure to read. Good get by Westword to hire him recently

As you may have heard, most (not all) of the people who produce Outside magazine (and the website) were laid off on Thursday. The ex-ME has a complete archive of issues going all the way back to the 1970s. If anybody knows of a library that might want to house these, lemme know.