Substack Rising on the Capitol Beat
Substack Rising on the Capitol Beat
Plus, Pablo's View.
The first Substack on the Capitol beat was Regular Order by Jamie Dupree, a radio reporter who lost his voice to illness in his 32nd year as a radio newsman for Cox Media. Dupree now uses AI to generate his voice from the decades of newscasts he produced from the House and Senate where he’s been a reporter since 1986.
Next was Askapol by Matt Laslo who, like Dupree, uses the Substack audio player to broadcast to his long-neglected news audiences. Instead of producing scripted segments, Laslo posts the audio of his hallway interviews with lawmakers and full transcripts for his huge audience in overlooked news beats like UAPs and crypto.
Once Upon A Hill by reporter Michael Jones is a biweekly dispatch from the Capitol beat “with a focus on Democratic politics in the MAGA era.” Capitol Press launched in January, making us the fourth Substack focused specifically on the Capitol beat. However, Joe Perticone was already covering Congress for The Bulwark, which is also on Substack.
Last week, 24Sight News by veteran Hill reporter Warren Rojas and national politics ace Tom Lobianco is now the fifth news startup hosted on, you guessed it, Substack.
Pablo’s View
Independent news ventures are on the rise in Congress. What began with Punchbowl News in January 2021 has opened the floodgates for newsletter writers, many of whom have been laid off from an imploding news industry.
Outlined against a bleak employment backdrop for reporters is Substack, an out-of-the-box solution for writers with much to report, but without the tech know-how or coding skills to build their own subscriber platform.
Such was the case for Arturo and me when we launched Capitol Press in January. Initially, we tried another platform, but the hours lost on configuring the site took us away from our essential product: news reporting.
So expect lots more Substacks going through the credentialing process to cover Congress and the White House in the next year or two. The platform is basically becoming the right tool in the right place at the right time for reporters who refuse to give up on these important beats.