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Erin Kissane<p>Hi. In the spirit of XOXO and the past couple of years of preliminary work and the things that need fixing, I&#39;m starting a micro-studio and kicking off a community support setup and fixing what I can reach in the only way I know how.</p><p><a href="https://www.wrecka.ge/into-the-wreck/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="">wrecka.ge/into-the-wreck/</span><span class="invisible"></span></a></p>
Erin Kissane<p><a href="https://erinkissane.com/fediverse-governance-drop" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">erinkissane.com/fediverse-gove</span><span class="invisible">rnance-drop</span></a></p><p>So relieved and delighted to have this stuff out into the world where it can help new (and maybe also some experienced) fedi admins and mods think through their work. And maybe help convey to others at least some of what makes the fediverse such a structurally interesting place. </p><p>I&#39;m even more optimistic about the fediverse than I was when we jumped into this—and sobered, too, by how much work there is to be done. But I think it&#39;s doable.</p>
Erin Kissane<p>Today is exactly five years since we opened up the Covid Tracking Project and I think my body can tell.</p>
Erin Kissane<p>I am down in some stressful ditches at the moment and it is not great, but I am here with friends, so we&#39;ll be okay. </p><p>(Edited for overstatement reduction. I am very tired.)</p>
Erin Kissane<p>I guess the main theme in my last decade or so of work-life has been that the process of building real understanding of the big grim facts necessary to provide distilled, solid information about difficult things is exhausting and kind of damaging, but that the end-use value of that distilled, solid info is so high and so sustained. </p><p>(And the thing that makes that work sustainable is not doing it alone.)</p>
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Erin Kissane<p>I saw a particularly beautiful newt on my morning walk today and I had a deeply revivifying conversation and I am going to put the day in the plus column.</p>
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Erin Kissane<p>I will just put it out into the universe that I would sure love to get ghost-comped into someone&#39;s Politico Pro account if you happen to have a login lying around 🫥</p>
Erin Kissane<p>the destruction of 18F is a wrecking ball to the real and meaningful efforts—by some of the best and sharpest people in US tech—to make government work *for people*. such a kick to the chest.</p>
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Erin Kissane<p>I’ve gone temporarily quiet on network things bc a.) flu flattened me and b.) I am helping with some crisis work that uses the networks for sense and resilience. Which is…what I talked about needing the networks for last fall at XOXO. I just wish we had had more time. </p><p>(More network stuff on the way, just getting the plates back into the air.)</p>
Erin Kissane<p>Last thing before I pause—I&#39;m posting this because these are things we *could* all know, but never got taught. </p><p>Not knowing can make it look like delays are all permanent ignores—and that delays = &quot;no one cares,&quot; which is a terrible, despair-inducing feeling. </p><p>There *are* prioritization problems in our newsrooms, but a lot of delays are bc it takes time to report things out and then make sense of what you learn and then go through editorial process. </p><p><a href="https://mas.to/tags/USpol" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>USpol</span></a> <a href="https://mas.to/tags/News" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>News</span></a></p>
Erin Kissane<p>What I would expect to see in the next day or two is the national US outlets and some big regional papers doing coverage that either reports out the effects and contexts for this EO by itself or wraps it into ongoing coverage of the whole set of &quot;dismantling the administrative state&quot; actions.</p><p>That takes time, though, and has to go through layers of process and prioritization. All of which are wild right now, especially since so many newsrooms keep firing their people. </p><p><a href="https://mas.to/tags/USpol" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>USpol</span></a> <a href="https://mas.to/tags/News" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>News</span></a></p>
Erin Kissane<p>The wire services are different than other newsrooms because they sometimes just slinging basic info, so I went looking and yep, we have Reuters at 2am rolling up yesterday&#39;s EO-based carnage and calling this one out:</p><p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-signs-orders-curbing-funding-migrants-eliminating-regulations-2025-02-20/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">reuters.com/world/us/trump-sig</span><span class="invisible">ns-orders-curbing-funding-migrants-eliminating-regulations-2025-02-20/</span></a> </p><p>AP probably also has this somewhere in their sprawling multiverse but I only found the one about an immigration-focused EO issued earlier in the day yesterday (<a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-immigration-public-benefits-medicaid-parole-0b5c8045efcf4b4c865de606fee857b5" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">apnews.com/article/trump-immig</span><span class="invisible">ration-public-benefits-medicaid-parole-0b5c8045efcf4b4c865de606fee857b5</span></a>)</p><p><a href="https://mas.to/tags/USpol" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>USpol</span></a> <a href="https://mas.to/tags/News" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>News</span></a></p>
Erin Kissane<p>Another fast response is what the NYT does here, which is to throw the EO onto their big tracker (ty to the Times reporter who posted a gift link) to get it onto the board, and link directly to the EO itself: </p><p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/us/trump-agenda-2025.html?unlocked_article_code=1.u04.WGpO.VlpSokDFpVes&amp;smid=url-share" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">nytimes.com/interactive/2025/u</span><span class="invisible">s/trump-agenda-2025.html?unlocked_article_code=1.u04.WGpO.VlpSokDFpVes&amp;smid=url-share</span></a></p><p><a href="https://mas.to/tags/USpol" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>USpol</span></a> <a href="https://mas.to/tags/News" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>News</span></a></p>
Erin Kissane<p>Or you go fast and shallow, aggregate a couple of people posting their hot takes on Twitter/X, add some context at the top, and run with that—which is much faster than having actual conversations. </p><p>That&#39;s what Politico did here, in the first writeup of this EO I&#39;ve personally come across: </p><p><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/20/trump-order-review-federal-regulations-00205143" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">politico.com/news/2025/02/20/t</span><span class="invisible">rump-order-review-federal-regulations-00205143</span></a></p><p>(They aggregate two X posts, both from right-wing sources, and kinda imply they&#39;re covering both sides of the story. This is…v Politico.)</p><p>Or another fast thing…</p><p><a href="https://mas.to/tags/USpol" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>USpol</span></a> <a href="https://mas.to/tags/News" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>News</span></a></p>
Erin Kissane<p>If you&#39;re a reporter/reporting team in a newsroom working this story, you need to find people with the right expertise to explain and contextualize it and break down the likely effects. </p><p>Those people are not inside the newsroom, they&#39;re in your phone contacts or someone else&#39;s phone contacts or on the internet.</p><p>So you start making calls and talking to people who have what seems to your newsroom like relevant expertise. </p><p>Or…</p><p><a href="https://mas.to/tags/USpol" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>USpol</span></a> <a href="https://mas.to/tags/News" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>News</span></a></p>
Erin Kissane<p>Beforehand: I’m not a working journalist, but I’ve done various kinds of journalism, worked with newsrooms, and—maybe most relevantly—been a person reporters email and text late at night and early in the morning to ask for analysis and explanations. </p><p>What I learned doing those things changed my understanding of how news works on, like, a mechanical level. Maybe this will be useful to others. </p><p>Here is the EO, published the night of Feb 19: <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/ensuring-lawful-governance-and-implementing-the-presidents-department-of-government-efficiency-regulatory-initiative/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">whitehouse.gov/presidential-ac</span><span class="invisible">tions/2025/02/ensuring-lawful-governance-and-implementing-the-presidents-department-of-government-efficiency-regulatory-initiative/</span></a></p><p><a href="https://mas.to/tags/USpol" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>USpol</span></a> <a href="https://mas.to/tags/news" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>news</span></a></p>
Erin Kissane<p>I saw someone expressing very understandable frustration this morning about not seeing any headlines about a Trump admin EO (executive order) that was posted late last night, and I think this is maybe a good way to explain in real time how an EO becomes A News here. </p><p>I’m not going to get into the substance of the EO! (It’s bad, of course.) I’ll just walk through its movement through the media ecosystem. </p><p>Please be gentle with each other in replies, things are rough.</p><p><a href="https://mas.to/tags/USpol" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>USpol</span></a> <a href="https://mas.to/tags/News" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>News</span></a></p>
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