The Fucking News is the weekday-morning newsletter of journalist Jonathan Larsen (me), aggregating, contextualizing, and commenting rudely on the day’s news.

My goals with TFN are to screen out bullshit that doesn’t matter, help navigate bullshit that does, and surface bullshit you might not otherwise know about.

My intent is to keep Newsfuckers sane, sometimes with humor, sometimes explaining why media frame the news in ways that make people unsane. I’ve worked in corporate media and alternative media. Both are in trouble, so now I do The Fucking News.

I hope you’ll try TFN. In the year since I launched it, the number of subscribers has, appropriately for The Fucking News, sextupled. And if you find, as many Newsfuckers have, that TFN is habit-forming, I hope you’ll consider becoming a paid subscriber to help me grow this to the point where it’s financially sustainable for me.

You may notice that paid subscriptions don’t really come with extras. That doesn’t mean I’m not grateful to paid subscribers (I respond to all their questions and emails and also love them). It just means I hate paywalls. I despise the idea of cutting people off from journalism because they can’t afford it.

The premise of TFN is to fight for a world free of that kind of shit.

So what I hear from paid subscribers is that (a) they want to help keep it all free for everyone, but also (b) TFN is really, really important to them and they want to help it succeed. Which they’re doing! Here are some things they’ve said that I didn’t even pay them to say:

So, what qualifies me to do this? I’ve worked at three major news outlets: MSNBC — where I was the executive producer of Up w/ Chris Hayes and a senior producer at Countdown w/ Keith Olbermann — CNN, and ABCNews. I’ve also worked in alternative media; helping to launch Air America Radio as executive producer of Morning Sedition and The Rachel Maddow Show (yes, she had a radio show first), barely helping The Daily Show with John Stewart, and most recently serving as managing editor at The Young Turks.

Throughout my career, I’ve tried to do more than just relay the news. I’ve tried to tell the news in ways that were enlightening and compelling. I got called a purist a lot, but I was actually hellbent on getting the work seen.

So, I was the guy who kept World News Now quirky and fun at ABCNews for several years. I led a team at Up that worked hard and smart to show that intelligent, wonky, progressive news could succeed commercially and critically, without polarizing.

It’s not easy to draw attention to news about policy. Which is why I say fuck and make jokes. People ask why I called it The Fucking News. It was to signal right up front that I will violate norms that don’t serve the people.

That’s it.

I don’t expect anyone to become a paid subscriber without trying TFN out first. But if you do subscribe, and TFN becomes a habit for you as it has for thousands of other folks, please consider — if you can afford it — upgrading to a paid subscription.

If the current rate of growth holds up, I’ll actually be able to make this work as The Thing That I Do. I think we’ll be able to get there this year, but only if TFN’s growth continues. You can also help out by sharing TFN pieces that you think other people will find valuable for info, humor, or creative uses of words like fuckbuckle, shitpooper, et al.

Oh, and I also encourage you to read and post comments — I do my best to respond to questions and comments and the Newsfuckers are a warm and lively bunch. I think you’ll like them. I do.

With gratitude,
Jonathan