Behind Darren Samuelsohn on our call sat a plastic tub. Then another one. Inside are about 200 journals, decades of a reporter writing to himself, and he’s working his way through every one of them.
Darren and I go back years. Energy, then politics. He was the reporter and I was the flack, and we’ve both changed our shade a few times since.
In late 2022, one of those journal entries saved him. His team at Insider had just won an SPJ award for Conflicted Congress, its investigation into members trading stocks. Washington is still arguing about that story. Then he was fired. He told me it sucked. He also told me it was the most he’d ever talked about it.
So he wrote. An essay called “Why I Love Journalism,” trying to talk himself into staying in the business. Somewhere along the way it flipped into a letter from journalism back to him.
Love, Journalism. Comma in the middle.
That’s his Substack now. He didn’t leave the newsroom right away. He went back in twice, to The Messenger and then USA Today, where he led White House, Congress and campaign coverage through the stretch all of us lived through. Earlier this year he walked out. His tank was empty, and had been for a lot longer than he let himself admit.
He’s clear-eyed about the business he came back to. The outlets that are thriving, from a one-man courts beat on Substack to the Times and the Post, know exactly who they’re talking to. He worries about where that leads, with everyone gravitating to their own churches. He also sees a living in it for journalists willing to experiment and fail. He’s failed before. He learned from every one.
What struck me is how much fun he’s having. A weekly podcast. Photographs of power lines out his car window. Poetry. A Bigfoot story he swears is coming. At 12, Darren wanted to be Dave Barry. Now he has the column, and Dave Barry is on Substack too.
I asked how he knows when it’s time to go. His grandfather admired people who talked about ideas, he said. So Darren checks whether he’s still learning something about himself, the world or the business he loves. At Insider and again at USA Today, the answer stopped being yes.
He says a lot of what he writes now is for the reporters he used to edit. A little inspiration. A nudge along the way.
Consider this one passed along.
Notable Quotes
“And then I got fired. And man, I’ll just say it. It sucked.” — Darren Samuelsohn
“I think the tank was empty two or three years before it was empty.” — Darren Samuelsohn
“Everyone’s kind of gravitating to their own churches, and that’s dangerous as well as a bounty and an opportunity for journalists who want to write.” — Darren Samuelsohn
Takeaway
Sometimes the love letter to the work only gets written after the work lets you go.
