Is there value to thinking in public?

I have to start with a serious mea culpa this week. I have often asked you to reply to this email with feedback. I get emails with feedback, which, I assumed, were replies until last week. Instead, replies have been being sent into the great digital beyond. I apologize! My settings have now been fixed. If you have sent feedback and I didn't respond, it is because I never got it. If you're willing to give it another shot, this time you will get the reply you deserve. Again, I'm so sorry!

Over the next few weeks, you'll notice changes to the appearance of these posts and the organization of the site where they live.

This week I'm sharing part one of a conversation between me and Nicole Lewis. Lewis is the Engagement Editor at the Marshall Project. We've been in touch and paying attention to each other's work for more than a decade. I think her work is outstanding. I reached out because to her when I heard she and Lam Vo from Documented were pushing reporters and news organizations toward more coherent theories of change. We had so much to talk about!

Q and A's can be a quick fix to salvage some content from a story that didn't gel or reporting that didn't pan out. But that's not what happened here. We were both asking and answering. Nicole and I used our conversation to work out ideas on utility, service, advocacy, and power. I hope you'll find something to think about or reflect with us about.

What I'm reading?

I don't usually mention the fiction I'm reading here, but Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones is the perfect book for curling up with on a cold November night. This is a book about big questions; identity, justice, responsibility packaged into a propulsive narrative. It's spooky and contains more gore than I typically mess with. I'm about half way through and I love it.

If you haven't read Jack White's parable delivered during the White Stripes induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, do it now. It's beautiful.