A founding complaint.
Somewhere in the back office of American life, there is a customer service desk. It is not staffed. The phone rings, occasionally, and a recorded voice apologizes for the unusually high call volume that has now lasted, by my count, somewhere between thirty and two hundred and fifty years. A small sign on the counter reads, in dignified serif: Please direct all complaints to your representative. The window beneath it is dark.
This publication is, in its modest way, the line forming outside that window.
We are not a news organization. We are a complaint desk. We did not invent the news; we just believe the country has the right to file a grievance about it, in writing, with the manager — and that until the manager arrives, somebody had better be taking down the names.
“This publication is, in its modest way, the line forming outside that window.”
There is a particular kind of citizen, in this country, who has been quietly accumulating receipts. Receipts for the school taxes that did not produce the school. Receipts for the highway bill that did not produce the highway. Receipts for the wars, the bailouts, the promises about prescription drugs and broadband and bridges and the long, patient queue at the Department of Motor Vehicles of the soul. We do not, as a rule, expect refunds. We have grown up. We have made our peace with disappointment. But we would like, at minimum, an itemized statement.
President Karen is for those people.
Each weekday, we will publish a complaint. Some will be serious, written by guest contributors who actually know what they are talking about — former staffers, working journalists, civic-minded friends who agreed to write for us because they believed, against the evidence, that another publication was worth having. Some will be satirical, because the gap between what we are told and what we observe has grown wide enough that satire is, increasingly, the only honest register left. And every day, in a column on the right of every page, we will publish the complaints of readers — anyone with a working internet connection and a grievance ready for the public record.
We will also, as a service, point you toward the news itself. The left rail of this newspaper carries headlines pulled from real wire services — Reuters, the AP, the Guardian, NPR — so that you can read the original reporting without us pretending to have written it. We are not, as I have said, a news organization. The newsrooms still exist, more or less; many of them are doing remarkable work under remarkable pressure; we encourage you to support them. We are, instead, a place to think about the news after you have read it. A respectable place. With a serif typeface, a dateline, and a manager's window that — for the first time in some time — happens to be open.
A few things to declare upfront, since trust is the only currency a publication of this size has any of:
We are independent. There is no parent company, no investor deck, no chief revenue officer who will, in eighteen months, gently suggest that we lighten the tone. There is no paywall. There is no subscription. If you would like to support the desk, there is a tip jar; if you would not, the publication is exactly the same.
We label our pieces. Opinion is marked OPINION. Satire is marked SATIRE. The wire is marked THE WIRE. We assume you can handle the distinction; we will not be cute about it.
We will, eventually, open the floor to discussion. Not today. We would like to know who is in the room first.
And we will not, under any circumstances, take ourselves too seriously — except in the precise moments when the situation demands it, in which case we will take ourselves more seriously than anyone has in a very long time.
The window is open. The pen is uncapped. The manager will see you now.
— The Editor