Throwing Spaghetti

Sober and alone, for the purposes of journalism

Welcome to Throwing Spaghetti! Thank you so much for being here! 

This newsletter, digital magazine, news space, bulletin board, collection of reportings by me (or whatever else I decide to call it) was born out of both emotion and passion. 

On Jan. 31, The Messenger — a start-up national news organization launched in May — shuttered completely, leaving around 300 employees without severance or health insurance. 

I was one of those employees, and that’s why I’m here on Substack throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. 

As a Throwing Spaghetti subscriber, you’ll have access to original reporting, compilations of stories I’ve done while working at previous jobs, new interviews, and — hopefully — a feed of links to the work I publish going forward. 

I’m sticking with my beat and will still be covering all things food, restaurants, chefs, industry trends, agriculture, and more. 

Basically, reader, I’m going to send you everything I write and shoot until we figure out our flow and you tell me what you like best or what you’re not that into.

Why am I doing this? Why not just find the exit and run far away from the news industry? 

Welp, as The Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz said just a few weeks ago, journalism is “in a free-fall.” While I’ve witnessed layoffs happen in newsrooms since I joined the workforce, the frequency at which publications both big and small are downsizing, restructuring, and flat-out folding is unlike anything many of us have ever seen before. And it’s terrifying. 

The Associated Press reported in November that the US has lost one-third of its newspapers and two-thirds of its newspaper journalists since 2005 — and that was before the devastating string of layoffs and closures that happened in December 2023 and January 2024. 

If you want to know more about why that’s so devastating to both laid-off employees and the general concept of democracy, you can check out reports from Nieman and the Columbia Journalism Review — both explain what happens when reliable news sources start to disappear. 

As it turns out, I’m pretty invested in telling stories, sharing information, sparking curiosity, and answering questions. I’m a reporter by both nature and trade, and it’s not a job I want to walk away from. So despite the fact that the business of journalism is crumbling, I decided to keep doing it, here, in newsletter form. 

From celebrity chef interviews to diving into controversy and maybe even a recipe or two, I hope this little corner of the internet will make you excited to look at your inbox, hungry for whatever I’m serving. 

I’ve got a fistful of noodles and I’m ready to go. You in?