Thankful for: Your help and encouragement

Hank is grateful that you're guiding this weird endeavor.

Welcome back, readers,

The Agenda team is taking the week off to work on a couple of big projects, including a redesign of basically everything we do.

One of our big goals for the year is moving off of Substack. And we’re pleased to announce we’ve found a new home. By next year, our emails will be coming to you through Beehiiv. This week, we’re working on that great migration.

So keep an eye out for the new Agenda!

(And we’re still soliciting answers to our annual survey, which will help guide our work next year. Please chime in!)

But because we’re compulsively nervous workaholics, we couldn’t just leave you alone this week.

Instead, we asked each of our team members to write a little thank-you note to our readers, talking about whatever it is they’re thankful for.

Hank will go first.

More than four years ago, I quit my gig at a corporate newsroom.

I was sure that I would be begging for that job again when the Agenda failed.

So first of all, I’m eternally grateful for you all keeping me from having to swallow my pride and take a real job at some godawful news corporation.

But I’ve said that before.

As I reflect on 2025, I’m most grateful for all the Agenda supporters who have reached out to offer advice about building the Agenda.

I’ve been a journalist my whole life. I don’t really know how to do anything else.

And when I decided in 2022 to build the Agenda beyond a tiny, two-person newsletter, I truly had no idea what I was doing.

Curt and Hank making a promotional video for the Agendas circa 2023.

I knew what I wanted to do with it. But I had no idea what the steps were between there and here.

And thank God I didn’t, because I would have never started if I knew how much work this was going to be.

But along the way, I got a lot of help.

Sometimes, I just cold-called people who are smarter than I am. So many people were incredibly generous with their time, their expertise and knowledge, teaching me the basics of how to run a tiny media empire — a business — that I couldn’t possibly name them all here.

Some of those critical helpers called me, saying they were impressed with what we do and that they wanted to help. I’ve tried to take every single one of them up on those offers. Some of them were probably a bit overwhelmed by my questions.

But that’s the joy in being a reporter — you have no shame in asking dumb questions that you don’t know the answer to.

We couldn’t have built the Agenda into what it is today without those members of our community who offered tips, tools and their time. So thank you!

I’ve weirdly found great joy in the act of building the Agenda.

As politics become more miserable and unbearable, what keeps me going is building a home for great journalists who want to practice the craft a little bit differently.

Of course, there would be nothing to build without you all.

So, to those of you who signed up, a huge thank you. To all of you who subscribed to one of our weekly policy newsletters this year, thank you. To you policy pros who have taken a tour of Skywolf, our legislation tracking service, thanks. To those who have seen what we’re doing and reached out to offer support, new ideas and new opportunities, thank you.

I’ve had a handful of readers, friends and acquaintances say we should just stay in our lane and focus on the newsletter. And I appreciate that perspective.

But it’s not what I want to do. I want to keep building. I want to keep trying new things. I want to keep evolving — both personally and at the Agenda.

I know that we can produce a darn good newsletter.

What I want now is to see if we can build a great media organization.

So thank you to everyone who has come along for the ride.