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About WTF Just Happened Today? and how it works.

tl;dr I doomscroll the news so you don't have to. And while I can't make the news any less absurd, less violent, or less exhausting, I can summarize the chaos into a sane, once-a-day update to help normal people make the news make sense.

It's just me here at WTFHQ (otherwise known as my basement in Seattle where we store our kid's old toys and well-intentioned exercise equipment). There's no staff, no investors, no ads, no sponsors. Just members who choose to support and underwrite my work.

What follows is my operating manual of sorts. My goal here is to provide orientation and set expectations about what WTFJHT is, isn’t, what I believe in, how I work, what I will and won’t do, and how you can keep me honest.

A brief history.

Like many, I found the 2016 election cycle to be deeply confusing and frustrating. Even though I’ve always followed the news, I struggled to keep up with all the articles, blogs, tweets, Facebook posts, newsletters, podcasts, push notifications, and randomly clipped news segments floating around social media — all while trying to navigate the almighty Algorithm™. Even when I felt “on top of the news,” I still couldn’t really make sense of it. I don’t see how any “normal” person living a regular life can actually stay informed in this sort of information environment. And that’s because people have a scarcity of time to follow the news, while the media industry is optimized to produce an abundance of information. This is a fundamental misalignment of incentives.

I started WTFJHT on Jan. 20, 2017, as a personal project to establish a better, healthier relationship with the news. In an attempt to become less anxious and more informed, I organized the main stories of the day into a series of concise summaries that fit on a single page. That’s how I made the news make sense for myself. And while it was simply supposed to be a personal challenge to chronicle the daily shock and awe of the Trump administration’s first 100 days, it quickly became my full-time job. And here we are, nearly 10 years later…

What I believe in.

Independence and autonomy. I don’t believe you can do honest work if someone owns your time and manages how you spend it. I value the agency that comes with being independent, because it gives me permission to explore the things that interest me (as well as the freedom to ignore the things that don’t). While I may earn less than I would in a traditional job, I live a richer life because I own how I spend my time.
People. As the late St. Joe Strummer once said, “Without people, you’re nothing.” My job, as I see it, is to serve people, not turn them into the product. That’s why WTFJHT is free, but supported by optional patronage. It’s a self-imposed forcing function to aligns incentives and ensure I’m always delivering something people want that’s also valuable enough to pay for – whether or not you can or will.
Transparency and accountability. Trust isn’t something you claim, but rather it’s something you earn through consistently meeting the expectations that I set for myself, showing my work, and following through. Every day that I meet those expectations, I earn trust with the audience. Every day that I fail to meet those expectations, I lose trust. It’s really that simple. It’s also why all the copy and code are both published publicly on GitHub for anyone to scrutinize.
Restraint. As noted above, we live in a media environment defined by an abundance of information that’s competing with a scarcity of time. To square that, WTFJHT does one thing: it deliberately publishes a once-a-day update about what happened in U.S. politics for normal people. In a world of endless (doom)scrolling, WTFJHT is that “edge” that creates the natural endpoint, turning the news from an endless addiction into a bounded ritual. Anything more is just misaligned incentives that are designed to hijack your attention. But at a more meta level, everything about WTFJHT runs under a set of intentional constraints that I call the business of enough: the editorial scope, the business model, the solo operator – all of it is intentionally restrained.

Where this comes from. I grew up on DIY punk and hardcore, and still feel deeply connected to those values and ethos. I like to think WTFJHT is just a reflection of that community and my own lived experiences. Jello Biafra once said: “Don’t hate the media, become the media.” That sort of pirate mindset has always spoken to me. Because to become the media, you don’t reject the tools of production. You seize them and use them for yourself. Likewise, you don’t need permission to build the thing you want to see in the world. You can just start today and do it yourself with whatever tools and resources you have available.

I find a similar spirit in open-source software and how it places an emphasis on sharing, transparency, and collaboration. This is why all the content and the code behind WTFJHT is open-sourced publicly on GitHub. You can trace the entire history of this project, audit my work, help maintain it, or even fork it if you think you can do it better. Because DIY doesn’t mean doing it alone, it means there’s no gatekeeper to lock the door.

How I work.

I’m here to tell you what happened, not what to think. That means my job is to distill news that deserves attention into a clear, understandable, and accurate first draft of history – even if it’s uncomfortable, unpopular, or upsetting! – for normal people who might otherwise not engage with the news. And while I rely on verified facts as reported by multiple trusted and reputable news sources – which I carefully cite!! – as with any historical narrative, the first draft will necessarily require future revisions as more information becomes available with the benefit of time.

Editorial standards and practices. I focus on clearly and concisely answering what happened, what the facts are, and then moving on. I cite every reference by the name of the original source and link to it directly. Where appropriate, I’ll include additional sources to the same or similar news story or event. When details are disputed, unverified, or developing, I try to say that directly. If I get something wrong or something material changes, I update and correct the record proactively and publicly. The goal is a clean record of what happened when it happened as it happened.

WTFJHT covers the news through the lens of the executive branch specifically – and the president in particular – followed by the legislative and judicial branches in general, and in that order. That’s my self-imposed scope. Naturally people will demand more from me than this scope and framing allows for, and that’s fine. But if your politics, religion, or ideology dictate that you pick a side and expect me to cater to it, well, then you might be disappointed. Sorry, not sorry!

It’s important to note that this is also the news through the lens of one person making decisions about the relative importance of information – much the same way a front page editor does for a newspaper. With every summary, I’m trying to make a news-value judgment about the importance, impact, and consequence of the news through my defined scope. WTFJHT is neutral-ish on purpose. It’s not intentionally partisan, but instead purposefully fact-based. Any perception of intentional bias is simply the result of one human making decisions the best they know how.

What I will and won’t do.

I won’t negotiate my values in an effort to please everyone. Said in maybe a less confrontational way: I’m firm on my principles, but flexible on my methods. To me, this is a sort of discipline that is best understood by the tensions that my principles straddles, whether that’s the news, the audience, the money, the tools, whatever.

Below are the tensions that I’m thinking while operating WTFJHT. They’re defined by something I’ll do vs. the line I won’t cross. Together, they provide the necessary guardrails and mental model that keeps me focused, while also preventing against the slow slide into enshittification.

Follow the news, but don’t be consumed by it.
Earn the audience, but don’t be captured by it.
All are welcome, but this isn’t for everyone.
Accept money for honest work, but don’t be bought by it.
Build a business, but don’t sell it out.
Use tools, but don’t be used by them.
Scale your labor, but don’t replace it.

A note on AI, where it fits, and where it doesn’t. To be abundantly clear: AI doesn’t decide what’s news. It doesn’t write, edit, or publish WTFJHT. I do. AI never speaks on my behalf or impersonates me.

But I will allow AI tools to support me with the plumbing and other mechanical tasks that go into running a small business as a solo operator: assist with the code and infrastructure that WTFJHT runs on, troubleshoot technical problems, help me organize and analyze data and analytics, soothe the pains of accounting and managing my books, etc. This is all necessary work, but it distracts me from making the main thing the main thing: writing and producing WTFJHT.

As a solo operator, I view AI tools as a sort of power-up, like when the Fire Flower first gave Mario fireballs in the original Super Mario Bros… the nuance here is that when a newsroom bans AI, a human journalist will still report the news. That’s the same deal with WTFJHT. But, if I ban AI from assisting me with all that other work, nobody gets hired to do the plumbing. It’s not like there’s an assistant or engineering team to handle these tasks. So the alternative isn’t a job saved, it’s work that doesn’t get done. (Well, it DOES get done, but it’s mostly my nights and weekends – times I try to protect and prioritize for my family.)

I use these AI tools to save time, but not so I can work less. Instead, they allow me to better allocate my time to the work that matters most. So as a solo operator “scale your labor, but don’t replace it” isn’t just a nice slogan, it’s a statement about my capacity and how I spend my time. Because if I don’t scale my labor, there’s no one else to do the work. These tools create time that goes back into making WTFJHT better – not into an afternoon off.

Again, none of this touches what you read in WTFJHT. The reporting, the writing, and the news-value judgment are all me. That doesn’t change. Spellcheck and grammar tools (e.g. Grammarly) help catch my typos, of which I still miss plenty.

But WTFJHT is more than the daily update these days. So if I ever do something where AI was part of making the thing, whether that’s something you read, hear, or click, I’ll say so directly on the thing itself: what the tool did, why I used it, and how I checked it, etc. The audio edition (while currently paused) is the one that exists today: it’s my words read by a clone of my voice using text-to-speech, labeled as such on every episode. Here’s the backstory on that.

And your data is private and stays out of it. Emails you send me don’t go into AI tools, and neither does the subscriber list or anything else about you. You’re not data to be trained on. Meanwhile WTFJHT itself is a different story: the archive is public and licensed under Creative Commons, so I assume that AI companies have already slurped it up at this point along with the rest of the internet… sigh.

I want to note that the values above, what I believe in, where this comes from, etc., don’t mention AI because they were true before these tools even existed, and they’ll be true after these tools are replaced by whatever comes next.

How you can keep me honest.

This page is full of promises, which, as we all know, are cheap to make. That’s why everything I do is designed to be as transparent as possible so that you can check my work.

So let’s start with my record:

I’ve published this thing nearly every day for almost ten years.
The content and the code are open-source, version-controlled, auditable, and licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
Every summary includes citations to the underlying reporting, so you can check the accuracy and veracity of my work.
When I get something wrong, I fix it publicly (viewable on GitHub and the Corrections page).
I keep a public ledger of what it costs to run this thing.

This page is part of that record, too. It’s dated and version-controlled just like everything else. You can literally see the evolution of my thinking and articulation of these values.

The work itself is also a conversation: your corrections, your emails, your criticism, and your collaboration. I read and consider it all, even if I don’t agree or have the ability to respond. You can log new issues, comments, or feedback here. Or, just send me an email at anytime: [email protected].

And if you’re wondering who I answer to, we should follow the money. My goal is to create more value than I capture. I’m not here to get rich. I’m here to help you make the news make sense. That’s why there are no ads, no sponsorships. No content gates or paywalls. No selling or sharing of names, email addresses, or any other user data. You trusted me with your email address and gave me permission to email you, the least I can do is respect your privacy.

WTFJHT is free for everyone, but supported entirely by an optional, pay-whatever-you-want membership model where you don’t get anything other than the satisfaction of supporting something you’d like to see exist in the world. The business model is directly aligned with the value created for readers. This is how the product can remain free for all while funding a fair living wage for me.

That’s also what makes membership an investment, rather than a charity or subscription. Members aren’t buying access. They’re investing. And that makes them stakeholders in the success (or failure) of WTFJHT.

Said another way: I answer to you – the thousands of readers who make this project possible.

I’m glad you’re here.

-MATT
[email protected]
WTF Just Happened Today?
505 Broadway E #211
Seattle, WA 98102 USA