In the years since this site first launched as “Reporting by Matt Taibbi,” there have been significant changes in the national media landscape. The corporate press is dying, with once-prestigious TV channels losing audience at breakneck speed. As those organizations struggle, the explosive growth of independent podcasts and sites like Substack re-kindled interest in reporting generally. One of the reasons virtually all the reporters on the #TwitterFiles story came from Substack was due to our indepdent status. While corporate outlets forgot how essential the building of trust is in maintaining faithful audiences, independents on sites like Substack have no choice but to pay close attention to the problem, succeeding only through the slow process of building relationships with subscribers over periods of years.