📰 My journalism depends on people like you.

For 15 years, my mission has been to tell the stories others won’t and hold powerful people accountable. Help me keep going.

Family, for the past 15 years, my entire mission as a journalist has been to tell stories nobody else is telling, expose corruption and bigotry for what they are, and hold powerful people accountable—no matter what it costs me. That mission hasn’t changed. But being able to keep doing it depends on something I need to talk with you about plainly: your support.

If you believe in this work, please become a paid member of The North Star today.

Let me explain why that matters so much.

When you speak like I speak, and insist on saying what you actually mean, you can no longer work for mainstream media. Anywhere in the world. You have to play by a certain set of rules to maintain that access, and I don’t play by those rules.

I’m talking about the expectation that you’ll soften what you know, make your criticism more comfortable for the people receiving it, or treat certain powerful people as if holding them accountable is somehow out of bounds. I cannot make protecting that access the purpose of my journalism. Once keeping your place in the room becomes more important than telling people what’s happening inside it, something essential has been lost.

And I want you to understand my heart here. I don’t wake up looking for a way to be controversial. I want to do work that matters. I want someone whose suffering has been ignored to know that their life deserves our attention. I want you to read a story and understand something that was deliberately made confusing. I want powerful people to know that somebody is going to examine what they did, challenge their explanation, and keep asking questions.

That kind of independence has to be supported by somebody. For me, that somebody is you.

I live and die by the support of everyday people just like you reading this right now.

That’s the honest reality of how I get to keep doing this work. Your membership helps make room for the research, the writing, the follow-up, and the persistence that journalism requires.

It also helps me keep making a very important decision: to follow a story because it deserves to be told.

Think about what we’re asking journalism to do. We need it to examine people and institutions with enormous resources and every incentive to control what the public understands. We need reporters who will stay with a story after the initial attention fades. We need someone willing to say, “Hold on. That explanation doesn’t add up,” and then do the work to show us why.

That takes time. It takes care. And it takes a community willing to sustain it.

If you’ve ever read something here that helped you understand an issue more clearly, gave you words for something you were struggling to explain, or brought a story to your attention that you otherwise would have missed, I’m asking you to help make the next piece possible.

Please take that next step and become a paid member of The North Star.

You don’t have to agree with every word I write to believe this work deserves to exist. I’m asking you to support a commitment to telling the truth, showing the evidence, asking difficult questions, and being accountable to the people who read the work.

And if you’re already a paid member, thank you. I hope you understand how directly you make this possible. When I ask people to join, I’m also acknowledging what you’ve already chosen to help sustain. Please share this post with someone you think would value being part of it.

If a paid membership isn’t possible for you right now, I understand. Keep reading. Keep sharing. You belong here, too. My ask is for those who have the room in their budget and have been meaning to support the work: please make today the day.

Fifteen years in, I still believe that a story told honestly can change what people understand—and what they are willing to accept. I still believe people deserve someone who will ask the question that makes the room uncomfortable. And I still believe we can build a lasting home for that work together.

I know the mission. I’m committed to it. I need your help to keep carrying it forward.

Become a paid member of The North Star today.

Your friend and brother,
Shaun