When Margaret Sullivan left The Washington Post last August after six distinguished years as the paper’s media columnist, she sold her New York City apartment and moved to her family’s old place on Lake Erie. “I had this idea in my head — I used the acronym FBT — I was going to go Full-Bore Thoreau,” she said. “I was going to live a very simple life and stare at the lake a lot.”
But she didn’t last long in the wilderness. “I felt the pull,” she said. “I guess I felt like I still had something to say.” She now writes a weekly column for the Guardian US and teaches journalism at Duke University. Starting Wednesday, however, she will also host a new podcast on Substack, “American Crisis.” The show, she said, will address “whether journalism, at its best, can help save democracy.” Two specific crises that were hinge points in U.S. history will be used to frame her conversations with guests: Watergate and January 6.
