Note: If you’re wondering why this post seems to lack any context, it’s because I wrote it for my opinion journalism students. It’s an example of a blog post I want them to write when they do a presentation on an opinion journalist whose work they think is worth sharing with our class.
Heather Cox Richardson is an unlikely person to have emerged as a star of independent opinion journalism. A historian of 19th-century America at Boston College, she began writing her newsletter, “Letters from an American,” in 2019, during the run-up to Donald Trump’s first impeachment.
Her efforts caught on quickly. A year later, according to a profile in The New York Times, she had amassed such a large audience that she was earning about $1 million a year from subscribers who were willing to pay $5 a month for access to her comments section and for her occasional “History Extra” feature. She currently has 1.8 million free and paid subscribers.
Richardson uses Substack as her platform and has stuck with it despite complaints that the service has refused to crack down on neo-Nazi content. Unlike some celebrity Substackers who were staked to a share of the venture capital the company has been able to raise, Richardson built her presence organically. After all, she was virtually unknown when she first began writing.
Richardson’s hallmark is a daily essay, running 1,000 to 1,200 words and placing the political news of the day in historical context. She does this five or six days a week, and usually fills in the other days with a photo. Her emails generally land at 2 or 3 a.m., which may speak to her diligence, although it’s possible that she’s scheduled them for automatic delivery. According to her biography, she has co-hosted other podcasts in the past, but I don’t believe that’s the case any longer.
A liberal whose new-found prominence landed her a half-hour video interview with President Biden in early 2022 (something he rarely granted to professional journalists), Richardson nevertheless presents her views calmly but firmly. Here are three essays that are worth taking note of:
• After the Justice Department released former special counsel Jack Smith’s report earlier this week finding that Donald Trump would likely have been found guilty for his role in the attempted insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, Richardson wrote: “While the report contained little new information, what jumped out from its stark recitation of the events of late 2020 and early 2021 was the power of Trump’s lies.”
• Following Kamala Harris’ defeat at Trump’s hands in November, Richardson did not hold back, calling Trump “a 78-year-old convicted felon who has been found liable for sexual assault and is currently under indictment in a number of jurisdictions” who “refused to leave office peacefully when voters elected President Joe Biden in 2020.”
• Reaching into the past, Richardson expressed the hopeful view that Trump was finished on Jan. 7, 2021, beginning, “The tide has turned against Trump and his congressional supporters, and they are scrambling.” Her essay represented the consensus view at the time, although in hindsight she showed that she — and all of us — could not foresee what was to come.
Richardson also posts an audio version of her newsletter on Substack and as a podcast. I haven’t listened, but at 12 to 15 minutes that’s just enough time for a longish walk to the train station. It’s also ideal for people with visual impairments.
With social media fracturing, it’s worth noting that you can follow her on Bluesky at @hcrichardson.bsky.social and on Threads at @heathercoxrichardson. For what it’s worth, she remains on Twitter/X as well, and you can find her there at @HC_Richardson.
Of course, as a self-respecting historian she also writes books. I’ve listened to the audio version of her 2023 book “Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America,” which is dedicated to engendering some optimism during the dark time we’re living through. Bonus: Richardson narrates it herself. I wrote a short review here.
As much as I appreciate what Richardson is doing, I think it is intended mainly for well-educated liberals who do not have the time to immerse themselves in the political news of the day and who want to catch up with something more substantive than MSNBC. My business is to follow the news, so I often find that her daily essays repeat what I already know. Still, she is performing a real service, and it’s not surprising that she has amassed such a large and loyal audience.