Happy Holidays from Inkstick — Plus, Highlights from 2024

Hi, everyone,

Patrick Strickland of Inkstick Media here. I’m just checking in with a few updates, first of which is to let you know that Inkstick will be on holiday hiatus until Jan. 5.

2024 was a busy year for us. As we head into the new year, we’re working hard to keep doing the kind of in-depth and thoughtful reportage and analysis we already publish and to expand our work.

For my part, I recently traveled to Chios, one of the Greek islands where refugees and migrants wait in crowded camps while their asylum applications are processed. The refugee crisis that began in 2015 hardly merits the same attention it once did in the headlines, but each year, tens of thousands of people continue to risk heavily fortified borders and treacherous sea crossings to make the dangerous — and sometimes deadly — journey to Europe. If you’d like to learn more about what that crisis looks like for the people enduring it today, please read and share this longform piece I wrote about it.

We are endlessly grateful for our readers, including those of you who subscribe to our Substack. We also hope you’ll continue to follow, share, and support our work in 2025. A couple ways you can support us are to upgrade your Substack subscription to a paid version and to consider donating to Inkstick this holiday season.

Your contributions will be doubled by NewsMatch and will go a long way toward allowing us to expand our reporting, build up our nonprofit newsroom, and better compensate our contributors.

Make a tax-deductible donation

As I mentioned in my note last month, these are perilous times in the world. War, conflict, and climate crisis are wreaking havoc — and many are profiting off these calamities. In 2025, we aim to hold the powerful to account, to tell stories from the ground up, and to offer a more nuanced (and sometimes much more challenging) explanation for the crises we cover.

But I’m not just here to plug my own reporting and ask for your money. I also want to highlight some of my favorite pieces that we published at Inkstick in 2024. Check them out here:

• “Cracks in the Sin Screen: The Link Between Mormon Tithes and Nuclear Weapons” by Taylor Barnes

• “The New Great Game” by Hunter Williamson & Hantong Wu

• “Cheap Fakes: The Global Trade in Counterfeit Drugs” by Jennifer Huxta

• “The Sheriffs, Hardliners, and Militias Preparing for Trump’s Return” by Tyler Hicks

• “The Lebanese Children Coming of Age During War” by Madeline Edwards

• “The Ukraine War is Driving a Wave of Suicides in India’s Surat” by Hanan Zaffar & Danish Pandit

• “35 years After Germany’s Reunification, the Lingering Consequences of the Split Drive Politics Today” by Marc Martorell Junyent

• “In Kazakhstan, A Nuclear Power Plant Threatens Lake Balkhash” by Omar Hamed Beato

• “For Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon, Israel’s War Echoes the Past” by Hanna Davis

Of course, that list isn’t exhaustive, and if you want to check out more of what we were up to in 2024 while we’re on break, take a stroll through the archives at Inkstick.

On behalf of the entire team, we wish you a happy and safe holiday season. We’ll be back at it on Jan. 6, and we look forward to reconnecting with you then.

With Warmth,

Patrick Strickland

Managing editor, Inkstick Media

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