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At a recent event, a young man told me that he enjoys my newsletter, and he asked me about my writing process. How do I go from a blank page or screen to a finished product?
I immediately thought of all the writing books I had read and what they suggested my process should be. Like maybe I should track exactly how I spend each minute of my waking day for a week and use that data to build a schedule for my writing.
I will not do that. If I were the kind of person who could do that, I’m pretty sure I would already have a super-organized writing system. I would also have completed my Christmas shopping a couple of months ago. (It would be easier because I would have fewer friends.) I have nothing against people who are organized and who complete tasks ridiculously far in advance, but I am not one of them.
When I asked, the young man said that he did not live with any cats. I told him that was a good thing. Cats are determined interrupters of the writing process and when you are desperately low on ideas you sometimes end up writing about them. The next thing you know, you are introduced at an event as a writer and “cat dad,” even if the cats you write about clearly belong to your wife. This happened to someone I know.
See? I just wrote about cats despite the fact that I knew before I sat down that my intent was to write about the Nobel Peace Prize and how the person who campaigned hardest for it this year did not win and is very disappointed because all of his friends said that he was by far the most deserving candidate despite being the kind of person many past Nobel Peace Prize winners have worked against.
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To get back on track, I’ll go to where I always start my research and writing day: Ground News [ [link removed] ]. Ground News is a website and app that pulls in thousands of articles from around the world and organizes them by story - and each story comes with visual breakdowns on things like political bias, reliability, and ownership. On days when I’m not sure what I am going to write about, I look to see what is in their “Top News” section, and then I click on my favorite Ground News feature, “Blindspot.” The Ground News Blindspot feed exposes the echo chamber and gives me a peek into information silos. There, I can see which stories people are missing if they’re consuming only left-leaning or right-leaning media.
Today, there are 14 Blindspot topics that are being almost exclusively covered by media on the left and 10 that are being covered almost exclusively by media on the right.
When I scroll down, I can see those headlines in two columns with information about the political bias of the sources and their Factuality score. I should point out here that Ground News is not a publisher. They do not fact-check articles. What they do is flush bias out into the open, so you are aware of it. Another thing to keep in mind is that bias, factuality, and ownership information is assigned to sources, not individual articles. The Mike Johnson story below is one I will check out later. My news nose detects the scent of inadvertent humor and blatant hypocrisy behind that headline. Ground News indicates that most sources for that story have mixed or low factuality, which could mean that my instincts are correct.
Today, though, I am searching for stories on the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. Ground News has aggregated 71 stories on that topic in the past three months. The headlines in the search results are almost found poetry. They capture the authoritarian disappointment and the trauma inflicted when a man used to getting whatever he wants is denied the object of his desire.
I will explore this one about Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro’s overreaction to the news that the prize had been awarded to María Corina Machado, a pro-democracy activist opposed to Maduro’s government.
I can see that there are 33 articles from sources with a pretty balanced bias distribution and relatively high factuality. Then I scroll down and see the individual headlines. The left-leaning Il Post emphasizes that Maduro closed Venezuela’s embassy in Norway in protest. The far-right PJ Media thought it important to point out that the Nobel Peace Prize winner warned against socialism.
From here, I can click on the PJ Media button and see information on that publisher and also get links to explore the methodology and sources used to develop bias and factuality ratings. I can even challenge a rating if I think they got it wrong.
There’s more to explore, but now I have to look at some of the other stories, like these:
“‘Hand it back to the president’: Top Trump aide asks Nobel winner to cede prize.”
“Why Trump Should Have Won Nobel Peace Prize.”
“John Legend Thinks He Knows How to Win Trump a Nobel Peace Prize.”
“Death of the Nobel Peace Prize” (by Nicolás Maduro).
“Why ‘the Venezuelan Iron Lady’ beat Donald Trump to win the Nobel Peace Prize.”
I will look at those and find a fun angle to explore. As for process, I might type directly into the Substack editor. I might type into Scrivener and paste source material into my research folder. I might write with a wooden pencil or a fountain pen on a legal pad or printer paper or index cards. My process is basically whatever works that day, but Ground News [ [link removed] ] has been a constant for months now. Even when I didn’t have a full-access subscription, I would go there first to find stories I might otherwise miss.
Now my readers can benefit from my relationship with Ground News. You can get 40% off their unlimited access Vantage plan (what I have) using my link, groundnews.com/punch [ [link removed] ] or by clicking the button below.
Finally, remember this: María Corina Machado won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. She earned it. It should be all about her and no one else.
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