The Informant is restarting soon

Hi friends – I want to let you know some good news: The Informant will soon be relaunching and publishing again on a regular basis in the lead-up to the U.S. election and beyond. The exact date of return is still uncertain, but I’m hoping it will be as soon as this week or next, depending on a few last-minute details.

It’s been almost two years since I’ve published anything here (or elsewhere) and a full three since I produced this newsletter on a semi-regular basis. If you’re receiving this note by email, it means that you signed up to subscribe somewhere along the way. I hope you’ll continue to subscribe and follow along as I bring you key reporting and intelligence on the dangerous and often, yes, weird purveyors of hate and extremism in the U.S. today. If you’re new to The Informant, I hope you’ll sign up today.

I’ve spent my career investigating white supremacists, neo-Nazis, militias and other extremists for an array of news outlets and nonprofits, and I’m looking forward to bringing you important coverage of these topics in the days ahead. I’ll be relaunching with a fresh investigation that I’m putting the finishing touches on now.

The reason for my absence, as many of you already know, is that I’ve been sick with what my doctors believe is Long Covid. It’s an illness that at times has left me bed-bound and unable to read or write more than a single text message at a time. Thankfully, I’ve recently been experiencing a significant remission of my symptoms, one that has lasted several months so far. This period of stable health is giving me the opportunity to build what I’ve come to think of as The Informant 2.0.

One of the biggest and immediate changes for the new iteration of this publication will be that it’s moving off Substack, the newsletter publishing platform where it began. I plan to say more about the reasons for the move in the near future. For now I’ll simply say that, as someone dedicated to fighting and exposing hate and bigotry, I can’t in good conscience remain part of a platform that’s so willing to work with neo-Nazis and help facilitate their funding. In December, Substack’s co-founders said bluntly they’re willing to do just that: work with neo-Nazis. (The company later said it banned five publications that expressed support for Nazism, but it has subsequently continued to host many others, including a publication that outright uses a racist slur as its title.) There are very few times in life when decisions are as easy as this one was for me. If Substack is going to work with Nazis, I’m not going to work with Substack.

Instead, The Informant is going to be using Ghost as its publishing platform. Ghost is open-source software in the vein of WordPress. Anyone can use it and install it, but doing so doesn’t lump you into a social network alongside all the other users of the platform in the way that Substack does. The work published by The Informant will not be at risk of contributing to the success of people who hold racist and genocidal ideologies.

If you’re already a subscriber to The Informant, the transition should be seamless. You won’t need to do anything. The website for the publication will change in design the next couple of days to accommodate the move to Ghost, but hopefully that will be relatively pain free too. So far, the relationship with Ghost has been very smooth, and I’m grateful to the people there who are making it a breeze. They have been really supportive. I can see why they are one of the main platforms for writers and publishers who are leaving Substack.

For now, all subscriptions are set at the free tier. But I’ll be creating the ability to pay for premium memberships very soon. If you were previously a paid subscriber to The Informant, keep an eye out for a special discount code along with that announcement.

The Informant also has a few other changes in store, which I’ll be announcing soon. The goal is to get back to a weekly or perhaps even more frequent publication schedule before the end of the year. For now I hope you’ll subscribe if you haven’t already and help spread the word.

Sincerely,

Nick R. Martin

PS – If you followed me on Twitter before it crumbled into a heap of racism and antisemitism, you might notice I’m no longer posting there. Instead, you can find me on Bluesky these days. It’s a much better platform than X or any of the alternatives that have cropped up at the moment and I’m enjoying the conversations and interactions I’ve been having there. I hope you’ll join me.