I spent seven years as a staff writer — politics desk, tech policy, platform regulation. Good years. The kind where you still believe the job is to find what's true and say it clearly.
Then an editor killed a story because it made an advertiser uncomfortable. Not the first time. Just the last time I let it happen. That story never ran. I left three weeks later.
The Holt Report launched in 2021 as a one-person operation. No editorial board. No advertisers. No PR relationships to manage. No list of sources I'm protecting by staying vague.
The format is simple: pick a story, find what everyone got wrong, and say it. Sometimes that's the left. Sometimes that's the right. More often than not, it's both — usually for different reasons, usually with the same confidence.
Politics — not the game, the gap. The distance between what gets said in speeches and what gets written into law. Donors, lobbyists, and the legislation they quietly author.
Tech — specifically, how the people building the internet talk about what they're building versus what it actually does. Platform policy, AI hype, the slow collapse of online privacy.
Platform culture — Reddit, X, TikTok, the algorithm-driven feedback loops that shape what millions of people believe is happening in the world. I also review the platforms themselves: anonymous chat sites, social networks, and the infrastructure of modern loneliness.
Opinion — occasionally I just have something to say. I try to make it worth your time.
Sharp. Ironic where irony is the most accurate tool. Factual in a way that makes the irony land. I learned early that the best way to make powerful people look bad is to quote them accurately. I try not to be funny when the story doesn't call for it, and I try not to be earnest when the story is obviously absurd.
I don't do rage-bait. I don't do hot takes for the sake of engagement. If something I write makes you angry, I'd ask whether the anger is at me or at the thing I'm describing.