Landing Big Scoops as an Indie Journalist (with Marisa Kabas)

0:04Hey, and welcome to the 404 Media Podcast, where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds, both online and IRL. 404 Media is a journalist-founded company and needs your support. To become a subscriber, go to 404media.co. Subscribers get access to bonus segments, bonus episodes, and early access to this interview podcast series. Today, I'm joined by Marissa Cabas, the independent journalist who runs the handbasket. Marissa has gotten scoop after scoop about the federal government, Doge, ICE raids, George Santos, and a lot more. She's a friend of ours and has been super nice to 404 Media, so please check her out.

0:39I'm talking to Marissa about how she started the handbasket, what's going on in the federal government now, and why independent journalism is so much nimbler than big media institutions. Here's my interview with Marissa. Hi, Marissa. Hey, how's it going? Good, good. Thank you so much for doing this. I wanted to first thank you for putting together the independent journalism guide that you published, where you so kindly recommended us and so many of our great colleagues across the indie media sphere. That was like an amazing public service. So if you're listening to this, go check that out. But I figured we should feature you who put it all together.

1:23Marissa, you run the handbasket. for people who do not know what The Handbasket is, can you just tell us a little bit about it and about you and what you focus on? Sure. So The Handbasket is an independent media site. It covers mostly politics, but media as well. I like to say our country's crumbling institutions kind of covers it. I have been working as a journalist for over a decade. I had some staff writer jobs back in the day, but mostly I've been a freelancer. And I started the handbasket in 2022 just to make sure I always had a place where I could publish my stuff. And it's turned into a full-time job and a fairly successful one, which is crazy and cool.

2:09Yeah, it's been amazing to watch you run rings around establishment media, bigger media. We'll get into that eventually. I want to start with this piece you wrote a few months ago, or rather it was the transcript of a speech that you gave at Grinnell College, which I think is in Iowa. I have not been there, but you were asked to talk to journalism students there about independent media, about how you built the handbasket. And well, I thought it was an amazing speech. So I wanted to go through a few things in it because I think that we broke into the industry around the same time. I went to the University of Maryland and I majored in journalism.

2:52I graduated 2010. You graduated around the same time. Right down the road. You talk in there a little bit about journalism school at that time. And I remember really like two things. One, I remember sort of having journalism ethics drilled into me. And that was, sort of always present both sides of the story. There was a very useful journalism law class where I sort of learned about libel and things like that. And then the class that I actually remember the most was a newspaper layouts class where we had like graph paper and we're actually cutting column inches to lay out a newspaper. And this was in 2010.

3:41Websites existed then. Like websites existed when we went to school, but you mentioned in your speech that there was like one digital journalism class that you took. I'm curious like what it felt like to go into an industry that even at that time felt like, it felt like the training I was getting was from like a bygone era. And I'm curious if you felt that at that time and like how that has kind of informed maybe your career. That's a very big question. I don't know if I was aware of it at the time, just because it was hard to know what the job market was going to be like and what the industry was going to be like when I actually got into it.

4:25I had a broadcast journalism internship in college at NBC News in DC, and that was a whole other kind of antiquated experience. um I don't know I just felt like it felt very specific what I was being trained for it felt like we were being trained for one type of thing um and whatever that was wasn't really for me I didn't feel like I was fitting whatever mold that they were looking for um based on on kind of the way we were instructed um and so it I just felt like I was pushed off a cliff basically when I graduated, looking for jobs at websites and trying to figure out what that looked like. We had absolutely no training for that.

5:12We had no... I mean, I wrote for my student newspaper and we published it online. Like, I knew what internet journalism was. But as far as that being the primary medium for journalism, it was just completely uncharted territory. And so I feel like our cohort, like our group, we kind of had to blaze the trail because the people older than us didn't know any better. They just were trying to figure it out a little bit longer than we were. And I think we were kind of in that sweet spot where we were like young enough to be nimble and we weren't steeped in the old way of doing things. So that's allowed us to say like, you know, screw the old rules.

5:52Let's let's try something new. Yeah. So you have this part of the speech where you explain that you had an interview with the executive editor of The New Yorker to be her assistant. New Yorker, amazing magazine. They have had it figured out for a long time, I think, at least. They're doing great work. But you talk about going in for that interview. And here's what you wrote. You said, I was taken aback when the executive editor asked me, how do you think we can monetize our website? I really wanted to say, how the fuck should I know? And also, why are you asking me? In retrospect, it should have been a glaring red flag that the adults in charge had no idea what they were doing and that it would be up to me and my peers to figure it out.

6:35But that's something I wouldn't realize until much later on after years of expecting someone else to fix it until I realized I was the adult. And that really stuck out to me because one, you have figured it out from a business perspective, from a how to do journalism perspective, from sort of like a jack of all trades perspective. That was something that was drilled into me in college. They're like, oh, you might need to learn how to take a photo or you might need to learn how to like edit audio, although they didn't teach us. But it really does feel like with something like the handbasket, like you are doing everything.

7:09We talk a lot of 404 Media like, oh, we're doing everything. We're only four people. You're only one person and you're doing a lot of stuff. But I guess that was a very roundabout way of asking, like you have figured out how to both run a business and get scoops and publish and be your own editor, sort of like legal department type thing. Is this something that you've picked up gradually or is it something that you really feel like you were thrown into the fire and have had to figure it out? Yeah, I would say probably the latter. I've really just had to figure it out. And yes, like it is, I am on my own.

7:52It's just my operation. But I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that there are a lot of people kind of behind the scenes that have been so helpful to me. And I have so many journalism friends. We've all gone through 800 layoffs. Like we've all been in the trenches together. And, you know, I have all these friends who I can bounce ideas off of and to headline, you know, headline help. I'll just frantically start texting them and it's like I can hear it right now. And I've had friends edit stuff for me, a little bit longer stuff that I feel like could use an extra set of eyes. So I'm incredibly fortunate in that I'm not a complete island.

8:33But at the same time, it's just been a game of trusting my instincts. It's kind of crazy. Like I, I, there have been times where I'm like, I need advice about something, but I don't really know if there's anyone who can give me advice on this very specific situation. Kind of like when I had the big scoop at the beginning of this year, I didn't know what to do and I was freaking out. And yes, there are some kind of basic ethical things that you could consider, but with social media, with the current administration, with the way that outlets are structured now, like there wasn't actually any blueprint for how to handle it.

9:10I kind of just had to figure it out. And that's terrifying. I want to talk about how you handled that scoop. You got a lot of scoops, but I think that the one that you're talking about is the OMB memo. So at the end of January, soon after Trump took over, the White House's Office of Management and Budget sent out this memo to all federal agencies saying that they were going to freeze all grants and loans across the entire government. And you got that first and you posted it on Blue Sky. I'm curious why you posted it on Blue Sky rather than like quickly writing up an article for the handbasket.

9:50I know you eventually did write it on the handbasket, but was it a sense of like, I need to get this out like as soon as possible or what was sort of your thinking at the time? Yeah, part of it was the immediacy. I didn't want to get scooped and I knew I had something enormous. I didn't know. I don't know if I knew quite how enormous it was like in the moment, it, but I just knew that I really wanted to get it out quickly. And I'm not a breaking news reporter. So my forte is not writing things up really quickly. Like I'm actually terrible at that. And people who are good at that, I'm very envious.

10:23And so part of it was that. And then part of it was a confidence thing. I think I felt like if I published it on Blue Sky and I felt really good about it, I knew I had had the story right. But if for some reason it wasn't, it's a lot easier to delete a social media post than it is to, you know, delete an entire post on your website. Like that feels more permanent, I guess. And I felt like that was going more out on the limb. And in retrospect, it really isn't any different. But like you were saying, like I had to kind of figure it out as I was going. And so I wanted to wait. I waited until a big outlet confirmed it before I actually wrote it up because I was still kind of stuck in that old mindset of like, it's not really news until the Washington Post says it's news.

11:15And now my mindset's completely changed, but that's where I was coming from at that moment. Yeah, I do remember some of my first scoops and even learning what a scoop is. Like, oh, this is information that other people don't have that I have. And then you sort of have to, you have to publish it and you have to, you have to be right. It's like, uh, very early in my career, um, you know, I, I've, I've made like small mistakes. Thankfully, I've never made like a massive, uh, mistake, but I think that anytime that you have, uh, like a, a big scoop like this, when it has to do with a big company or it has to do with the federal government, there is like almost this moment where we work in Google Docs, but it's like, we're working in Google Docs, we're loading into the CMS.

12:09And then your hand like hovers over the publish button. And it's like, before you click that button, it's not public knowledge. And then after you click that button, it goes out there and people begin to react to it immediately. can you talk a little bit about what it feels like to publish a big story especially kind of like in this administration where yes like you're doing very impactful work and people are going to to read it and share it and that sort of thing but also you don't know how they're going to react you don't know sort of like what the fallout of any given like big article is going to be i'm sure that there's a bit of a mix of like adrenaline and fear is the wrong word, but like, uh, unease that, that comes with doing some of the work that you do.

13:03Yeah. Um, I, I have a lawyer that I can run things by. I mean, I definitely don't have one on staff or anything because I don't have a staff. Um, and so if there are ever real concerns, I try to, I mean, I try to be as buttoned up as possible, but there's, it doesn't matter how buttoned up you are. If someone wants to sue you and someone has it out for you, it doesn't really matter how much you've done before. They can still try and go after you. And so that moment of hovering over the publish button is so real. I have so many times where I'm just like, do I need to give it another read? And it's like, no, you've read it 700 times.

13:40You're good. You're good. But there's always that little bit of nagging in the back of my head, like, well, maybe you missed something. And of course, usually it's just like a stupid typo. And then I get like 700 messages about the dumbest typo. But if that's the worst of it, then that's fine. But yeah, it's been a real confidence building exercise this year to just say, why does anyone else know better than you do? That was sort of the thing that I had to get over. At first it was, why me? And now it's like, why not me? I am well-sourced. I trust my sources. People trust me. I've built a body of work that is trustworthy.

14:24There's just as much of a chance that I'm getting a big story as the New York Times or AP or Reuters getting it. But I still struggle with that a little bit. Yeah. I mean, I guess we, I feel like we have largely built our audience the same way that you have built your audience, which is behind the backs of some like pretty big scoops that other outlets have not been able to get. And I don't work at other outlets. I don't know if, you know, maybe they were working on some of the pieces that we were working on and we were able to get them out faster. Or maybe they had no idea just because our sourcing was better because people trusted us more.

15:05one thing that we found at the beginning of this administration and it sort of continues to go is that we had a lot of government sources sort of in the early days of Doge and they were saying we want to talk to you we don't want to talk to the New York Times we don't want to talk to the Washington Post were you hearing the same thing and and why do you think people were talking to you instead of these like big bastions of journalism? Maybe this is an easy question, but I think it's still like notable to talk about. Yeah, yeah, definitely. No, there's at the beginning, especially there are a lot of people being like, why would they talk to you?

15:45No offense, but like why? And I think it was because a lot of, at least for me, and I wonder if you had the same experience, a lot of the people who were speaking to me were not used to speaking the media. Like it was their first time being a government informant or leaking information. They were not the people running the agencies. A lot of times they were the people kind of in the middle or even towards the lower end of things who knew what was going on, but they weren't executives. They weren't thinking about optics and they weren't in meetings with these high-level cabinet people. They were just regular people trying to do their jobs and not able to do them because of this insane government.

16:29And so I think it was just the feeling of wanting to speak to another person and not to a corporate entity. Saying, I spoke to Marissa and not, I spoke to the New York Times. Those are two very different things. I also think it's just less daunting. I think if you're not used to speaking to media, this idea of just, oh, there's just this girl, she's a reporter and she's going to listen and take me seriously is a lot less intimidating than like reaching out to the biggest media outlet in the world. Yeah, I think that's right. We had a very similar experience sort of mixed with we're a tech publication, we had tech expertise.

17:11And so having Elon Musk come into the federal government and try to like AI-ify everything, I feel like sort of led people to speak to us because they felt like we understood what we were talking about. Whereas, like, I think that probably a lot of the reporters for national media outlets who cover politics or who cover government agencies didn't necessarily have like that tech background expertise. And I know you weren't doing a lot of tech reporting, but I think that's part of it. they were like, you're not going to mess up the details of why this matters or like why replacing all of the contract, uh, like review process with it, with a large language model is going to be a really bad thing.

17:59And I think that you, you do a lot of the same where you understand how these agencies work. And that's not to say that, uh, you know, other reporters don't understand how they work, but I have worked at other outlets and I have friends who've worked at other outlets and it feels like often during the editing process at some of these outlets, a lot of the like bite to the stories gets edited out or the potential harm that's going to be done is minimized because sometimes it hasn't happened yet. So it's like sort of speculative. And that's something that you also talk about in your speech where you talk about having sort of like a point of view and moral clarity, which is different from being like an opinion writer, totally different.

18:46We're both journalists. We both do like fact-based reporting, but you're coming at it with a perspective. And I think that that, I think readers like that, but I also think sources like that. Yeah, I think it helps make them feel heard and feel like you're accurately conveying what they're feeling. Because if you tell someone a really emotional story and they kind of dispassionately relay it, I imagine that feels like it falls flat a little bit. But we're dealing with highly emotional subjects and immigration and people's money and staying fed and benefiting from federal programs that we pay into, you know, all these things that are pretty life or death.

19:28And to the way that a lot of these bigger outlets approach it is just, it falls flat for the source and also for the reader because it doesn't really convey the gravity of the situation. And, you know, I think I've noticed an evolution in my writing over the last year. Like, I think as far as being, you know, Boise or whatever you want to call it, like, I think I've pulled back a little bit just because I think the facts do speak for themselves. But, you know, there are just, I think, little flourishes that make the difference. And I'm not trying to say, like, for example, the boats that have been bombed in the Caribbean and the way that a lot of outlets will say like, well, legal sources say that this is probably has no legal basis or something.

20:14Instead of just saying this is illegal, like there's, if no one can tell you it's legal, it's illegal. And so you can't be afraid to say what is plainly clear. And so for both of us, you know, we lack those institutional guardrails saying like, well, you can't really say it in quite that way because we might get in trouble. You know, there's less fear. Yeah, I think that's another really important point. And it's one that I brought up before where on one level, it's like we don't have the resources of a New York Times, not even close. We don't have the lawyers of a New York Times, although we also have a lawyer, but they have like a whole army of lawyers.

20:53But at the same time, I feel like we have an advantage, which I'll knock on wood here. But a lot of what we're seeing from the administration in particular is them going after household name journalistic institutions, going after CNN, going after 60 Minutes, going after the New York Times. And as we see a lot of these cases just get thrown out, or in some cases, the media outlets just pay the money. What's becoming clear is that they don't actually care about winning in court. They care about the headline and Trump being able to say it at a speech or something. And I'm having a hard time imagining Trump at a rally being like 404 media fake news or the handbasket fake news.

21:43It just doesn't, the sort of calculus there doesn't super make sense. And so I feel like we have a little bit of an advantage because we are being taken seriously by our readers and our work is having impact. But at the same time, we don't have this, these like decades of baggage that some of these other places have. Yeah. Yeah. You're absolutely right. I was so nervous earlier this year about potential legal problems and just putting a target on my back with the administration. But I think it's right that they, it's such a Trumpian view of the world, right? Like he's stuck in 1985. He's like, Oh, CNN, whatever, like NBC news.

22:23He just cares about the brand names and, and embarrassing them. And we're such small fish in comparison. And also like if they sued us, they wouldn't get a lot of money. Like it would be, it would just be kind of like a useless exercise for them. So yeah, I think you're right in that we are somewhat protected in that way, which is a luxury that I think that we've been taking advantage of. And that's why we've been able to get these really great scoops. And you guys have been absolutely killing it. And it's just, it's cool to have, you know, people alongside you doing the same sort of work and seeing like, there's a lot of us and there could be even more of us.

23:05Yeah, I think that's right. You know, we were obviously inspired by Defector and a lot of the other independent media outlets that have started this or started doing similar things. And a lot of them do really great reporting. But I do feel... I'll just talk broadly about random sub-stacks. It's like so many people started sub-stacks, many of them journalists, many of them just tech bros or whatever. And I feel like there's a little bit of a stigma about sub-stack in particular, not the company, we don't need to get into that, but just the idea that people are doing roundups of news, or they're giving you their takes, or they're just like writing whatever.

23:50And I feel like something that you have been really able to do is show like, no, I can do like real journalism, real scoops, real stories. That's like what we're trying to do as well. And what many of our colleagues are doing. But I do feel like it's almost a new wave of people who are more reporting focused in this independent space. And that gives me like a lot of hope. And I do think that there's room for others to do the same thing. Yeah, I realized very early on that scoops were currency in this space if you wanted to grow. Because I mean, yeah, sometimes I'll write more column-y type stuff and opinion type stuff, but I don't know if that's necessarily my forte.

24:30Like there's some people who are just really good at having a take and it's fairly obvious, but the way they write it for some reason catches fire. Like that's never been me. And so I've spent the last years trying to figure out how to differentiate myself. And even as early as 2023, like early 2023, I was covering the George Santos beat and getting scoops on that. And that was helping me break through initially. Like that was when the handbasket first kind of got on the map. You know, like I went on cable news for the first time and like had a chiron that said the handbasket. I'm like, this is so weird.

25:04Um, and, uh, Cable news is also crazy to go on. I've only done it like once or twice. And it, it, you, you feel like you're like in a vortex or something like it's otherworldly, at least my experience. I like, I don't remember anything that I said. It's so bright. It was so scary. You black out. It's so true. You're like, just need to get through this five minutes, but it's like so fast too. And it's like, you spend hours reporting a story on cable news like that. But yeah, no, I saw how I had these moments of growth with scoops around that story and then a few other things a bit later the following year.

25:41And so I knew that if I wanted to grow, I had to keep getting scoops. But I just didn't really plan for it to be about the federal government. That's just sort of how it ended up happening. But it's true that the normal kind of sub-stack personal site type thing is opinion. and it's like selling yourself as like a news brand almost. And I feel like I have managed to do something that's a little bit, I don't know, more substantial than that. Yeah.

26:36You also mentioned in the speech about one of your first scoops, which was about this case that happened in 2023 in Kansas. And the long and short of it is that local news had reported about... I don't remember the entirety of the story. The reporter got their electronics seized, basically, while reporting on police there. and you call the newspaper and you figured out that they had their electronics seized by police which I do remember that story as well and that was a very horrifying thing for press freedom in the United States but I really liked it's just like oh I picked up the phone and I got information and that's how I got a scoop that's how we can all have our scoops too it's just like oh something's happening like let's call people and see what they know or like let's send a freedom of information, act request, or let's send an email.

27:27And that's not to say that other... Lots of people get scoops, not calling people lazy. But often that is all there is to it, is like, hello, I'm interested in this. Can you tell me more? And if you get the right person on the phone, then you have a great story. You don't make it so complicated, I guess, is what I'm saying. That's what I like. Yeah, it's really not that complicated. Some of the scoops I've gotten are really complicated and involve documents and backdoor things and off the record and whatever. But sometimes it's literally just as simple as giving someone a call. And that was another one of those moments where people are like, where did this come from?

28:12How did she get this story? This makes no sense. And it was actually quite simple and straightforward. And anyone else could have gotten it. And also, like, I had this conversation with the owner of this small newspaper that had been raided by the police in Kansas. And I was just really interested. And I think he was like, you couldn't believe how interested I was, you know, some random person across the country. And I don't know, I'm fascinated by things happening outside of my bubble. And I don't treat them as, like, oddities. I think it's like, I knew that what happened there was really important.