Independent Newsletter Spotlight: Marisa Kabas of “The Handbasket”

Before starting her newsletter, The Handbasket, in 2022, Marisa Kabas was a full-time freelancer, reporting on politics for outlets like Rolling Stone, HuffPost, MSNBC, The New Republic, and The Washington Post. Like many media workers who take the leap into newsletters, Kabas was seeking some semblance of security in a chaotic landscape.

“I wanted to have a place of my own, to know that, no matter what, no matter which publications went under and which archives were erased, I would always have a place where I could publish my own thoughts and my work,” she tells Study Hall.

On The Handbasket (as in, going to hell in one), Kabas has been tracking the ebbs and flows of the brutal, exhausting and chaotic election cycle, and weighing in with takes on everything from the “weirdo” discourse to close-reads on Project 2025. She has also found a beat covering goings-on at small-town newspapers, and the climate of local media media. Recently, she uncovered the surprising culprit behind the theft of an entire Colorado town’s newspapers, which were stolen on the day of a breaking news story about the police chief. 

Last year, after The Kansas Reflector, a nonprofit newsroom, reported that police raided the offices of the Marion County Record, a newspaper in Marion, Kansas, The Handbasket was the first to learn and report that the paper had been investigating Marion’s police chief. The Washington Post cited her reporting. In July, she collaborated with The Kansas Reflector, to do on-the-ground coverage of the raid’s lingering effects on the town.

In addition to covering national politics and the local news industry, she’s also been tackling pop culture from a personal and political perspective. Following the fallout over The Zone of Interest director Jonathan Glazer’s Academy Awards speech, in which he disavowed the Israeli government’s co-option of Holocaust trauma, Kabas contemplated what it means to be a “good Jew.” 

Kabas has found a living and a passion in The Handbasket, which is now her full-time job (she occasionally still freelances elsewhere). The newsletter, which she publishes on Beehiiv, has developed a loyal audience of over 7,000, which she’s built largely on Bluesky.

Study Hall spoke with Kabas about her goals for The Handbasket, reporting on local news, and why she left Substack.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity

What is your goal for The Handbasket? 

Obviously, the next 99 days until the election are going to be huge. [My goal is to] stay close to the issues that matter most to me rather than just running along with the horse race of elections. No matter who wins in November, I’ll continue to [focus on] criminal justice reform, abortion rights, women’s rights, and LGBTQ+ rights. I also hope to get to a point where I’m not just making a living from my newsletter, but a good living. I feel really fortunate to be doing this on my own because I can wake up every day and say: I am in control of what I publish, and my fate, and I’m never going to get an email that says, ‘Hey, can we talk’ one morning.

What are some of your promotional strategies for your newsletter?

The biggest platform for my newsletter so far has actually been Bluesky. It’s still a relatively small network, but the people on there seem to be much more engaged. I used to have a really big Twitter account, more than 50,000 followers. Then last year, when Elon Musk took over, I pretended to be Gwyneth Paltrow and got permanently banned. But it was kind of a blessing in disguise, because it forced me to lean off Twitter for the most part. I still have an account but it’s not my primary network. My audience on Bluesky is far more engaged than my Twitter audience ever was.

Your piece about the The Washington Post, and the power of Murdoch’s empire underscored the need for independent media. How has running your newsletter changed your perspective on legacy media? 

I understand why people still work at legacy media publications. I don’t begrudge anyone. Especially for people of a certain age, millennials and older, the idea of working at one of these publications is still exciting. I remember when I newly graduated from journalism school and my dream job was to work at New York Magazine. That’s not my dream anymore. I’m on the path to realizing my ultimate journalism scenario. I tried so for so long to fit into the traditional mold. [First] a few staff jobs, then when I was freelancing, by continuing to pitch these legacy publications. Everytime I would write something for someone, it would go really well. But there was never any momentum. It always felt like when I would reach out with a new pitch, it was starting from square one. I was really sick of that, because that’s not that’s not a productive way to work, that’s not encouraging. I didn’t feel good about my output. Now I’m able to circumvent that with my own newsletter. To publish whenever I want, whatever I want, that certainly comes with certain flaws, and you have to be a good self-editor. But I have been able to improve my writing so much just by being allowed to keep doing it. 

In 2023, you broke news that the Marion County Record was investigating the town’s police chief prior to a raid on its offices. How did it feel to break news with your newsletter? Can you share a bit about your collaboration on that story with Kansas Reflector? 

Breaking the Marion story was a big milestone for The Handbasket. It’s what brought enough readers to the newsletter for me to justify trying to make it my full-time job. It also felt personal, given that an attack on the press anywhere is an attack on the press everywhere. I quickly understood that if the police could pull this off in Kansas, they could do it where I live, too. And in fact, a New York City-based photojournalist was just arrested for a hate crime this week just for being present and documenting [activism].

Working with Sherman and the Kansas Reflector on that story team was honestly a dream. It felt amazing to work with other people again, and particularly with people I would’ve never met if it hadn’t been for this story bringing us together. I feel really invested in the future of free press in Kansas because I have friends there now.

Last December, you co-wrote an open letter, titled “Substackers Against Nazis,” criticizing the company for platforming Nazis. Substack responded with an open letter reaffirming their policy. Did Substack end up addressing you and other publishers’ concerns? 

A couple weeks after we posted the letter, one of the founders posted on Substack notes on behalf of the three co-founders. They said: “we understand your concerns. We don’t like Nazis either, but…” and basically how we have to tolerate all viewpoints, no matter how abhorrent. That was the final nail in the coffin. I left at the beginning of this year, and now I’m hosted on Beehiiv. It’s smaller, it’s newer, but it’s served me well so far. I pay a monthly hosting fee, and then I get 100% of all my subscriptions. Not only am I not giving money to people who I have severe ideological disagreements with, I’m also getting more of it for myself and for my own business. 

How do you feel like this incident illuminates the dynamics of being an independent media worker on these platforms?

[The incident] highlighted that we can’t become dependent on any one platform. Substack was sort of feeling their oats and feeling like they were the first to pioneer this independent newsletter space, while at the same time, trying to make it so that writers couldn’t leave, and feel they have to say, “I don’t just write a newsletter, I write a Substack.” I didn’t want to be writing a Substack. I wanted to be writing a newsletter of my own. The sooner I could get away from that, and the sooner I could establish myself as a completely independent entity, the better.