I am not here to tell you how it all turns out. I do not know yet.
What I can tell you is this: I am in it with you. Right now. Not looking back from some mountaintop with a book deal and a podcast sponsor, dispensing wisdom about how I figured it all out. I am still figuring it out. Every single day.
That is the whole point of Self-Reliant News.
I am Evan Houk — a freelance journalist based in Old Town, Maine. I have been covering local government, police, courts, and community stories for years, most recently for The Maine Monitor. I have also been a cannabis user for twenty years, a father for three, a person in recovery from opiates for longer than I care to count, and a human being trying to stay functional while staring at everything that is broken in this world without flinching.
Self-Reliant News exists because local journalism is dying. The newspapers that used to send reporters to every selectmen meeting, every school board vote, every zoning dispute — they are gone, or guttered down to a skeleton crew chasing clicks. The accountability infrastructure of American civic life is crumbling quietly in small towns all across this country, and nobody is covering it.
I am going to cover it.
Not with a press release rewrite. Not with a quote from a spokesperson. With shoe-leather reporting, public records requests, source cultivation, and the willingness to sit in uncomfortable rooms asking uncomfortable questions until someone gives me a real answer.
This site is free. It will stay free. Because the people who most need this information — the people living in news deserts, the people whose local government makes decisions affecting their lives with zero public scrutiny — those people should not have to pay a subscription to find out what their elected officials are doing with their money.
If you want to support this work, there will be a way to do that. But for now, just read. Share it. Tell your neighbor. Show up to your next town council meeting. That is all I ask.
We are just getting started.
— Evan Houk
Self-Reliant News
Old Town, Maine
[AI DISCLOSURE: This post was written by Evan Houk. No AI-generated content.]