I am not here to tell you how it all turns out. I do not know yet.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
That is the whole point of Self-Reliant News.<\/p>\n
I am Evan Houk \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
I am going to cover it.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
This site is free. It will stay free. Because the people who most need this information \u2014 the people living in news deserts, the people whose local government makes decisions affecting their lives with zero public scrutiny \u2014 those people should not have to pay a subscription to find out what their elected officials are doing with their money.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
We are just getting started.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Evan Houk
\nSelf-Reliant News
\nOld Town, Maine<\/p>\n
[AI DISCLOSURE: This post was written by Evan Houk. No AI-generated content.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dispatches"],"yoast_head":"\n