I gave my dad a tour of NR’s headquarters this past December. For my dad, who’d grown up watching William F. Buckley Jr., the display cases filled with Firing Line memorabilia and shelves stacked with God and Man at Yale made it a pleasant stroll down memory lane. If I remember correctly, he fangirled at the pictures of Buckley debating Reagan and speaking with Margaret Thatcher and even Muhammad Ali.
NR meant something to my dad. It wasn’t one of the new digital outlets I’d written for that I needed to give him some deeper context about. National Review was enduring. Thoughtful. A place where real writing was done.
I feel the same way.
Visiting the office a couple of days after our company holiday party this year, I grabbed several pins from our secretary’s desk, nicked an NR-logo mouse pad, and took a parting photo of the office. “Standing Athwart History,” I texted my family group chat before ducking out into the cold December day. My dad got the pins (which he proudly displays), and my grandfather — and his somehow miraculously still-running Windows 7 desktop — got the mouse pad.
Nothing has made me prouder — and underscored the importance of an intellectually diverse journalistic landscape — than NR’s conduct since 10/7 and its hard-nosed reporting holding institutions and leaders to account. I remember pinging Jack Crowe and Phil Klein incessantly throughout October 17, when reports emerged of Israel bombing the Al-Ahli Hospital. It was a case study in levelheadedness. We monitored news feeds and patiently waited before reporting on the hospital blast caused by an errant Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket.
Most other major outlets got it wrong, but not NR.
That’s not a fluke. That’s a by-product of the great people and robust norms that guide our work — reaching out for comment, not scrambling to a headline at the cost of accuracy, and clear-mindedness at a time of intense passion. We’ve created a little brain trust with Phil, Jack, and Zach Kessel, putting out some of the sharpest coverage since the conflict started more than three months ago.
There are so many people in my brief stint with NR who deserve special thanks for making me the person I am today.
Firstly, Judd for taking a flier and somehow having faith that a Canadian could carry his weight and actually contribute to such an esteemed publication. Judd was gracious enough to stay in touch with me after I lost out on the Buckley Fellowship a few years back (happily, I can say, to Luther). By luck, or divine providence, we happened to chat the same day that NR was looking for a news writer.
The rest is history — as the newsroom can attest.
Jack Crowe bore through more headaches, revisions, edits, and Slack huddles than any editor I can think of. Without Jack, my writing would still be meanderingly incoherent. If it’s any sharper or clearer today, it’s because of his watchful eye and skillful application of the editor’s scalpel. We commiserated, more than once, on the state of the New York Giants before editorial calls (and will likely commiserate more for the foreseeable future).
One of the first things Jack recommended when I first joined was to “Read Ryan.” Ryan who? I was still getting my bearings and learning the ropes of NR’s deep roster of writers, but I nodded my head and pretended to know what he was talking about.
And then it hit me: that Ryan — of course — was Ryan Mills.
Again, by some measure of incredible luck, Ryan found time between raising a family, kids’ wrestling practices, and his own reporting to edit my stuff and coach me on the ins and outs of journalism, all while being a mentor, sounding board, advocate, and colleague. There are many people who’ve set me right on the course of reporting, but perhaps none have done more than Ryan.
The whole newswriting crew was right there with me through all of it, particularly Brittany Bernstein and Caroline Downey. Both tolerated my constant horse-trading and haggling of shifts far too often. I’m sure the sight of a late-night text from me saying, “I’ll give you my Tues P.M. for your Thurs A.M.” is still near-trauma-inducing for them at this point! I look forward to seeing how both their careers evolve over the years; my money is on Caroline becoming a Fox News on-air host and Brittany being a Capitol Hill reporter.
Luther (who edited this piece and hopefully added even better adjectives to describe how helpful [Editor’s note: Not to mention brilliant, gregarious, and humble] he’s been) reached out to me on my first day at NR with a cheery message and his “Unofficial Guide to National Review” (now in its fourth edition, I believe, for those who are curious). No single person better embodies the soul of NR than Luther, who, on several occasions, has offered to show me around Wisconsin, take me to a Packers game, and even go sailing. He was always there when I needed an emoji for the Giants or the New York Mets, or to capture some strange emotion my beloved Canada had provoked by doing something silly.
If my U.S. citizenship application doesn’t pan out, there’s a strong possibility that I might jump the northern border and hide out in an undisclosed location in Wisconsin with his help. [Editor’s note: He’s probably in Chicago, Ill., Border Patrol, so don’t bother looking in central Wisconsin at the Crystal Café in Iola.]
Miraculously, NR provided me the liberty to find opportunities in far-flung places about stuff that matters: reporting on Israel concerning judicial-reform protests, Yellowstone about bison, and Portland on homelessness, all within a single year. I also got to meet people such as Douglas Murray, Sebastian Junger, George Will, Matt Taibbi, and others.
I still don’t believe this has all panned out. I worked in a corporate bank doing anti-money-laundering spreadsheets for two years and hated my life. How did I possibly find myself here? How could I not pinch myself every day?
NR has been and will always be in my bones. NR was the first site I opened every morning not because I happened to work there; rather, I read NR multiple times a day to understand what Andy McCarthy, Noah Rothman, Michael Brendan Dougherty, and Rich Lowry — as well as many other esteemed colleagues — have to say. They are the clarifying voices in our time of uncertainty, and I’ll gladly keep my subscription!
That all of this has happened in barely over a year is hard to fathom. Because of the great work I was a small part of at NR, a Canadian daily, the National Post, saw fit to take a chance on me as a reporter. It’s the first step in a long journey, one which I truly hope intersects, sometime soon, back through NR.
Thanks for all the memories.