YES! Magazine’s Next Era

The big news is that it looks like there will actually be a next era!

You may have heard the sad news that YES! is ending its nearly 30-year run this month. There’s good news, though, better than I dared hope for. Thanks to the work of the most recent staff and board, YES! readers can look forward to a new era for YES!

Truthout, a leading progressive website, will keep the YES! website alive. I’m sure they will make an official announcement soon, but they gave me permission to let you know. Even better, the Truthout editors — some of whom grew up reading YES! — plan to create fresh YES! content moving forward!

The YES! approach lives on!
I’m excited super excited about this news and I want to make sure you saw the piece I wrote during the transition period (before I learned of Truthout’s plan). It’s called “The World Is Burning — Does the YES! Approach Still Matter?” In the spirit of open-source sharing, I unpacked the solutions journalism approach we developed in the early years of YES!

You can read it on the YES! website, or check out the version with photos from my 2016 road trip on my new Substack, "How We Rise."

Does saying YES! still matter?
We're living through dangerous times. The Trump regime’s violence and destruction is heartbreaking. And neither party truly takes on the long-term threats to human civilization—the climate crisis, nuclear weapons, inequality, and unregulated AI among them.

I believe this makes the YES! approach even more relevant. A divided and over-consuming society, with vast inequalities, and systems that deplete our planet’s capacity for life, simply could not continue. Many of us warned that this level of dysfunction could lead toward fascism. Then and now, we need realistic pathways forward.

At YES!, we celebrated those leading the transition away from division and oppression. We lifted up the work of building a new economy — and world — rooted in justice and sustainability. And we told stories of people changing their corners of the world, because hearing those stories helps us all understand what is truly possible.

This work of documenting possibilities feels even more urgent now than when we founded YES! during the Clinton years. The need for hope grounded in real action has never been greater.

Staying connected
I am feeling so much gratitude for what we accomplished together at YES! and for every person who contributed — staff, supporters, writers, artists, interns, readers, and board members. Most likely, you are one of those people, and I want to thank you.

I hope you are finding ways to stay grounded and connected through all this chaos and uncertainty.

P.S. A quick personal update: I recently retired from my role as communications manager for the Suquamish Indian Tribe (the people of Chief Seattle)—what an honor that was! I continue serving on the Tribe’s foundation board and traveling with the Tribe on the annual canoe journey. I'm planning a July road trip through Oregon and Northern California. If you're in those areas and want to grab coffee, please reach out!