The future of this reporting project

It’s the end of the ExxonKnews era and the beginning of something new.

Me, the mighty Hudson, and my now-artifact ExxonKnews tote.

Hello everyone! I have some exciting news to share: This is the last email you will receive from ExxonKnews on Substack — but a new and expanded climate accountability reporting project will be coming to your inboxes later this year.

I started ExxonKnews back in the dinosaur days of 2019 as a way to keep people informed about the fight to hold oil and gas companies accountable for their role in the climate crisis. The old heads will remember the original newsletter format — I had a lot of fun with memes, puns, and cat photos in those relatively gentler times.

A lot has changed for this project and — I don’t have to tell you — for the world in which we all live. Among other horrors, we have seen what happens to people, communities, and the planet when corporate power is left unchecked.

But having focused on this particular topic for this long, I know many of us won’t just watch that happen.

Because over these years, I’ve covered congressional investigations, the steady progress of lawsuits, and the hunt for documents that tell a story of maybe the most consequential corporate deception of all time. I’ve talked to people living through interminable cycles of disaster and recovery, pollution and extraction, who give every inch of their lives to acting and speaking out. Even with the resurgence of decades-old climate denial, the rise of attacks on our rights to protest and speak freely, and a seemingly neverending corporate colonizing of communities, from endless plastic trash poisoning our bodies to the procession of gas-fired plants for data centers most people don’t want. Even still, I’ve seen an undying refusal to be quiet about one of the most powerful industries on the planet.

And yet, one of the most frightening trends over these years has been the collapse of media outlets and the layoffs of reporters willing and able to tell these stories, and the cannibalizing of media by corporate billionaires — sometimes by fossil fuel companies themselves. All the while, confronted with the Trump administration’s prioritization of profit above all else in American society, some in the chattering classes are debating whether politicians should talk about climate change at all.

We need far more support for public media and independent climate accountability journalism, but I’m proud that ExxonKnews has become a place for original reporting focused on corruption and the corporate oligarchy, keeping these stories accessible to all. Through collaborations with other outlets and reporters I admire, including investigations with Atmos, DeSmog, Grist, HEATED, The Lever, and The Lens, and through our partnership in Covering Climate Now, a collaborative helping hundreds of outlets get climate stories out to readers, I’ve been able to tell new kinds of stories to a wider audience.

Over the past few years, my reporting and collaborations have dug up oil industry lobbying to limit pipeline safety regulations and been cited in a (Biden-era) White House advisory council report on carbon management, uncovered how a risky Exxon pipeline got sited just feet away from a community and analyzed the company’s new greenwashing scheme around data centers, helped expose hypocrisies from the law firms representing Big Oil, a covert partnership between industry and government, and a weird partnership between a major media outlet and a major utility, shone a light on the dark money groups behind laws and dark money trails behind fake news, and just last month, got a Louisiana legislator to say he would rewrite a bill that could have halted all lawsuits against polluters over emissions in the state. I’ve also kept close tabs on the oil industry’s growing efforts to escape accountability in court, and reported on what they might have learned from the gun industry. I took an intensive investigative reporting course at Columbia Journalism School in 2024, which has informed my approach to this work including many of the stories above.

All that brings me to my news: this project has changed a lot, and it’s getting a refresh.

I will still be running a reporting project of the Center for Climate Integrity, covering climate accountability and the fossil fuel industry — but some other things about it will be a little different, and I’m excited to share more about that when I’m back. The next email you’ll receive will be from Ghost, a different platform that does not host Nazi newsletters.

I’m getting a refresh, too! I’ll be completely offline for the next month, taking a minute away from screens to do something I love: hit the trail (more about that when I’m back, too).

In the meantime, if you’re a source and want to keep me updated on stories (please do!) or send tips, you can continue to reach out at emily@exxonknews.org — I’ll check email when I return — or reach me on signal at @emilysanders.84.

If you’re a reader and have feedback on the types of stories you’d like to see more of or how this project can better serve you, please shoot me an email! I’d love to hear from you as we move into this next phase. In the meantime, please do encourage others who you think should subscribe!

I want to thank you so much for being part of this community and helping others stay informed and connected. At a truly disturbing time for humanity and the planet, I’m deeply grateful for all the people still fighting for a better world.

Bye for now and see you on the other side,

Emily

A Tumbleweed for the road.