Jan. 11, 2023: Blake Hounshell, 1978-2023

Most listeners to this show or readers of the Playbook newsletter didn’t know Blake Hounshell, but all of you were influenced by him.

He nurtured and mentored dozens of young journalists who now populate virtually every significant news organization. He plucked brilliant academics from obscurity and turned them into influential writers. He shaped the world of online political news, newsletters and social media for over a decade at Foreign Policy, POLITICO and The New York Times. He put together the current incarnation of Playbook. He helped create POLITICO Magazine. He taught beat reporters how to become longform storytellers. He relentlessly spotted and recruited new talent. He was a terrific reporter with a rare breadth of knowledge — just go read his archive of stories over the last two years at the Times.

“Blake had lots of insights,” our Sam Stein noted to us last night. “And observations. And advice. He was informed but inquisitive; hyperactive but not overbearing. Those were qualities that made him a great editor. 

“What made him a brilliant one was that he loved to stir up shit. When … he hired me for the role of White House editor, he said he was eager to cause ‘some good trouble.’ He loved to push the envelope. He wanted to build: stories and newsrooms and products. And he did. Great ones. What a wonderful legacy to leave.”

We lost Blake yesterday. It was sudden and baffling. His friends were texting and emailing with him — about dinner plans and story ideas and a new class he was set to teach at NYU. He was tweeting. And then he was gone. He committed suicide after a long struggle with depression. 

Blake was a singular figure in Washington journalism, and we asked those who knew Blake best to share some remembrances of him. We were ultimately overwhelmed by the extraordinary array of Playbookers whose lives he had touched — so many, in fact, that we’re hard-pressed to share them all here. Uncut, those tributes run to 13 pages, and we’d love to hear more still: playbook@politico.com. 

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Raghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.