INQUIRE is a reader-supported newsletter and podcast produced by Zaid Jilani and Shant Mesrobian, where we examine and cast a critical eye on America's political, media, and elite class discourse.

Why INQUIRE? If you're here, then you might already have a sense: On topic after topic, the national conversation has gone off the rails. Today, the mainstream institutions that are responsible for informing and engaging the public have been captured by an increasingly narrow, highly concentrated class of hyper-partisan elites and culture warriors who prioritize a devotion to preconceived, artificial narratives and rigid orthodoxies over truth and free inquiry. 

The stories, news reports, and analyses that we used to rely on to understand current events now sound like they are describing an alternate universe. These institutions have abandoned any pretense of reflecting mainstream perspectives, serving the broad public interest, or antagonizing elite power centers. Instead, they increasingly view themselves as the information arms of those very interests. In doing so, they have divorced themselves from the very public they are tasked to serve and continue to lose more of the public’s faith and confidence every day. Our intent is to serve as a counter-weight to this trend by examining and deconstructing it in real-time.

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INQUIRE is completely reader-supported and relies on subscriptions to keep going. If you haven't already, please take a moment to subscribe now and join us. By subscribing, you'll get access to all of the articles we produce as well as the INQUIRE podcast. You'll also be joining the INQUIRE community where you can comment on articles and be a part of the discussion.

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Examining America's political, media, and elite class discourse with Zaid Jilani and Shant Mesrobian.

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Zaid Jilani is a reporter who previously worked as a digital reporter for NewsNation. Before that, he was a staff reporter at a range of outlets, including The Intercept, AlterNet, and ThinkProgress. He is based in the Atlanta area.