Dear readers:

Welcome to my newsletter, which will be my primary outlet for writing for the foreseeable future.

Many people who come to my newsletter do so as followers of my investigative reporting on Bill Gates, including my 2023 book, “The Bill Gates Problem.” Others may have read my investigations into conflicts of interest in science, like exposing the National Academy of Medicine’s financial ties to Big Opioids. And some readers may know my work in media criticism, examining how powerful private interests quietly fund journalism and documentary films to advance their brands and messages.

A focus of my journalism career has been interrogating institutions that the public—and many newsrooms—do not normally regard as structures of power, like philanthropy, show business, the scientific enterprise, and the news media, itself. More broadly, my reporting examines the intersection of public and private interests, and the conflicts of interest that emerge.

In this newsletter, I will continue to produce investigative journalism, but I’ll also publish book reviews, media criticism, Q&A’s with interesting people, personal essays, and other content. My hope is that this platform gives me an opportunity to do and say more than I have (been allowed to) as a freelancer.

And I hope that you’ll support me.

My plan, as I write this, is to make the newsletter free for people who can’t afford to pay. But if you can afford to pay, please consider doing so. Because this is my job. This is how I make money. And if I can’t make money, I can’t continue the project.

Now, for the wind and swagger. If you want some some braggadocio on my bonafides, here you go:

My investigative journalism has won an Alicia Patterson Foundation reporting fellowship, an Izzy Award from the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, and a Deadline Club Award from the New York City chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. An investigation I wrote into the Gates Foundation’s financial influence over journalism was a finalist for a Mirror Award from the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.

My reporting has appeared in numerous outlets, including The Nation, The British Medical Journal, Columbia Journalism Review, The Baffler, and elsewhere.

My 2023 book on the Gates Foundation——“The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire”—-has been translated into six languages, and can be found in book stores around the world. The book generated an “Editor’s Choice” recommendation from the New York Times, a starred review from Booklist (the American Library Association), and a glowing review in the prestigious academic journal, Nature. More than 100 media outlets have covered the book, and I’ve been invited to give book talks to a wide variety of audiences, from Harvard University to Association of Health Care Journalists.

timschwab2020@gmail.com or find me on Signal under username Yes.60